LEED Certification

What is LEED?

ThinkDwell offers LEED Certification services. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is a green building rating system designed by the USGBC (US Green Building Council). The purpose of the rating system is to allow builders/designers to document how green their building project is. It was developed to encourage better, healthier building practices because many mass-produced materials that are commonly used in buildings are very bad for people and the environment. The term 'sick building syndrome' has become an industry term associated with buildings that make their inhabitants physically ill due to poor quality living conditions, such as chemical off-gassing affecting air quality or lack of natural daylight. The designs of unhealthy buildings ignore the basic necessities of human/environmental health. These necessities should undoubtedly be a major factor in standard construction and building design practices. LEED attempts to bring this issue to the attention of the construction industry.

LEED Certification is based on a points system. For example, you get a point for specifying drought-resistant plants, or you get points for using alternative energy sources like solar panels- the more energy you produce via solar panels, the more points you get, etc. The categories in which you can receive points for LEED for Homes include Innovation & Design Process, Location & Linkages, Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Materials & Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality, and Awareness & Education. LEED for Homes Certification requires that you complete a check list of specifics related to the above mentioned categories. Detailed descriptions help LEED determine the points your home is awarded, like the percentage of water usage your home design will reduce in comparison to a standard home of similar size or the proximity of your home to public/alternative transportation and community resources.

For builders, LEED Certification documents the effort they put into making their homes green, and can help them market the homes as green and healthy. For home owners, it can give piece of mind knowing the actual amount of energy use that will be reduced when operating their green home - asserting that their energy bills will be far less than a home of standard construction. There are many other reasons for wanting to document a home's green rating: healthy materials used to build the home create a cleaner indoor air quality (reducing the chances that people who live in the home will develop or have increased asthma symptoms or other lung-related illness, specifically children and emphysema patients); knowing that the materials and process used to build the home required less energy in production, transportation, and execution (lower embodied energy in end product); a higher quality, more durable, longer-lasting building.

Spreading the word that green design is affordable and that it has many benefits for all of us, humans, plants and animals alike, is very important. Reducing the environmental impact of building is necessary for achieving a balanced relationship between people and the environment. However, if people do not have a practical reason to implement green design strategies in their home projects, they simply won't bother. Leading up to my personal favorite reason for documenting a home's green building rating: providing incentive for builders and home owners to go green. By giving homes points for striving for sustainable design, we are putting numbers to something that is otherwise very complex. In doing so, government (both local and national) is able to reward people who make green building a priority with monetary incentives, such as tax rebates.