Building a Foundation for Future Green Builders

In Balance Green Consulting is delighted to be partnering with 3C-REN’s Guest Speaker program to deliver green building education for students in high school, community college and centers for employment training (CETs) throughout the tri-county region. In the past year, we’ve been able to present in over 40 classrooms, with a focus on two core “101”- level green building lessons.

The first, Green Building 101, introduces typical materials in construction, their sources, and relative impacts on the environment and carbon emissions. We explore solutions through efficient resource use and implementation of green building design strategies such as daylighting, natural ventilation and passive solar.

Our Green Careers 101 helps students survey the broad range of jobs related to the construction industry, including a range of trades, planning, inspections, and maintenance. Students are encouraged to think about the skills needed for different career paths and work environments that appeal to them.

Building on these successes, we look forward to offering three new presentations in 2024.

·      Introduction to Zero Net Carbon Design for community colleges

·      All-Electric HVAC and DHW for CTEs

·      Hands-on Green Building for high schools

If you’d like to have our speakers at your school, contact us!

Harry’s House Achieves GreenPoint Rated Gold

We are excited to announce that Harry’s House, an all-electric, affordable senior housing project in Santa Ynez, has achieved GreenPoint Rated Gold certification! This two-story building is comprised of 60 affordable rental units, a community center, meeting rooms, a beauty parlor, computer room, laundry facilities, a covered patio with a barbeque area, and other amenities. It even has a full all-electric commercial kitchen in the common area serving the resident dining hall.

In Balance Green Consulting worked with the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Barbara (HASBARCO) consulting on energy optimization, photovoltaic (PV) sizing, GreenPoint Rated certification, and commissioning.

The project achieved GreenPoint Rated Gold certification by implementing features that contribute to increased energy efficiency, water efficiency, indoor air quality, resource conservation, and promoting livable communities. Because GreenPoint Rated Gold was an important goal set early in the design process, the project teams worked together to develop a checklist and plan that led to a smooth construction process and a high performing building.

Sunseri Construction managed an incredibly efficient construction timeline, considering long lead times and storing materials on site to ensure smooth progress through the duration of construction.

Amana package terminal air conditioner (PTHP) and heat pumps are installed in each dwelling unit. Along with Sanden heat pump water heaters, both contribute to the energy efficiency of the all-electric building. The project includes a photovoltaic system generating over 291,000 kWh of electricity per year, offsetting almost 90% of the predicted residential energy usage.

Last year In Balance published a blog article showing Harry’s House as an example of best practices for radon mitigation as part of the GreenPoint Rated program requirements for projects in Radon Zone 1, primarily covering Santa Barbara County. As radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, proper mitigation is important for promoting indoor air quality and occupant safety.

This project serves as a great example of how early planning, goalsetting, and coordination across disciplines sets a project up to meet and exceed building performance goals, creating a healthy environment for all occupants. Congratulations to the team!

6845 Silacci Way Earns LEED Silver!

We are delighted to announce that 6845 Silacci Way in Gilroy has been awarded LEED Silver certification! The 30,000 SF project includes office space and a mechanics workshop that will be used by the State of California.  

Although security requirements dictated much of the exterior architecture, the team was able to emphasize energy efficiency and onsite renewable energy production, securing over half of the total points needed for certification in just the EA category. A flat roof was used to maximize renewable energy production via a 64kW photovoltaic system, ultimately offsetting 37% of the project’s annual energy use. One challenge was presented by the use of radiant heaters in the building’s semi-conditioned spaces, which represented almost two-thirds of the total footprint. By fine-tuning the operating schedule and controls, modeled energy use was reduced significantly.

Sustainable site measures such as large bioretention basins and drought-tolerant landscaping combined with highly efficient irrigation and indoor water fixtures reduced outdoor and indoor water use by 70% and 41% respectively.

Indoors, the project team focused on pollutant source reduction (walk off mats, ultra low-emitting materials, ventilation with filtered outside air) and natural daylighting to produce a comfortable and healthy work environment.

Congratulations to the entire team!

Architect: Jeff Krauss

Owner: Patrick Howes, Bram Investments

MEP: Kern Mechanical

Landscape: K&D Landscaping

Reducing Embodied Carbon - Concrete is First Stop!

With the growing focus on carbon emissions associated with the built environment, the concrete industry represents an important sector for lowering embodied carbon, and therefore total carbon emissions from a project. The process of manufacturing concrete, especially its main component cement, is responsible for approximately 40% of carbon emissions from buildings. By looking at your concrete specifications and working with your engineer to make some informed choices about quantities and components, concrete’s impact can be significantly reduced.

Source: NRMCA

The ingredients list, material characteristics, and testing standards for concrete in a construction project can make it feel overwhelming to start to sift through. To help designers and engineers start to adjust their mixes, the National Ready Mix Concrete Association (NRMCA) recently published its “Guide to Improving Specification for Ready Mix Concrete”. In it, you can read through a sample Cast-in-Place concrete spec and learn what the different sections mean and the role each plays in the embodied carbon of a concrete mix.

One of NRMCA recommendations involves “removing minimum cement requirements.” As a refresher, in a concrete mix, cement is the ingredient that when mixed with water, binds aggregates and hardens it all into a rocklike mass. Producing cement requires heating minerals to very high temperatures and then grinding them into a powder. This heating process is what is responsible for the high energy use. Max Pina, Plant Manager for Cemex in Santa Barbara, shares with us that traditionally, specs may place minimum requirements for cement quantity in a mix, since more cement means the required strength is met sooner. But the NRMCA found that designers may be over-specifying the amount. Instead of relying on a standard spec, they recommend revisiting it and working with your structural and civil engineers to determine what is the sufficient amount based on the specific project needs.

A second recommendation calls for “utilizing blended cement mixes”. Generally, cement mixes are classified by their ingredients and applications, with higher grades used in dams and roadways. Type I is the usual Portland Cement Mix, with its high embodied carbon footprint. But Pina shared with us that in the last year, he has seen the use of limestone in blended cement mixes becoming more popular in situations where the overall cement content cannot be greatly reduced but teams still want to see a reduction in embodied carbon. This Portland-Limestone Cement (PLC), or Type IL mix, is manufactured similarly to Portland Cement, but by adding limestone after the heating stage rather than before, the total energy used and emissions released in manufacturing concrete can be reduced. Additionally, the material can also be extracted locally to the concrete plant, further helping with transportation emissions.

There are other types of blended cements such as Portland-Pozzolan (Type IP) and Portland-Blast Furnace Slag (Type IS) that incorporate the manufacturing waste from coal power plants or other combustion sources. But Pina cautioned that on the Central Coast, the availability of these other blends is often seasonal. For example, the Pozzolan or Fly Ash additive is often sourced from coal-powered “peaker” energy plants. With energy demand changing through the seasons and their use decreasing as our grid transitions to renewable energy, these supply chains may not be as reliable as limestone.

These are just two of the many ways you can start to make incremental changes to the way you use concrete mixes in your project. With concrete being one of the most widely used materials, even small changes can make a big impact on our road to lowering carbon emissions. If you are interested in your project reducing its carbon emissions, reach out to In Balance today!