$100M Lawsuit Filed Against USGBC/LEED

This will sure be interesting to watch.

I look forward to seeing the research and data to back up the claims.

It was bound to happen. As you know we built our home to LEED-H GOLD yet in the past year have found some significant flaws directly related to LEED requirements.

For example, in our geothermal HVAC system, adding the MERV 8 filters tightened airflow to a point that it rendered the system useless. It caused the ERVs to compensate and created a vortex where external air was consanttly being sucked into our home. The result? A system that ran at incredibly high humidity levels (86% and higher). It took the HVAC team more then 4 weeks to figure out and isolate the problem.

The end result was we had to switch to MERV 12 filters (I didn’ have to give back points), disconnect our ERVs (for now) and add dehumidification. It cost me hundreds of dollars in energy for July and thousands in the system redesign.

And this is just one example of green products in LEED that failed us.

So though the lawsuit probably won’t be won, point taken; LEED is not the only solution. In fact what we need is builders who are better educated and a system that isn’t point motivated but focused solely on performance efficiency.

Kimberly Lancaster
Caster Communications

Hurray for Henry Gifford.

Kimberly,
You should step up your filters to Merv 13 which are available through http://www.nordicpure.com. They are just one step more efficient and cleaner than Merv 12’s, and Nordic Pure is the only one that has them in all standard & custom sizes.

Lastly, IMO, and presently, the entire “Going Green,” routine of building & designing is a total sham. I’d rather waste my money on a 3D TV.

From what I have researched Gifford has an issue that the LEED surveys that are done to say they save money. The surveys say a LEED building that is newly built is more than 25% less expensive to run monthly than the average US building is to run. The study isn’t using the equivalent building being built today, but rather all US buildings, including the ones that are 50 or 100 years ago and very inefficient.

If you look at 2 buildings both being built to the same dimensions, is a LEED bulding more cost effective in build? Is a LEED building less expensive monthly to run? That is the basis of this argument and I think it is a very valid argument.

I would like to see the results when an equivalent tesut is done.

We should also remember that one of those buildings is the White House…

During the Carter Administration, Jimmy had solar panels installed as a statement to reduce the dependency on foreign oil by going green.

2 years after Reagon took office, Ronny had the panels removed because they were not only inefficient, but too expensive to maintain. 

Once again, for all of those playing our home game, our tax dollars at work!

Carter had it right, had we only put as much R&D into Solar then it would be far more efficient than it is now.

Posted by Kimberly Lancaster on 10/20 at 12:58 PM
“It was bound to happen. As you know we built our home to LEED-H GOLD”

How were we supposed to know how you built your home?  Did we miss the Tweet?  Were we not paying attention to your facebook status?  Did we just not follow your blog close enough?  Maybe we didn’t know about your home status because the world doesn’t revolve around you, so we just didn’t care.  Especially since us working-class monkeys had more important things to worry about, like where our next paycheck was coming from.

Dear 40cent stamp. Your comments were completely unnecessary.

A. I work for a living and have since I was 14. So good for you.

B. CE Pro (and Electronic House) wrote a number of articles on the project including how installers can look at LEED ID points as on opportunity to generate income.

C. Jason Knott has been to the project twice and the comment was for him and anyone who in fact did follow the project.

D. I referenced it from a place of experience in dealing with LEED directly. I spent two years learning and living with building a LEED home, this is not something many industry people have done and it offers insight.

There are some significant energy savings, health and environmental benefits that come from building a green home. But I’ve also encountered first hand where the program fails, education is critical to undertsanding the pros and cons of the process and managing expectations with LEED.

Kimberly Lancaster

Joel,
You’re absolutely correct! Not that I was a fan of Carter, but we do have to give him a break as he was dealing with getting the hostages out of Iran, and dealing with the fastest rate of inflation this country ever saw.

@40cent Stamp: Now that was a piece of surgery, but you too are correct. Yet, 39 Cent Stamp has been around for a long time, and feeding off his moniker is not cool IMO.

When I was in AZ the Home Builders Association created their own build it green initiative, to focus on effeciencies not necessarily built around LEED.  Many builders complained about the LEED process, and some of the strategy. 

There were also comments from suppliers that it seemed the amount of points your division was worth was directly related to the fees they charge you to get certified. 

I.E. Sustsainable lumber companies have much more profit at stake than ChannelVision structured wiring panels.  So certifying the lumber would be an exponential fee, while certifying post consumer recycled metal content of the Structured Wiring Panel would be much less.

(kinda like guys in our industry who charge for a product based on the amount a home sells for.  You know the guys. . .Denon 4811 is $300 in a $300k home and $500 in a $500k home.)

Also some complain that the more you are willing to pay for certifcation seems to correlate with the amount of points your product can take credit for.

Ask Mark Sipe to chime in, as he went through some of this process on the product side trying to get X-Spot certified, as the magnetic “spots” are retrieved and reused over and over again.

Mark C

On the Homes side, this LEED lawsuit will not have strong legs.  Every LEED home goes through ENERGY STAR performance testing to measure the quality of design AND construction and ensure the home performs, at minimum, 15% more efficiently than a code-built home.  Many LEED homes are more than double that efficiency with HERS scores in the fifties or lower. So they truly are measured and are not a sham.

As for the antitrust claim, that will be hard to support as well given the plethora of green building and energy-efficient buildnig certifications out there such as Energy Star for homes, Passive House, the NAHB program, ALA Health House, and dozens of local green building programs. LEED is a voluntary program, leaving the market to decide whether a building should pursue certification or not. In that respect it fits well within our free-market capitalist system.  Is LEED perfect? No, of course not as Kimberly found out. It’s a rating system that is ultimately a tool, and like any tool, it continues to evolve as technology changes.