Last week, the city posted another Unified Development Ordinance question on Open City Hall to solicit feedback from the community. The Decatur Minute sums it up …
We’re wrapping up our online polling with questions about how the UDO should handle high performance (green) buildings. The proposed UDO includes new high performance standards for both residential and commercial buildings.
The proposal would require some manner of third-party green building certification for new construction or substantial renovations that exceed 50% of a building’s pre-renovation market value. It would also require new construction buildings to achieve higher tightness standards, making them less leaky than Georgia Residential Energy Code currently allows.
In other green building news, at the last Decatur City Commission meeting, City Manager Peggy Merriss announced that Fire Station #1 recently received Platinum LEED certification.
Photo courtesy of nfdecatur
“The proposal would require some manner of third-party green building certification for new construction or substantial renovations that exceed 50% of a building’s pre-renovation market value.”
So if a family with a $150,000 fixer-upper does a $76,000 renovation, they have to obtain the certification, even if they don’t expand the footprint of the home, while another family with a $800k home can spend a whopping $399k on renovations without triggering any requirement? What a tangled web . . .
Green building certification ain’t cheap. LEED or Earthcraft will set you back around $5k last time I checked a few years ago but maybe that depends on the size of the build.
If done correctly, green building will be much cheaper in the long run due to lower utility bills. Lower utility bills also have the benefit of less carbon footprint and keeping your money out of the hands of the Ga Power monopoly.
If done properly it would save exactly the same amount plus the cost of the 3rd party certification by simply eliminating the 3rd party.
If people want to invest now to save on future utility bills – great, they should be able to do so.
They should not, however be required to have such a certification as a condition for a permit nor should these standards be mandated.
WHether one wishes to increase the cost of construction to have a future payback should be the decision of the property owner – NOT the ad hoc collection of the community.
I’m late coming into the conversation, but I know that Decatur is home to one of the leading building science experts and green home building advocates in the country. Has anyone gotten feedback from Dr. Allison Bailes about the costs and returns on green building? http://www.energyvanguard.com/
I’m not trying to plug these guys, but I live in Decatur and I work for a company that manufactures products that help homes meet green building standards and I follow Dr. Bailes blog pretty regularly to help understand the implications of “green building.”