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LEED for Homes Reference Guide - searching for more points for our house in Houston

The LEED for Homes Reference Guide came last week, and this morning I had some time to sit down and read it. By read, I mean go over the section intros and read some of the parts in depth. It is quite long, and just a tad dry...

I mainly focused on the areas where our preliminary assessment appears to leave room for more points.

Here is the big picture: LEED is a point system, with some prerequisites and then points depending on how green you can go. There are 8 categories in which you can earn these points, encompassing everything from what you build to how you build it and spread the word. There are different categories, depending on how many points you get.

For our house, which will come in around 3,200 sq ft, we need 51 points to gain Certification (the basic level) and 66 to gain Silver. Our preliminary assessment by our architects puts us at 59.5, so well within the basic, and tantalizingly close to Silver...

You can see our preliminary assessment here:

In some areas we are getting lots of points. In others we seem to be leaving lots of points on the table, in particular in the SS Sustainable Sites, WE Water Efficiency and EA Energy and Atmosphere areas.

In the SS and WE the assumption is that we install a high efficiency irrigation system, perhaps with water reuse. We will also landscape with local, drought resistant plants and add some trees. At present we do not have an irrigation system and do not water our yard, front or back. It gets a little dry in the summer, but not so that you would notice it overly much. We do not have real grass, but a local ground cover that does well. So, if we install no irrigation system at all, we may well gain points, as our water use should be low compared to the typical house in the area. Currently our annual consumption is around 50,000 gallons.

The big one is the EA category - we are currently programmed to gain only 10 of 38 points, and 8 of 34 of the Optimize Energy Performance category. In EA you can either go through a global assessment, using the HERS system, or section by section. We are going to do the former, so we will learn much more when we have our preliminary HERS assessment. The 8 points here are for a HERS of 72 - with better windows, and a higher SEER rating on our A/C we may get higher, and earn more points.

In total we need a projected 6.5 points over what is already in the plan. It seems that with no irrigation and careful landscaping, we may gain 5 there alone. With a good HERS score, we may well earn another point or two. Perhaps Silver is not out of the question.

Big caveat: $

Everything has to fit the budget. October will tell us more, as we get the price projection once the schematics are complete. That said, leaving out the irrigation system will actually save money!