Arlington County Government, VA Environment, 10 Sep 2009

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From YouTube: Here/now Green It: LEED House

Description

A segment of AVN's monthly magazine show, "Here/now" "Green It" looks at the various ways Arlington County works to be at the forefront of sustainable environmental policies. In this segment, we meet Patty Shields, owner of the first LEED Platinum home in all of Virginia.

A

This past summer, for the first time, a Virginia homeowner received the prestigious LEED Platinum level certification for their home. Now, that's the US Green Building Council's highest level for environmentally conscious construction and the requirements for it are really very strict. Well, it's no surprise to us that the home is right here in Arlington. So let's take a trip to see the greenest house in Virginia in.

B

An older neighborhood like this in alton, you hardly expect to see one of the most innovative designs in green buildings, but we're going to see one right here in westover come on with me running inside right now,.

B

C

Joe good to see.

B

You good to see you thank you so much for having us pie today, thanks for coming. This is patty shields, truly the visionary behind this green gem in Arlington. We're really looking forward to our tour today.

B

Patty, this is the first leed platinum house built in virginia. It.

C

Sure is, but I understand it didn't happen by accident. Well, it didnt. You know, in order to do something like that, you really got a plan from beginning to end, and and with this house we work with arlington county, their green home choice program to really plan the house from beginning to end with architects and engineers. Well, what we've done with this house is?

C

We use something called gravel tape, which is a set of rings, that you lay down over large stone, gravel and that large gun travel is about 12, inches underneath, and so it almost serves as a reservoir. Then this this set of rings sits on top of that, and then you put your nice pretty gravel in it and it locks in so it acts like pavement. It can hold a car, but when it rains that entire piece underneath acts as a reservoir hole in the water and preventing run off very.

B

Very pervious letting a lot of water to win, so it doesn't go in down storm drains and affect all local water quality. Yeah.

C

And one of the other things we've done is when I talked about water conservation, not just making sure we have pervious surfaces but making sure we can conserve as much water preserve that rain when it comes down, so we can use it later. Can I show shuffle I'd love to see how you all right? Well, jus! Let me show you this: these are our rain barrels and what this does is this carries the water from our roof above we filter it through a screen here, but then it retains the water patty with your rain barrels.

B

And his sister and just how much rain? What are you captioning.

C

So this site is developed to accommodate a one inch rain. Ok, so what we have here? This is a 60 gallon barrel up above we have a green roof. So the combination of that green roof, ok and this rain barrel allows us to catch a one inch rain, so Joe there's a whole lot more to see inside. Would you like to come in, whereas.

B

Very anxious to do so.

C

This is the kitchen area, and there there are couple things I'd like to highlight in here that we looked at from a green perspective. That's the post and beam. That's a structural part of the house instead of using solid wood. What we did in this case is this is a recycled wood. It's a post-industrial, recycled wood so would that they otherwise would use for furniture, but it's not good enough. Of course you can see. We have energy, star appliances, the countertops in this house and a lot of people. This is sort of a new thing.

C

These are made of concrete, really.

B

Substantial yeah.

C

They were poured in place and, of course, there's recycled many recycled components in concrete and then of course, when you take it down, it can be recycled again. So so it's a nice renewable material.

B

And durable very.

C

C

The house was built out of something we call structural insulated panels and what you have is plywood on either side and then styrofoam like a cooler on the inside, and what this does is it turns your house into a cooler. Your house is so well sealed and so well insulated. You don't lose heat in the winter. You don't lose cool in the summer. Another component to this is to make sure you have good windows.

C

This is a Plexiglas window. It's about an inch thick and inside. It is something called aerogel or nanogel, and that is a highly insulating gel, and what that does in this case is it allows this window this light wall to be about as insulating as a two-by-four construction ball with fiberglass. So now that we've talked about how the house was built, let's talk about the brains of the operation, how we heat and cool the house in an efficient way. This is our geothermal hvac system and what you can look at here.

C

We've got two tubes coming right behind you up over you. One goes out of the house. One goes in the house. This is what we call a closed loop system and there's a liquid that runs through this two down through two wells that we dug each 320 feet. What that does is it uses the ambient temperature of the earth, which is 55 degrees, waters, 55 degrees when it comes through the tube and through the system it takes?

C

The heat out of the system in the summer runs it down into the ground and sinks it into the ground, so it acts as a heat sink in the summer and a heat source in the winter. This cuts down our heating and air conditioning costs by about fifteen percent, if you can believe it and which is just an incredible savings for us, so we go on outside Oh, open up the entire wall. So if we look out here Joe what we've got, this is absolutely my favorite I.

B

Paper I could imagine why I can imagine we.

C

Spend a lot of time up here. What we have up here, we've got what we call a green roof right.

B

Those are a variety of seedings right.

C

And the great thing about a green roof is it does a couple of things for you when it's beautiful on a roof day.

B

C

But it is meant to take in the runoff when we're downstairs I so do some rain barrels. But what this does is this can hold a one inch rain, so this will soak up a one inch rain and prevent that runoff from going out of the ground. It also helps against late the house and, in addition, the roof has angled in such a way that it is a perfect angle for solar panel.

B

And you've got solar panels lining the rooftops.

C

Yes, spotting us a kilowatt of energy, we're really hoping that this won't be the last leaf platinum house in Virginia and.

B

You have a lot of plans of your own. Yes,.

C

ah Yes, I've started a business called Metro green. It's a construction company I can build for people, but I can also provide consultation. I can only give thanks to Arlington County for an example. They set with the building's they've done and there are lling to green hub choice program with just great for us right, patty.

B

I can't thank you enough for us to tackle the tour we've enjoyed every minute of it. We've learned a great deal into our wall. Viewers are learning a great deal about it too. I think, isn't it time and just sat down and started enjoying the view.

A

Thanks Joe, there's just so many interesting ways to make projects environmentally friendly these days and they come out looking so cool. If you're thinking of doing any of these construction projects around the house, you really should check out the US Green Building Council's website at us, GBC org, for lots of great ideas to make your home a little greener.