Gut Rehab Home Goes Platinum

Having built one new LEED Platinum home (see EBN Vol. 16, No. 6), Richard Renner, AIA, shifted his attention to retrofitting an existing building and attaining the same “lofty” level of certification. His own 1,400-ft² (130-m²), two-bedroom live/work loft, located in a mixed-use neighborhood in Portland, Maine, is the first gut rehab in the Northeast (and the second in the nation) to achieve a Platinum rating in the LEED for Homes rating system.

Dan Kolbert Building & Renovations performed the rehab work for the 100-year-old, once-derelict commercial building, which now boasts high levels of insulation, triple-glazed windows, light tubes to bring daylight into the interior spaces, radiant-floor heating, heat-recovery ventilation, framing and floors certified to Forest Stewardship Council standards, low-flow plumbing fixtures, low-emitting finish materials, and a green roof, among other features.

Danuta Drozdowicz of Fore Solutions provided LEED documentation services for the loft. While Drozdowicz believes that “LEED for New Construction is very straightforward in terms of evaluating environmentally preferable materials,” she finds there are “limitations within the LEED for Homes program in terms of what counts and what doesn’t count as an environmentally preferable product.” Renner, who says that LEED guides the environmental aspects of his firm’s work in general, agrees with Drozdowicz in this respect: “The entire outside of the building is reused,” he explained, “but LEED for Homes doesn’t really give you credit for reusing a significant amount of the building shell.” Although LEED for Homes doesn’t address salvage and reuse, the team captured some credit for the building’s reuse of existing resources in the category for local materials.

– Rachel Navaro

For more information:

Richard Renner Architects
Portland, Maine
207-773-9699
www.rrennerarchitects.com

Fore Solutions
Portland, Maine
207-347-5066
www.fore-solutions.com

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Maine House Achieves LEED Platinum EBN: Newsbrief - June 2007

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IMAGE CREDITS:
1. Photo: Richard Renner Architects

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