Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2013 - (Page 8)
POLICY ROOF WITH…
ON THE & STANDARDS
follow tHe gReen building code
HOW LIVING ARCHITECTURE fITS INTO CALIfORNIA’S NEW GREEN CODE
By: JEREMy SIGMON AND WES SULLENS
W
elcome to sunny, cutting-edge
and care-free California. The
state is home to four Major
League Baseball teams, some of the nation’s most stunning mountains and coastline, a rich culture of art and innovation
and also one of the world’s most visited
vegetated roofs at San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences. California exceptionalism is certainly in the water, in the
air, and in its rich, even if often arid, soil.
This uniqueness extends into the very fabric of law and society in California. Even
the building code is exceptional.
Title 24 of the California Code of
Regulations has made a name for itself as
a greatest-hits list of expectations and requirements for building design, construction and alteration. Title 24 is best known
for its much-admired Part 6, the California
Energy Code. Under the hood, Part 6 relies on an annual, maximum energy budget
for any structure built in a given California
climate zone—unsurprisingly, the state
identifies sixteen climate zones where the
U.S. Department of Energy only finds five.
And look at the results: per capita energy
consumption in California buildings has
flat-lined for the last thirty years, while the
rest of the nation has doubled.
With these and other similar outcomes
LIVING ARCHITECTURE MONITOR / SpRING 2013 / 8
in hand, California has proven to the world
that beyond ‘health and safety’, building
regulations can achieve impressive results
at scale. So with the largest and most advanced green building marketplace in the
Western Hemisphere, it comes as no surprise that California is the first to pioneer
in the next direction—to develop, adopt
and implement a green building code.
The California Green Building Standards Code, better known as CALGreen,
now occupies Part 11 of Title 24. Following in the footsteps of green building rating systems like LEED and a popular local
program, GreenPoint Rated, CALGreen
codifies a series of green building ideas for
new commercial and residential construction. The code leverages the consistency of
statewide building regulations and the existing code enforcement process to ensure
that minimum and reasonably common
green building measures are required in
almost any permitted building across the
state. Mandatory statewide implementation
of the code began on January 1, 2011.
The mandatory measures for nonresidential buildings, including additions
and alterations, span fewer than twenty
pages, and half that for residential. These
are the most basic of the green building
measures that the code drafters deemed fit
for minimum requirements. These include
a handful of measures across four sections:
‘Planning and Design’ (e.g. managing construction site run-off); ‘Water Efficiency
and Conservation’ (e.g. plumbing fixture
efficiencies and irrigation controls); ‘Material Conservation and Resource Efficiency’
(e.g. construction waste management
and O&M manuals); and ‘Environmental
Quality’ (e.g. pollutant control during construction and low-emitting materials). The
‘Energy Efficiency’ chapter adds no additional minimum requirements beyond the
California Energy Code in Part 6.
Importantly, commissioning of building
systems is required for new construction
of non-residential buildings in Section
5.410.2. Another advancement is the
code’s applicability to additions and alterations greater than 2,000 sq. ft. or $500k in
non-residential construction. And the 2013
version of the code, expected to take effect
January 1, 2014, will engage even smaller
projects.
To be sure, this is great news for tomorrow’s buildings, their occupants, and
California’s overall environmental health
and safety. So what about green roofs and
walls?
While there are certain measures in
the code that comfortably endorse living
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2013
Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2013
Contents
From The Founder
Strata
On the Roof With...
Policy and Standards
Current Research
Living Architecture Meets Hurricane Sandy
How Healthy Is Your Hospital?
Leadership
Product
Plant
Conference
Project
Project
Project
New Corporate Members
Professional Calendar
GRHC Board Member Updates
GRHC Buyer’s Guide
The Lucky 7
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