SPRINGFIELD, MO - As businesses and homeowners look for ways to fight back against rising energy costs, more and more people are starting to learn that "green" equals gold. "Green building" is a revolutionary new approach to construction and remodeling that is beginning to take root here in the Ozarks. Innovations in heating and air conditioning, plumbing, and electrical systems are changing the way people look at modern homes and renovations.
The Home Builder's Association of Greater Springfield conducted extensive market research of potential homebuyers and found that what's attracting the most attention from buyers is energy efficiency. "People are paying most attention to green improvements to their homes that have a financial return," said HBA Executive Officer Matt Morrow. "Green building is about more than just energy efficiency, although that's a huge component of it, and that does seem where the market is most interested."
The driving concept behind green building is in viewing a home or other structure as an integrated and interrelated set of systems, heating and air, electrical, plumbing, and others, whereas previous building methods saw these systems as independent. "In green building it's much more organic than that," Morrow said, likening the green building concept to the various systems of the human body, each with a specific function but overlapping and working in conjunction with each other.
"You wouldn't think about your circulatory system separate from your respiratory system, because they're interrelated. A green building approach makes all of those systems work together as one comprehensive system for the house," Morrow said. "It's really the latest in building science."
Few people understand the science behind green building more than Emily Fox, CEO of the Discovery Center in Springfield. "We recognized very quickly that this fell within our mission to educate folks throughout the region as to what green building was all about, how they can do it in their homes and businesses to make a difference," said Fox.
Missouri is the Show Me State, and the Discovery Center has taken that "show me" approach toward education by turning the Center itself into a giant walk-in exhibit for green building. The new west wing of the Discovery Center, 438 St. Louis St, opened in Sept. 2006 and was the first building in Springfield to receive a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The new Discovery Center displays several of the latest developments in green building, starting with the materials, the majority of which come from within a 500-mile radius. Solar panels provide more than 7 percent of the building's power needs. Intelligent lighting, equipped with motion sensors that determine the amount of activity in a room as well as the amount of available daylight, brighten or dim according to need.
A roof garden that features indigenous plant-life helps to cool the building as well as controlling run-off from storm water. "It's a holistic approach to designing buildings," Fox said. "It's everything from how we took the previous building down to how we built this building on the same spot, without disturbing any more ground or making any more changes to the surrounding area. That's green in itself."
The various renovations on display at the Discovery Center have made it one of the most energy-efficient buildings in Missouri, although the process met with some resistance in the existing building codes. "At the time, because this was the first building, working with the city and working with the building codes was a bit bigger deal than now," Fox said. "But the more buildings that are built like this, the easier it's become."
Leading the charge is Matt O'Reilly, of Dynamic Earth Equipment Company. Partnered with his sister Lindsey, O'Reilly built the Green Circle Shopping Center at 1110 E. Republic Road to prove that green building is not only conscientious, but profitable. "When it comes to business you can't treat green building as anything but economically feasible," says O'Reilly. "It's not sustainable if it's not going to make money, because it won't last."
The Green Circle Shopping Center, a LEED Platinum Certified building, boasts some of the latest advancements in green building. Composite lumber, spray-foam insulation, a geo-thermal HVAC system, a parking lot made entirely of pervious concrete, and a 14,000 gallon cistern for rainwater (reclaimed from an old filling station gas tank) make Green Circle the most green and energy efficient building in the Ozarks. "Utilities are a major part of overhead for a business," O'Reilly said. "This is the cheapest building in Springfield to own without a doubt."
Source: News-Leader.com