This is our 3rd step in a 12 step process of achieving LEED certification.  I hope you enjoy this one cuz its important! Like really important…

3. Write down your Sustainability Goals
All projects that are seeking LEED certification should have a sustainability statement to which governs their project. Sustainability is such a broad term [...]

2. Evaluate compliance and strategies

Teams must initially evaluate their projects ability to comply with LEED and which system is most appropriate. Sometimes costs will be too much of a hurdle to overcome especially with certain versions of the new LEED 2009 system. If region is a hurdle then often more expensive credits will have [...]

We are starting this weekend off with a new series. 12 Steps to a Successful LEED Project.
In an effort to get updated with LEED 2009 we are offering up a document we’ve compiled to educate building owners and developers on how to organize their LEED project.
We’ll start with the basics and describe in relative [...]

What I can’t believe is how far we’ve come since this speech… Think about it.

I happened to be up in Tahoe this weekend and missed all the action of earth hour. What I did see was that countries outside of the US took earth hour as a celebration and cities in the US took it as a burden. It seemed that there was multiple gatherings of thousands of people [...]

I thought I would share with you some fun/disturbing facts about water and why it should become a priority in our buildings.
1) An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
2) 3.575 million people die [...]

The new version of LEED has some new and improved features and I wanted to discuss this idea of “weighting credits” that the USGBC has mentioned since GreenBuild.
To start with the new book is 674 pages - ridiculously big so plan on paying more for it than you did.
Secondly, they have decided to organize all [...]

Typical issues with Residential Homes (new and existing):
1. Built 16″ On Center
2. Unconditioned plumbing lines (specifically hot)
3. High presence of IAQ (indoor air quality) issues
4. Lead, Mercury, asbestos, VOC’s, chlorides, formaldehyde, mold exist within YOUR home
5. Don’t believe me - get your blood tested - these chemicals don’t go away!
6. Lack insulation - over 50% [...]

So a couple things are on my mind this week. The main one is water however. To date this blog has focused quite a bit on energy, materials, and sustainability however we’ve lacked on the water subject.

Since Karolina let me on to this movie FLOW I’ve been newly recharged to change the world. [...]

In keeping with our philosophy of writing every other day we decided to skip a week… Wait that makes no sense - well true. But in our defense it was a week full of vacation time, powder skiing and a Holiday.
So the title Friedmans on my mind is reflective of the fact that [...]