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James Bouler, RA, AIA - Nicholas Pfluger, Associate |
12 Doxsee Pl. Islip, NY 11751 | ph:631.969.3335 | fx:631.969.3391 |
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Green, greener, greenest - make it a race
July 27, 2008
To cope with rising home energy costs, here's a race that can make us all winners: a competition among Long Island towns and villages for the mantle of green champion.
This past week, the Town of Southampton roared past the others into first place, when the town board voted to adopt an imaginative amendment to the building construction code: As of Oct. 1, the bigger the house you want to build (or substantially rebuild), the more energy-efficient the town will require the house to be.
The method of measuring efficiency is the Home Energy Rating System (HERS), originally developed by Residential Energy Services Network, a creation of the mortgage industry. Why would that industry care about energy efficiency? Simple: If the soaring cost of heating and cooling a house blows up a family's budget, the family's ability to keep making mortgage payments is threatened. This is not a happy sound in the ears of mortgage lenders.
Under the new code, a house of up to 3,500 square feet would have to get a HERS rating of 84. At the top end of the scale, houses of 6,500 square feet or more would have to get a rating of 95.
Beyond that, the code requires that heaters for swimming pools be solar - unless the town waives that requirement because, for example, there's not enough sunlight available on the lot where the house sits.
In Southampton, where wealthy residents often build very large houses, with pools, it makes excellent sense to require them to make their homes and pools more efficient. They can afford the additional cost of whatever it takes, such as extra insulation, more efficient heating and cooling systems, and appliances that use less electricity. But they might not lay out the initial investment to save money later, unless the law requires them to do it.
That's a key point of energy efficiency: It's not merely about saving money for the family living in an efficient home. It's about the cumulative effect that the construction of more energy-saving houses will have on total power consumption on the Island. So it's vital that building codes all across Long Island impose this sensible requirement on everyone.
That's been the goal of a campaign by the Neighborhood Network, a not-for-profit advocacy organization that has made energy one of its core concerns.
Its executive director, Neal Lewis, has been a Johnny Appleseed of energy efficiency, lobbying towns to change their codes. With the town board's action this past Tuesday, Southampton becomes the ninth town, out of 13 in Nassau and Suffolk, to enact a green code. North Hempstead, Southold, East Hampton and Shelter Island have not yet gotten there, Lewis says. And only Southampton has taken this smart, escalating approach.
A few months ago, Lewis attended a meeting of a town committee that was working to make Southampton greener. He made his pitch, expecting pushback. But he was pleasantly surprised when a town building official said his proposal was not ambitious enough, given the huge homes going up there.
Now, in cooperation with the Group for the East End, Lewis plans to offer the Southampton law as a model to towns that have not yet enacted an energy-efficiency code. He'll also ask the towns that have already acted to beef up their regulations, to emulate Southampton's stricter code.
If we are to keep residential energy costs under control, and hold down the need for new power plants here, this race for greener and greener housing codes is a good bet for all of us.
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