POSTED: 04:00 AM PST Tuesday, December 9, 2008
BY SAM BENNETT
In designing a LEED platinum home, Zac Blodget faced a long list of challenges. In a tough economy, some of the obstacles had nothing to do with design.
"One of the hardest parts was getting the construction funding," said Blodget, who had to show his lender a solid general contractor bid on the project before he could get funding.
Once funding was secured, he tackled the project’s next challenge: how to fit a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design home on a 26-foot-wide and 100-foot-long lot, without removing a key feature: a mature fir tree in the front.
Blodget admitted "there are limits to what I could build," given the lot size. But he managed to design and build a 1,680-square-foot, two-story home that was certified last month as Portland's first LEED platinum home.
He has the 3-bedroom, 2½-bath home on the market for $360,000. It is located at 2514 N.E. Highland St.
Blodget, a LEED accredited structural engineer with Nishkian Dean, said he intended to build green from the start.
"It was always a goal of the project to make it as green as possible," he said. Yet he said he believed that LEED platinum would be "pretty hard to get."
One of the more innovative measures that Blodget took was to use 2-inch-by-6-inch studs rather than 2-by-4s, which allowed him to put more insulation in the walls. "We ended up with deeper walls and had fewer thermal breaks," he said. They also used less wood, because fewer of the 2-by-6 boards were needed.
In energy savings, the home is 40 percent more efficient than a home built to current energy code, and 25 percent more efficient than an Energy Star certified home. In addition, Blodget said the home uses tank-less water heaters and has 470 percent less air infiltration than the average new home. He used zero-VOC paint and water-based, low-VOC concrete stain.
For materials, he chose bamboo flooring, high recycled content fiber cement siding, wheatboard kitchen cabinets and 40-percent fly-ash stained concrete slab. His plan called for 4-by-9 sheets of plywood that required no cutting, which reduced waste.
One-hundred percent of storm water is managed on site, and Blodget used all drought-tolerant landscaping and 100 percent permeable landscaping. He also called for dual-flush toilets, low-flow faucets and a rain barrel water collection system for irrigation.
Blodget has had the house on the market since August. He said if the house doesn’t sell soon, he will move in.
"There has been a pretty positive reaction to it," said Blodget. "It just isn’t a good market now. I’m finding that a lot of people aren’t familiar with the LEED for Homes program yet."
As an engineer with Nishkian Dean, Blodget works mostly on mid-sized commercial projects and some residential projects. He recently worked on a 24 Hour Fitness branch in Portland’s Hollywood neighborhood and is helping design a six-story LEED gold office building in Walnut Creek, Calif.
One of the lessons he has applied from the LEED platinum home on other projects is the unique framing using the 2-by-6 studs. "Now I try to space out the studs as much as possible, to improve material savings and increase the insulation area," he said.
