City should soon have 3 buildings with highest LEED rating

Billings should soon take its place in a select company of American cities with three or more buildings that have earned the highest possible energy-efficiency rating.

Last week, the High Plains Architects building at 2720 Minnesota Ave. was officially granted LEED Platinum certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The council's rating system has become the national standard and is being used by municipalities and states that have adopted energy-efficiency standards for publicly financed construction. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

Home on the Range, an office building at 202 S. 27th St., previously won LEED Platinum certification, and a similar certification is expected to be awarded soon to the Swift Building, a nine-unit apartment building at 2605 Minnesota Ave.

All three buildings involved major renovations of existing buildings and were designed by High Plains Architects, owned by Randy Hafer.

The Green Building Council's Web site lists only 10 other cities with three or more platinum-rated buildings, including New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, Ore. Only 11 cities have two platinum buildings, and that number includes Mumbai, India, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which are among a handful of foreign cities that have sought the LEED certification.

Hafer said the Green Building Council has four rating levels - certificate, silver, gold and platinum. The rating system was just changed, he said, but under the system used to rate the High Plains building, it took 26 points for a certificate, 32 points for silver, 39 for gold and 52 points for platinum.

"The further you go, the harder it gets," Hafer said. "The platinum is a very difficult level to get to."

Hafer said his researches haven't nailed this down for certain, but it looks as though Billings might have the highest density of LEED Platinum buildings in the world, since the three here are all within roughly a two-block-square area.

The Swift Building, which already has enough points for a platinum rating but hasn't officially received it, also will be one of just a few, possibly just two, buildings in the country that are both platinum rated and certified for tax credits as historic structures.

It is usually thought that preserving historic features and promoting energy efficiency are "mutually exclusive objectives," Hafer said, but the Swift Building project shows it can be done.

Steve and Joni Harman bought the Swift Building in 2007 and converted the old meat-processing plant into a residential building with six rental units and three extended-stay suites. All three apartments are occupied - the Harmans live in one on the second floor -and the suites are expected to be ready for occupancy in a few days.

Hafer said the three projects belie the common perception that green-building practices are a good idea but are costly and impractical.

Home on the Range, which houses the Northern Plains Resource Council and the Western Organization of Resource Councils, used to be a grocery store. Hafer said it cost 25 percent less than demolition and new construction would have cost while using 79 percent less energy than a conventional building of the same size.

High Plains Architects, in a building that began life as a saloon in 1893, was 16 percent less costly to build and uses 63 percent less energy than a conventional building. Construction-cost comparisons for the Swift Building haven't been computed yet, Hafer said, but it should be 55 percent more energy-efficient than a new building.

In the High Plains building, which houses 10 employees, rainwater is collected in three 1,200-gallon tanks and put through a three-stage filtration process to make it drinkable. The building shut off its city water supply and produces more than enough water to meet its needs - for toilets, sinks, a shower and landscape watering.

A raised skylight was added to the roof, providing natural light and ventilation. The skylight windows can be opened by electric switches and they close when rain sensors are triggered.

For cooling, windows in the front and back of the building and in the skylight are opened first thing in the morning to draw in air. When the inside and outside temperatures are the same - about 77 degrees - the windows are closed and ceiling fans are turned on.

That keeps it cool enough until, on hotter days, the inside temperature reaches 82. At that point an evaporative cooler is turned on, quickly bringing the temperature to about 76 degrees. Even on the hottest days, that means turning on the evaporative cooler - which uses 80 percent less energy than a standard air-conditioning unit - for only two or three hours a day, Hafer said.

Other features include in-floor radiant heat, solar panels to heat water, flooring made from a mixture of fly ash and crushed glass and the use of recycled building materials.

The Swift Building, constructed in 1916, has many of the same features, including one innovation, "radiant cooling." In the summer, chilled water is run through the tubing built into the glass and fly ash flooring. Because the Swift is a residential building and needs more water, it uses city water for showers and sinks but collects enough rainwater for the toilets and landscaping, including a grass backyard and a raised garden.

The Swift Building also has a recycling closet for use by all tenants - recyclables are picked up by Earth First Aid -"wheatboard" cabinets and concrete countertops, lots of recycled building materials and photovoltaic collectors that generate 4 kilowatts of electricity.

For the extended-stay suites, the Harmans bought furniture from Granny's Attic and Oxford Antiques and had it refurbished.

Hafer, who picked up another green-building award from the American Institute of Architects in Seattle this spring, said architects and developers at that gathering were particularly impressed with his use of rainwater collection and even more by his emphasis on "VLB" - very low budget.

Hafer said that with each project, he keeps learning cheaper and more effective building methods, new ways to save and generate energy, new ways to use old buildings and recycled materials. And he's learning that the old ways of doing things don't make sense any more.

"It's all about 'tear it up, throw it out and move on.' We've got to stop doing that," he said.