455 West 22nd Street - Chelsea's Green Brownstone

If "Green building" were given the power of free speech, it just might be hoarse from screaming it's way into the nascent, yet promisingly sustainable 21st century. Terms like "Green", "Eco" and "Environmental" building are easily used, abused and thrown around oft without much meddle to back the claims. The few existing, newborn US standards to keep builders and appliance manufacturers honest, including LEEDS and the EPA "ENERGY STAR" rating, are well intentioned, but still in the teething stage; lots of noise, not much bite and almost no strength to enforce or prosecute. In other words: it's easy to fake it. Such temptation and profit are surely the stuff lining a path to... well, evermore crappy, inefficient buildings.

On a very limited, case-by-case basis, some secular people, even some developers, are doing incredible works to advance the art & science of producing a healthy, low impact dwelling. More so every year, which is truly promising, and in need of broad support, increased education and public awareness.

Today's unfettered reality is this: the average new construction apartment in NYC can have up to 10 times the airbourn pollutants INSIDE the apartment than in the centre lane of midtown @ 7th avenue at rush hour, measured in particulates. The bulk of these interior particles are not CO2, NOX and SOX like on the street, emitted from industrial, heat oil and vehicular pollution. These pollutants (let's call them toxins, which is what they really are) are potentially more severe and far less understood in their effects on children's and adult health. Most are petroleum based (surprise) or artificial additives and compounds found pervasively in wood, paint, glues and finishing lacquers for floors and surfaces.

In the Pürspace build at 455W22nd St., I personally supervised every aspect of the building design and renovation. The units are as green as we could get them giving current, available materials and skilled and knowledgeable labour to correctly install them. Staying "green" and staying more or less within budget and on schedule are often very estranged disciplines to reconcile. The challenge was, and always will remain constant, but the tension can productive one if you stay transparent in your methods and try no to force fit too many ideas onto public, building or spreadsheet.

Many a small green project goes belly-to-the-sun in this town, or suffers the fate of being triaged back to cheap, pollution intensive get-it-done NOW builds in order to complete the units and get to market one step ahead of the creditors or a swing of the free hand of the free market. Building, green or otherwise, is a business. It has very unforgiving, definitive bottom lines. In New York City, real estate development is this already volatile business on crack. It hyper-risky, capricious and unforgiving. It thrives on bottom lines, and feeds rapaciously on those who miss them.

At the Pürspace build on 455 W 22ND Street, our aim was to eliminate and/or reduce VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) and off-gassing in all building materials. We practice cradle-to-cradle materials management (from sourcing materials production to recycling/re-using) whereever possible. We practice full transparency in terms of materials used, building practices and waste disposal, which is law in most European countries and in Berkeley, California where I used to design & build green-ish houses. The entire 455 building process is text logged and photo documented and accessible online. I personally live in the building's top unit with my wife, who has her painting studio up there, two step-kids and myriad other animals. Nothing was built here that I would not personally live in with my family or that would keep me up at night.

This does not, as much as we wished it were so, mean that if you cooked any of these apartments long enough, you could eat them. I have been in places in Germany, France and Switzerland where you could. It felt really good to know, even if we never did find a way to test the premise.

Here in the uber-reality of development in NYC, actual practice can dog possibility, even availability, for quite some time. Such the big, old metropolis that she is, unlike most cities due to war and natural disaster, this old girl still has many of her original architectural natives (edifices as well as mentalities). It is a VERY old city, with, in my experience, a tragic underpopulation of truly progressive builders, very un-green building codes and a predominantly byzthantine attitude towards sourcing green materials and recycling. Luckily now, demand is leading production. We are heading in the right direction because people, informed, concerned people of every SES, on both sides of the tape measure (i.e. buyers and builders), are getting wise to the inherent benefits of healthy homes.

We used and went beyond the LEEDS standards in building the Pürspace at 455 West 22nd St.. LEEDS is pretty much all there is right now in terms of nationalized environmental design and building regulation, certification and benchmarking in the US. I find LEEDS far too lenient a standard in what it tolerates inside residential homes (as a series of pollution trade-offs, much like carbon trade off credits for industrial emissions). It is also prohibitively expensive to sign on to for in a small build like this one, with very time consuming, cryptic paper work, minimal rebates and superfluous, costly inspections for the builder/developer/owner. It's also very simple to cheat.

We would love to assure you that if you tracked every dump truck taking materials and "garbage" away from this site, would you find it going to some neat little sorting centre somewhere in Staten Island or New Jersey, where smiling, well paid people in snug fitting protective outfits worked tirelessly to separate, then re-integrate the materials into some other use. Approximately 75% of all the "stuff" from our site enjoyed such reincarnation, we're pretty certain. That's more than double the average NYC building site. Much of the"waste" materials from the demolition and construction process were reclaimed (sold as scrap or re-used, like with clean fill concrete and gypsum, etc.) not because it's in the contract with the GC, though it is. The reason is economic, surprise surprise; it's cheaper for contractors to sort and sell all this detritus than to buy space in a clean fill dump site. The economics of profit never fail to incentivize change, even with old dog builders, skinny margins and lots of dumpster traffic across bridge and tunnel.

I borrowed from recent Green building codes in Europe as my main source of reference, especially Germany and Switzerland. I am in pre-build analysis of pre-war building renovations in Berlin the past few months (my wife, Agnes, is from Berlin) and have been blown away by the practical, streamlined attention to the building and materials selection process as a whole that are de rigeur; law, not privileged option for high value add cub appeal. These methods have been made practiced and polished to now have low added costs and strong market attraction: prices make builders money and make homeowners happy across the prince spectrum of square foot offerings, new and renovated construction alike.

A word about energy: We chose gas fired boilers and AC condensing units for two reasons. Firstly, because NYC has a mandate to produce over 90% of it's own power in the 5 boroughs. All that power comes under the water via pipes into this metropolis as natural gas (a by-product of oil mining, predominantly). The gas is piped into a local power plant, combusted in a turbine and, voala', electricity. Removing that 2nd conversion process, i.e. using the natural gas straight as the power source is cheaper, and better environmentally for myriad reasons. The second reason we chose gas is that natural gas futures as a commodity are traded in larger "units" (of energy) over longer contract periods, not minute to minute like electricity, subject to relative monolithic monopoly-policies from Con Ed, or, worse, Enron style free marketeering / profiteering like California. We predict lower and less volatile prices for natural gas over the next 10 years. We could be wrong, but not likely. The information and infrastructure is already there. Soon enough, we hope to have the building off the grid and converted to 0 emission hydrogen fuel cells on the roof or a like clean fusion reactor already in use in Germany, China and many locations in the Middle East.

Here is the shortlist of what we've done.

• All Heat / Hot water systems are independent Hydronic Zones for each apartment unit. This means on-demand gas heated water, with adjustable moisture content added into the system for comfort. Each has a SEER efficiency rating of 16 or better.
• All AC Air Handlers are located in the units themselves. Compressors are located on the roof mechanical platform, and have a SEER rating of 16.5
• All Wood floors and Cabinetry are finished with pure Tung Oil, Bees wax, Lanolin (from sheep's wool) and Alcohol based natural stains. A formula about as old as Odysseus, and as tried and true.
• All Plywood used in the construction process was pre-gasses off and/or certified formaldehyde free. Much of it has a large re-cycled content. Timbers were either recycled from existing ceiling joists or walls, or largely eco-certified or smartwood.
• All Primer and Paint is Ben Moore Eco-Spec low VOC.
• All Caustics and Adhesives are low or Zero VOC formulations.
• Kitchen and Bath Countertops are zero emission slate (no radon, argon, or trace gasses)
• All HVAC systems have easy-service HEPA filtration in each apartment
• Solar Panels and 2 wind turbines on roof power public building lighting inside and out. Heat and cool to public stairs and hallway is shared equally from each unit.
• Living, Biodynamic sod-grass roof reduced heat loss and solar penetration.
• Exterior walls have R rating of 21 or better, Inside 12 or better. Floor to floor Sound Coefficient Transfer is between 45 - 51. That means you will not enjoy hearing your neighbors unless you choose to. All seams caulked with No-Toxic Acoustic caulk to prevent sound as well as heat transfer.

LEEDS STANDARDS can be viewed at www.LEEDS.com

Other resources we used and want you to research and explore for yourself:

• Real Goods
• Chelsea Press
• UC Berkeley ERG (Energy Resources Group)
• Berkeley Ecology Center & EcoHouse
• Berkeley Green Resources Centre
• Berlin Municipal Building Database

Yours in Green Intentions,

Jeffrey de Vito