News

LEED Requirements & Ipe Wood

by

There are many different LEED requirements that builders and architects can take advantage of. One particular credit is the MRc7 credit.

If a green building project uses a certain percentage of FSC wood, they can qualify for this LEED credit. If you want to qualify for this LEED credit, your project must have installed at least 50% of FSC wood. An exemplary performance Innovation in Design credit can be attained if you use 95% FSC certified wood.

There are many different kinds of FSC wood available including:

  • FSC Ipe
  • FSC Cumaru
  • FSC Tigerwood
  • FSC Garapa

The great thing about building green and LEED construction projects is that they are extremely creative. The green building revolution is certainly pushing the envelope when it comes to how hardwoods like ipe wood can be utilized. One such example that I recently found was the recently opened Eco Park in the Discovery Green Conservancy project in Houston, Texas. 60% of the wood used throughout the whole park used ipe hardwood. Using ipe hardwood helped the Discovery Green park project earn a Gold level LEED certification.

The designers and planners of Discovery Green chose ipe for the following reasons:

Read more

U.S. Postal Service – Uses Ipe Wood for Green Roof Project

by

Who says the US Government can’t do anything right? Recently, the United States Postal Service unveiled its new Green Roof for one of its major mail processing facilities. As a New York City native, I can tell you that the building in question is H-U-G-E. This building is so big, that when they decided to …

Read more

Green Building with Ipe Decking & FSC Wood

by

There are so many great resources out there to help you build a green deck, or install eco-friendly flooring. Thanks to increased demand and the efforts of governments throughout the world, eco-friendly products are not going to become a fad, but hopefully an industry standard. Obviously, this is important because if the construction industry and the lumber industry fail to recognize that there are only so many resources in the world, they are basically leading to their own demise. After all, there is a point where the damage caused by the old ways of forestry lead to irreparable damage that causes great harm to both our environment and our civilized society. If you think this is just some typical tree-hugger propaganda, think again…

Read more

Looking to Build a Deck? Now is the time!

by

Now more than ever, homeowners are looking at their home and thinking,“With the housing market the way it is, we may be at this home for much longer than we thought. Is now the time to build a deck or do a room addition?” In short, the answer may be “Yes!” After all, if you …

Read more

Ipe Decking Costs Less than Composite Decking

by

GREAT NEWS! Ipe decking is now more affordable than most composite decking. For a while, this was not the case. However, since the price of oil is so volatile, the cost of composite decking materials have risen substantially. Why is this the case? Because composite decking uses polyethylene and polyethylene is made from oil. So, …

Read more

LEED Certification – The Basics of This Green Building Initiative

by

The LEED Certification (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) was established by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to provide the construction and building industries with a verifiable system to define exactly what a green building is. Using a point system, an eco-friendly building can achieve LEED certification.

The more points a green building accumulates, the more prestigious the LEED Certification. If you think all it takes to get LEED Certified is screwing in a couple of compact fluorescent light bulbs, think again.  The USGBC has put in place a set of strict policies and procedures that must be followed. The good news is that there are various ways that a building project can earn LEED certified.

Here are the various LEED Certification levels:

  • LEED Certified – 40-49 points
  • LEED Silver – 50-59 points
  • LEED Gold – 60-79 points
  • LEED Platinum – 80 points & over

The Materials Resource Credit 7 (MRc7) is a great LEED credit to plan for.

Read more

What is Ipe?

by

Ipe (pronounced EE-pay) is an exotic hardwood that is used for decking, flooring, and a host of many other applications. Ipe has many names and is also known as Brazilian Walnut, Amapa, Cortez, Guayacan polvillo, and many others. Ipe also gets misspelled in various different ways such as epi, epay, and eepay. Regardless of the …

Read more