Portland, MAINE. Crescent Heights, a building that provides housing for medical students, was constructed by Portland-based Developers Collaborative and is targeted to achieve a LEED Platinum certification under the LEED for Homes Midrise Pilot Program. It uses 37% less energy and 30% less water than a typical housing building.

“The location itself is a wonderful green feature of the building,” said Jay Waterman, a LEED consultant and senior project manager at Fore Solutions. Residents can walk the nearby hospital and area businesses. “You can have the most ‘green’ building in the world, but if you have to drive 45 miles to get there, you are putting a lot of pollution into the environment.”

(MaineBusiness.com)

Portland, Maine – A regional high school carpentry program hopes to grow by including energy-efficient practices in its curriculum. Kehough’s students are building what he hopes will be the school’s first LEED-certified house, using materials and techniques that meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council.

“This project is a great opportunity because the LEED rating system is a great teachable guide to green building,” said Jay Waterman, a consultant for Fore Solutions, which has experts in green building and LEED certification.

Waterman said interest in green building is skyrocketing. Representatives from his company attended an international conference on green building in Phoenix last week that drew 28,000 people and had Al Gore as the keynote speaker.

“Builders are realizing, if they’re not using green building techniques, they’re missing a growing market out there,” Waterman said, including many public projects that require green materials and practices. (Portland Press Herald, November 17, 2009)

Learn more about LEED for Homes.

Jeff Young visits a super energy-efficient, solar powered house in Maine [BrightBuilt Barn designed by Kaplan Thompson Architects and Bensonwood Homes]. Its owner [Dr. Keith Collins] uses technology he calls “state of the shelf,” rather than state of the art. The goal is a green house that’s as economically affordable as it is environmentally sustainable. (Living on Earth, week of October 23, 2009)

Click here to listen to the Living On Earth story.

A Belfast, Maine home by G.O. Logic was featured in the Portland Press Herald on September 21st. The house is a model of energy-efficient design, contemporary architecture, high-performance building techniques and exacting standards (LEED and Passivhaus, to name two). Once built, it will be living proof that a self-sustaining home that cuts energy costs by 90% can be beautiful and affordable, too.

The three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot house is expected to cost roughly $225,000, minus land. That’s on par with typical custom-built homes in Maine. And costs could drop, the builders say, if the techniques being used here are adopted in mass production. (Portland Press Herald, Sept. 21, 2009)

Visit the G.O. Logic Website.