Building codes are laws created by governments to ensure minimal levels
of health, safety and performance. Historically most of these codes
addressed only safety and simple health issues. Houses had to meet a
level of structural integrity so they would survive normal
"severe" weather and usage conditions: a house that meets code
will support a room full of people, survive a big snow storm, live through
the average hurricane, etc. Fire regulations help prevent it from
burning down and electrical code keeps the wiring safe. In addition
the health department keeps the water clean and prevents sewage from
infecting anything. The energy crisis brought about energy codes,
and the resulting mold & toxics problems brought about ventilation
codes.
All these laws have a common thread: they are "one size fits
all" solutions. Although many codes allow for the possibility
of unique solutions that still meet the underlying safety or performance
concern, in practice it is often difficult to get those past unless the
building inspector is open to those possibilities. As more
people use alternative techniques and materials, inspectors become more
familiar and hence more open to allowing them. As we will see, the
very nature of Green Building is to design with basic principles in mind
rather than using a "one size fits all" approach.
A parallel effort to set a standard for Green Building has been created
by a number of organizations: in the United States principally by local
home building organizations (all affiliated with the National Association
of Home Builders) and by The US Green Building Council, a non-profit
organization. In all cases there is an attempt to quantify how green
a building actually is. The simplest, and currently the most common
method for home building is to use a checklist of green features and count
how many of them are applied, while the more complex methods are what we
call "performance based", meaning that one has to put an
actually number on how different the building is from standard.
To give an example: in the prescriptive (or checklist) approach, a
builder might say "insulated beyond code", "used advance
framing", "used energy-star appliances" etc, while in the
performance based approach, the builder must say exactly how much energy
is expected to be saved versus standard building.
While all these rules and rating systems are a step in the right
direction, Green Building's general principal are to start first
principles, and so any performance based system is always preferable.
