LEEDing the Way

A Fairmount project could prove ground-breaking in more ways than one.

by Natalie Hope McDonald

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Published: Feb 21, 2007

GRID UNLOCKED: Should Ari Barkan's plans to renovate an old Fairmount pharmacy into the city's first LEED-certified home come to fruition, he'll have no use for electric or water from the outside world. Photo By: Natalie Hope McDonald (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

When Ari Barkan stands on the front step of an old pharmacy at 23rd and Spring Garden streets, he sees an opportunity to do something no one has ever attempted in the city: Build Philadelphia's first-ever single-family Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certified home.

While there are several examples of environmentally friendly building initiatives in the region, Barkan's project will be the first to use "green" technologies to operate the home without relying on the city water supply or power grid. His home, instead, will be an independently sufficient living space.

"The project is an experiment," says Barkan, who's set his sights on the neighborhood surrounding Von Colln Park, a hub for dog-walkers, kids at the playground and pickup games of football. There are no single-family homes on the block. Instead, there's an apartment building, gas station, bar and deli. "I fell in love with Spring Garden Street."

That love sent him toward the shadows of the Parkway House, a 13-story apartment high-rise on Pennsylvania Avenue, just blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "I became affiliated with the Delaware Valley Green Building Counsel for its regional and community focus on green building practices," he explains, "and realized that Philadelphia was just beginning its own transformational steps. The timing seemed right."

Construction is expected to begin in the next few months pending a city permit, which Barkan says takes a few weeks to be approved. "The approval process heavily depends on support of the neighborhood," says Barkan, who held an open forum late last year to review plans and take questions. "People were excited to see a new dwelling being built. There were no objections until the zoning hearing took place."

He says someone in the neighborhood voiced opposition to the commercial space he's planning: a coffeehouse and chocolate shop on street level. "If I can get by that hurdle without significant delay," he says, "then I'm looking at springtime to start."

So far, he's cleared the building of asbestos, a mandatory and expensive step prior to demolition.

"I wanted to go green to test the industry to see what it's capable of and for the site to serve as a model for the city once it's complete," says the 38-year-old Washington, D.C., native and Silicon Valley expat, adding that Philadelphia is entertaining a genuine interest in green building.

Several local building initiatives already feature at least some eco-friendly elements, like the former Sheraton on Rittenhouse Square with its "fresh air" ventilation and nontoxic building materials; Fishtown's Rag Flats' solar power and rain-collecting cisterns; and SCA's green headquarters at the Cira Center. The new Comcast building will even feature waterless urinals.

If more architects and builders consider new ways of building sustainable home and work spaces, Ravi Srinivasan, assistant director of the T.C. Chan Center for Building Simulation & Energy Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, says environmental damage will be decreased.

"Humans are responsible for climate change," says Srinivasan. "Buildings, which consume nearly 35 percent of delivered energy consumption [based on U.S. Department of Energy 2005 data] do have a role to play."

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, there are a handful of LEED-certified, single-family homes in the country. Most LEED projects are multifamily residential structures, typically above three stories. "This will be one of the first pilot LEED homes in the country," says Aziz Hussaini, principal of BL Companies, an architectural and engineering firm in King of Prussia. He says once the four-story home is built, it will serve as a progressive attraction not only in the neighborhood, but throughout the region.

"There are a lot of various pieces to the project," says Sean O'Rourke, head architect at Philly-based spg, including an underground cistern to collect rain for toilet water, photovoltaics to create electricity from sunlight, a radiant heat floor plan, a geothermal ground-source heat pump and a vegetated rooftop, which will create insulation, harvest rainwater and provide green space.

"The problem in most cities," says Barkan, "is rain rushes off-property and into the street and sewage systems which are not built to handle runoff." The grasses and plants chosen for the roof, similar to the rooftop on Chicago's City Hall, will be designed to slow runoff and help funnel it into a 6,000-gallon tank underneath the building.

"Toilet water does not need to be drinkable," says Barkan. "It's a way of loosening my dependency on city water."

The plan also includes a passive solar design system composed of ledges over windows to draw low-hanging winter sunlight into the home and keep out summer heat. "We're really interested in using a geothermal system for heating and cooling the building," says Bill Craig of Re:vision Architecture, an environmental consulting firm in Manayunk. "It's a super high-efficiency system, as opposed to using a boiler that burns fossil fuels."

The initial cost of geothermal is expected to be substantial because it requires engineers to literally drill holes into the earth to extract natural heat, which is constant year-round. "The system either injects heat into the ground in the summer or draws heat from the ground in the winter," says Craig. "Although our design has not been finalized, we estimate that the boreholes would be between 400 and 600 feet deep."

Barkan says the initial investment for the project is still in flux; it's dependent on a battery of tests. "We are currently determining the payback period for upfront costs through the process of energy modeling," he says. "Custom homes are more demanding. The true test will be once the building is up and operational. Then we can see how well it performs in the height of the heat and chills of winter."

The overall effect of the home is to not only save energy, but to repurpose it from natural sources. "Having heat radiating out of the floor will change the space and make it more intimate," says O'Rourke. And while the majority of the eco-friendly features will be hidden from plain sight, with the exception of the vegetative roof and solar panels, O'Rourke's purposely exposing a vertical drain pipe in the living room as a vestige of the rainwater harvesting system. It will also feature soda stone, the same yellow-gold stone used on the Art Museum, as well as a wall of glass. "This is a fairly large house and has a fairly public presence," says the architect, who designed the building to look like two 20-foot sections rather than one long 40-foot facade. "Our first reaction was, 'It's not necessarily the most appropriate site, but it's a great model for other homeowners and developers who say this is so difficult, that it can't be done.'"

Photo By: Natalie Hope McDonald (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Barkan decided the deconstruction of the building now occupying the site would be as much a practice in sustenance as the new structure. Baltimore's 2nd Chance is already removing materials from the pharmacy — like doors and cabinets, many of which date back to the 1950s — and circulating them back into the community.

Barkan is also working with Philly's Construction Waste Management to keep as much of the standing building from entering landfills by separating materials after demolition. "The building materials will be segmented into cement, wood and steel," he says. "And then become commodities that can be broken down."

Every other part of the vacant pharmacy is being recycled or eliminated, including lead-based flooring and asbestos. Brooklyn-based IceStone is recycling countertops and CitiLog in Pittstown, N.J., is turning reclaimed materials into custom furniture.

One might assume the financial incentives to build an independently efficient home like this one would be rife, but Barkan's been able to tap only a few grants so far. The Energy Act of 2005 offers tax credits for use of energy-efficient appliances like Energy Star brands. There was also a solar grant program that subsidized 50 percent of photovoltaic costs, but it's no longer accepting applications.

"I think this may change as our local representatives see the importance and benefits of green building," says the fledgling homeowner. "The gains come in the long run when efficiency savings pay back the initial investments. You win in the end for savings in utility costs, lessening dependency on city energy sourcing and the value in knowing that what you are doing is slowing down negative global change."

The biggest challenge Barkan's faced so far?

"Approval from the city," he says. "It took a year and a half to reach a point where zoning summary drawings could be drafted with accuracy. What they deem appropriate, I will work with."

(editorial@citypaper.net)

 

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