Adam Sinclair, a bright-eyed green home builder idealist, took a hard look at the world of residential construction and found it wanting. “There has to be a better way,” he says, but it will take a lot of work to get there. In his opinion, that best way will include LEED certifications for homes and Post Occupancy Assessments (POE), an information-gathering process that he knows will never win a popularity contest with builders. “Nobody wants their flaws pointed out,” he explained. But he’s ready to bring them in for himself and his team. We won’t care, he says, it will only make us better builders.
A hard-working perfectionist based in Atlantic Highlands, Mr. Sinclair comes across as a friendly, easy-going, ‘aw shucks’ guy. But, in fact, he says he is never satisfied. “It’s a problem”, he acknowledges, “I always know that things can be done better. That there is something else that can be changed ”.
This is his way of being, both in the growth of his business and in the challenge of building green, which he is currently taking on with two new residential projects: one, for a client, aims to achieve LEED for Homes Gold certification, the another, an Energy Star certified home that was built to specification. “To achieve LEED for Homes certification, you must complete Energy Star certification, so I can do both,” he said. “Energy Star looks at how the home works, the mechanics. LEED for Homes combines whole building design with an integrated systems approach that also focuses on the impact of a home on the surrounding environment.” The first of his recent projects is built to standard state and municipal code requirements. Today, you won’t build a home for anyone unless they’re at least willing to go Energy Star, and I’d rather they get LEED, he said.
Yet despite his own total immersion in green building, Adam Sinclair worries that progress in the rest of the world is advancing at a snail’s pace. “We are not building structures to correct the standards of the 21st century, especially on the residential side,” he says. “Builders are behaving the same way they have been since the building boom of the 1950s, when the idea was to pick them up and sell them, or sell them before they even built. That’s when the quality of the construction dropped, and the Construction increased the amount, and that’s where we are today, “he says. While small builders like Mr. Sinclair are fixing the problem, he feels that until production builders start taking the lead, it won’t be enough. Green building makes you sleep better at night, but says the greater good of the environment remains in jeopardy. “Production builders are always looking for ways to build smarter and more profitably. Now they need to focus more on energy consumption and environmental impact,” he said.
This is where post-occupancy assessments (POEs) come into play, according to Jennifer Senick, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Green Building at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. “The buildings are programmed to meet the anticipated needs of the occupants in areas such as energy, water efficiency and durability of materials,” he explained. “SOPs consist of measuring the performance of a building in comparison with what was projected, and they also study the satisfaction of the occupants, as well as their habits and behaviors within the structures.” Therefore, the entry points form a feedback loop that leads to better design and better operation of the buildings, he explained. Noting that much of green building is about remembering practices we have forgotten, he gave the easy-to-understand example of daytime lighting, an important concept in the green building movement because it reduces dependence on electricity, among other things. But, in fact, someone might have their studio in a daytime setting and then discover that there is a glow on their consumer’s screen. So the blinds are lowered, at which point there is not enough light; so they turn on the lights. Really good design professionals are aware that when humans and technology come together, the results can be unpredictable, he noted, saying that much more attention is deserved in this area.
Despite Mr. Sinclair’s passion for green building, it was a career accident rather than a career choice that propelled him to construction in 1997. As he describes himself as a “wise ass of 18 years, “got fired from his job as a Longbranch Beach lifeguard and hired the same day for a renovation / restoration project that became Bed and Breakfast” Into the Sea “located at Avon by the Sea in Monmouth. “They fired me in the morning and hired me that afternoon,” he recalls. He stayed with that company until he launched FLUID Construction LLC in November 2002. It was just him and a helper. Working long hours, to high standards, and charging low prices, he worked his way up to a five-man crew and was close to bankruptcy … until his accountant called a halt. “I was working 60 to 80 hours a week and losing money,” he recalls. Exhausted and discouraged, he considered turning his back on the entire company. But no other builder he knew was doing what he wanted to do. So he took a deep breath and decided that what was needed was more brain and less strength. Reading the books, he took a good look at his business, raised the prices, and re-matched just for himself and an assistant. Today, your business is growing. Although it is still largely based on word of mouth, the future looks good and has big plans for a new website, web-based advertising, and a targeted mailing campaign for architects and other professional agents of change. In short, things have changed and you look forward to building green, targeting LEED designations and working on point-of-entry projects, which will generate information and visibility.
This should happen fairly soon according to Jennifer Senick, who co-chairs the recently formed Green Building Benefits Consortium (November 2007) with USGBC-NJ President Andy Topinka. The new organization is made up of a group of 12 stakeholders – green building owners and operators – who are interested in conducting about six case studies in NJ, he said. They are in the process of structuring POE evaluations around the 3 properties built by Mr. Sinclair, with funding and materials provided in kind from BASF. They are all in the Atlantic Highlands on adjacent lots, with similar square footage, setting up “a really nice potential case study layout,” Ms. Senick noted. Because more POEs are performed in larger multi-family and commercial buildings than in single-family residential buildings, she feels this is an opportunity to gather good information. This kind of available symmetry is very rare in the social sciences, he said. It will give you a good basis for comparison. For the Consortium, 2008 is expected to be the year of the case studies.
Look to the future, Mr. Sinclair’s newest project will be the renovation / restoration of a 100 year old Masonic Lodge in Fair Haven (Monmouth) which will become a holistic healing center. Your first step will be to bring in architects with LEED NC (new construction) experience. We need to clarify our clients’ requests for the project and meet their needs within the parameters of the LEED NC protocol, he said. With all this new activity, he hopes to develop a business platform and plan that will bring his company’s construction capacity to at least ten homes a year in the next three years.
Adam Sinclair now serves as vice president of the USGBC-NJ Central Jersey branch working on education and membership.
You can reach him at [email protected] or 732.291.1592 (p) with any questions or comments about green home construction.