Adam Sinclair, a bright-eyed idealistic green home builder, took a long 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 home certifications and post-occupancy evaluations (POE), an information-gathering process that he knows will never win a popularity contest with builders. “No one wants their flaws pointed out,” he explained. But he is ready to bring them for himself and his crew. It won’t matter to us, he says, it will only make us better builders.
A hard-working perfectionist living in the Atlantic Highlands, Mr. Sinclair comes across as a friendly, easy-going, ‘oh my gosh’ guy. But in fact, he says that 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 spec. “To get LEED for Homes certification, you have to complete Energy Star certification, so you 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 a home’s impact on its surrounding environment.” The first of their recent projects is built to standard state and municipal code requirements. Today, he won’t build a house for anyone unless they’re at least willing to go Energy Star, and he’d rather they got LEED, she said.
Yet despite his own total immersion in green building, Adam Sinclair worries that progress in the rest of the world is moving at a snail’s pace. “We’re not building structures to correct 21st century standards, especially on the residential side,” he says. “Builders are behaving the same way they have since the building boom of the 1950s, when the idea was to pick them up and sell them, or sell them before they were even built. That’s when the quality of construction went down.” , and construction increased the amount, and that’s where we are today,” he says. Although small builders like Mr. Sinclair are fixing the problem, he feels that until production builders start to take the lead, it won’t be enough. Green building makes him sleep better at night, but he says the greater good of the environment is still in jeopardy. “Production builders are always looking for ways to build smarter and more cost-effectively. Now they need to focus more on energy consumption and environmental impact,” he said.
This is where post-occupancy evaluations (POE) come into play, according to Jennifer Senick, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Green Building in 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 material durability,” she explained. “The SOPs consist of measuring the performance of a building compared to what was projected, and also study the satisfaction of the occupants, as well as their habits and behaviors within the structures.” Thus, the entry points form a feedback loop that leads to better design and better operation of buildings, she explained. Pointing out that much of green building is about remembering practices we’ve forgotten, he gave the easy-to-understand example of daylighting, an important concept in the green building movement because it reduces reliance on electricity, among other things. But in fact, someone could have their studio in a bright spot during the day and then discover that there is a glare on their consumer’s screen. So the blinds are lowered, at which point there is not enough light; to turn on the lights. Really good design professionals are aware that when humans and technology come together, the results can be unpredictable, she noted, saying it deserves much more attention in this area.
Despite Mr. Sinclair’s passion for green building, it was a career accident, not a career choice, that propelled him into construction in 1997. he worked as a Longbranch Beach lifeguard and hired the same day for a renovation/restoration project that became “Into the Sea” Bed and Breakfast located on Avon by the Sea in Monmouth. “I was fired in the morning and hired that afternoon,” he recalls. He stayed with that company until he launched FLUID Construction LLC in November 2002. It was just himself and a helper. Working long hours, with high standards and charging low prices, he worked his way up to a five-man crew and was close to bankruptcy…until his accountant stopped him. “He 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 of was doing what he wanted to do. So he took a deep breath and decided that what was needed was more brains and less brawn. Reading the books, she took a close look at his business, raised the prices, and rematched just for himself and a helper. Today, his business is growing. Although he still relies primarily on word of mouth, the future looks bright and he has big plans for a new website, web-based advertising, and a targeted mailing campaign for architects and other professional change agents. In short, things have changed and he looks forward to building green, aiming for LEED designations and working on point-of-entry projects, which will generate insight and visibility.
This should happen fairly soon according to Jennifer Senick, who co-chairs the recently formed (November 2007) Green Building Benefits Consortium 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, she said. They are in the process of structuring POE assessments around the 3 properties built by Mr. Sinclair, with financing and materials provided in kind by BASF. They’re all in Atlantic Highlands on adjacent lots, with similar square footage, making for “a really nice potential case study design,” Ms. Senick noted. Since more entry points are made 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, she said. It will give them a good basis for comparison. For the Consortium, 2008 is expected to be the year of the case studies.
Looking 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 center for holistic healing. His first step will be to bring in architects experienced in LEED NC (new construction). 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 building capacity to at least ten homes a year in the next three years.
Adam Sinclair now serves as Vice President of the Central Jersey Branch of the USGBC-NJ working on education and membership.
You can contact him at [email protected] or 732.291.1592 (p) with any questions or comments about green home construction.