Aurora Gold Award for Benchmark project

We are pleased to announce that one of our projects “The Stephens Residence”, located in South Seas Plantation on Captiva Island, was recently awarded the Grand Gold Award (best in show) at the 2010 Aurora Awards. Designed by K2 Design Group, from Bonita Springs, Florida, this Gulf Front home was completed in 2009.

The Aurora Awards is a architectural and interior design competition sponsored by the Southeast Builders Conference and the Florida Home Builders Association. The awards were held at the recent SEBC convention in Orlando, Florida. This is the second Benchmark project to receive an Aurora Award, the Larson Residence, located on Sanibel Island, received an Aurora award in 2002.


http://www.theauroras.com/winners/index.cfm?method=cWinners.main&thisYear=2010&sortOrder=winnerType

Jeff Good
Benchmark General Contractors, Inc.

Paralyzing the PACE

Paralyzing the PACE: Florida’s property assessed clean energy program likely strangled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Posted on July 19, 2010 by greenbuildingsubcommittee

The Florida legislature recently took a step towards creating a more sustainable future for our state. On May 27, 2010, Governor Crist signed into law House Bill 7179, which created Florida’s version of the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program.

lorida’s PACE bill enables local governments to levy non-ad valorem assessments to fund improvements related to energy efficiency,conservation,renewable energy and wind resistance. This type of program is more commonly known as a land-secured financing district or special assessment, which Florida municipalities have long used as a tool to finance projects that serve a public purpose, including street paving and the creation of parks. The novelty of the PACE program is that it is not a mandatory ad valorem property tax, has minimal fiscal impact on local governments, is not linked to the financial credit status of the property owner, and is completely voluntary. The program shows promise as an innovative, no-taxpayer subsidy approach to financing individual energy efficiency and renewable energy projects without the traditional barriers: large upfront costs and difficulty of financing them.

Under a PACE program, property owners borrow money from a newly established “municipal financing district” to purchase eligible technologies that are determined at the local level.

PACE programs are funded through the issuance of local revenue bonds. A PACE bond is a bond where the proceeds are lent to commercial and residential property owners to finance energy retrofits (efficiency measures and small renewable energy systems) and who then repay their loans over 20 years via an annual special assessment on their property tax bill. The bonds therefore act as a lien on the property until the amount is paid off. If the consumer sells the property, the tax would then be paid by the new owner. For many home and business owners, the annual energy cost savings from the retrofitting will exceed the cost of the annual repayment.
Unfortunately, on July 6, 2010, the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA), the agency that regulates mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, issued a letter effectively bringing PACE programs across the Country to a screeching halt. The July 6th letter expresses FHFA’s new requirement position that it will not purchase loans subject to PACE liens. The tension lies in FHFA’s concern with the “senior liens” or “first liens,” which result from the tax assessment on properties participating in a PACE program. The significance of the senior PACE lien is that if the property goes into foreclosure the PACE lien must be satisfied before the mortgage lender gets any money. In short, FHFA has “safety and soundness concerns” resulting from a combination of “first liens that disrupt a fragile housing market and longstanding lending priorities, the absence of robust underwriting standards to protect homeowners and the lack of energy retrofit standards to assist homeowners, appraisers, inspectors and lenders [to] determine the value of retrofit products.”

From a practical standpoint, FHFA’s blanket rejection of residential loans subject to PACE liens eliminates or restricts one of the most appealing aspects of the PACE program: the ability to make energy efficient improvements today and either pay the costs off over time or pass the costs off to future purchasers. Banks generally want to sell their loans to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, so under FHFA’s new rules, whenever a homeowner with a PACE loan seeks to refinance, the homeowner will have to pay off the PACE lien in full. In addition, whenever a homeowner with a PACE loan seeks to sell their home to a buyer using financing, the homeowner will have to either pay off the PACE loan or negotiate full payment of the PACE lien by the purchaser. The restrictions created by the FHFA’s position and the orders it has issued to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks have served to bring PACE programs everywhere to a complete halt.

There will have to be a significant push in favor of PACE programs on a state and federal level if one of the most promising renewable energy programs to date is going to be saved. Some commentators believe the only way to cross the proverbial “line in the sand” drawn by the FHFA is for Congress to take action on this pressing issue. If implemented in Florida, PACE programs could rev-up the state’s economic engine. The promises of an accelerated rate of renewable energy production, energy independence, green job creation, and greenhouse gas emissions reductions are all reasons to fight for PACE programs.

Submitted by Stephen A. Liverpool. Mr Liverpool is a third year law school student from Tampa, Florida. This December, he will graduate from the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida with a certificate in environmental and land use law. He is currently a summer associate at the law firm of Hill Ward Henderson and can be contacted at salpool@ufl.edu.

Opportunities and Dangers in Developing Florida's Solar Potential

Opportunities and Dangers in Developing Florida's Solar Potential

Big House-Small House

For most of us baby boomers, chances are great that the houses we live in now are bigger than the houses we lived in when we grew up. Nothing is more cost effective in controlling energy usage and carbon impact than good design. It’s no coincidence that many of the rating systems, such as LEED for Homes, Florida Green Building Coalition and others give credits to encourage smaller home sizes. Our culture's thirst for oversized homes, which have been so fashionable over the last few decades, have many homeowners realizing that maybe too much space is not so great after all.

Is it possible to live smaller with a higher quality of life? Is there a greener future for our homes? Sarah Susanka, author of the “Not So Big House”, believes that anything that is well designed will stand the test of time and will sustain our inhabitant. The wise use of both energy and monetary resources is a core element of good design, since over 20 percent of our carbon emissions come from our existing housing stock.

Sarah Susanka has been credited to have started the small house movement. In The Not So Big House, Susanka urges people to create homes that are designed for themselves and the way they live by carefully considering comfort, detail, and the importance of space and the spatial use to the residents. She encourages homebuilders to discover what ceiling heights and overall room shapes bring them into a peaceful state of mind. She stresses the importance of ceiling heights being in proportion to the rest of the room and giving every adult occupant a private place of which they can take ownership. Certain architectural details are central to her philosophy, such as stair railings, moldings surrounding windows and doors, and built-ins. Small does not necessarily mean plain. A basic concept is smaller and more personal spaces but still retaining a high level of quality, detail and craftsmanship. Sarah hopes that people building homes will discover what they like and what makes them feel at home--not just naming certain square footage or a number of bedrooms and bathrooms, or picking a generic plan provided in a builder’s set of fixed options.

The finishes and types of building materials are also important in her construction. Susanka stresses the use of renewable materials, building with energy efficiency in mind, and constructing homes to last for future generations to enjoy. Knowing and understanding what rooms and spaces one likes, the use for the space, and how often that space will be used are some of the building blocks Susanka utilizes for planning a home. Some examples include determining which rooms are public and private or which need to contain spaces for both, such as a window seat in an otherwise public room in which two persons may sit and converse away from others. Addressing the issue of the use of space, Susanka also discusses the duplication of functional spaces throughout the house, such as multiple dining areas, somehting most can probably relate to. One would translate these ideas and concepts into reality by determining one’s wishes and the feasibility of ideas, as well as considering what she calls the “three variables” of “quality, quantity, and cost”.

These factors form the basis upon which she makes decisions finding that one of them will often dictate another. For example, the size or number of rooms and the quality of interior finishes will decide the cost of space and materials. As one works with an architect and builder, Susanka believes persons building their home must determine which of these “three variables” is most important to them and their lifestyle.

Jeff Good
Benchmark General Contractors, Inc.

A Truly Green Device

Since residential energy use comprises about 26% of all the energy used in the state of Florida and in south Florida, about 35% of this annual residential energy expenditure is for cooling the home during Florida's 5- to 7-month-long summer, I started to look for a new device that I could use to reduce the energy consumption of our home. I got ideas from an AC guy and I learned a lot about insulation and glass shading co-efficients and such, but I found what I was looking for in my back yard. A tree!

Glass windows and doors can account for between 30 and 60% of a building's total heat gain in the summer. As much as 270 Btu’s of direct and diffused solar radiation can enter a home or building through each square foot of glass on the east and west sides. For example, direct sunlight on a clear glass window on a west wall can require more than one ton of air conditioning to remove the heat gained from this source alone. This is more than eight times the heat gain caused by conduction and infiltration. We don’t use clear glass anymore, but you can get the point.

So what would be a more aesthetically pleasing way to shade this window than a tree. Naturally this assumes that this doesn’t place a tree between your window and the Gulf of Mexico. Placing a tree to shade a home involves consideration of the angle of the sun's rays in summer and winter, mature tree height and structure height. In general, the target areas for shading during Florida's warm months are the walls on western, eastern and southern exposures, in that order. Though an exposure facing due south receives little direct sun on June 21, by August the sun will be lower and as we Floridians know, it’s real hot in August.

It’s possible to achieve as much as a 30% reduction in cooling and heating costs through careful landscape planning. Landscaping can reduce direct sun from striking and heating up building surfaces. Trees can prevent reflected light from carrying heat into a house from the ground or other surfaces. Shading the air conditioner can also improve its efficiency by as much as10 percent. Trees can shade a roof and walls from the hot summer sun. They can also create a cooler atmosphere around the home, cooling sidewalks and driveway that normally reflect heat.

So again it’s possible to trump the use of technical gadgets with good design and common sense! Go plant a tree!