, and a postconstruction surface water management plan. Most municipalities already require both of these, and many rural jurisdictions require erosion control plans as well. To meet the Energy Efficiency requirements, you only have to comply with the Title 24 baseline code provisions. CalGreen explicitly states that its intent is to encourage all new residential buildings to be at least 15% more efficient than Title 24, but it’s not required. The Water Efficiency category requires you to reduce indoor water usage by at least 20% by meeting specific fixture flow rates or doing a simple water use calculation. The flow rates are reasonable—2 gpm for the total of all showerheads in a stall, 1.5 gpm for lavatory faucets, 1.8 gpm for kitchen faucets, and 1.28 gallons for toilets. Irrigation systems require weather- or soil moisture-based controllers.
Material Conservation provisions require sealing all building envelope penetrations. Exterior-plate penetrations are supposed to be sealed with a cementitious material to deter rodents. In addition, a minimum of 50% of construction waste has to be recycled or salvaged. If the local jurisdiction doesn’t have a waste management ordinance, you have to develop a waste management plan and submit it to the enforcing agency. Finally, you have to provide an operations and maintenance manual to the building owner. CalGreen has a list of specific topics that are supposed to be included in that manual.
With 14 mandatory measures, the Environmental Quality category is the toughest to meet. Gas fireplaces must be closed combustion; wood fireplaces must meet expanded polystyrene (EPS) Phase II emission standards. Duct openings have to be sealed during construction to avoid contamination. Adhesives, sealants, paints, carpets, resilient flooring, and interior finish materials like medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and particleboard all have to meet fairly stringent VOC standards. Framing must have moisture content less than 20% before it can be covered. Bathroom fans must be Energy Star labeled, vent to the exterior, and be controlled by a humidistat unless they are part of a whole-house ventilation system. Whole-house exhaust fans must have covers or louvers that are insulated to at least R-4.2. HVAC systems must be designed using ACCA Manual J, D, and S methodologies or equivalents.
Only one of the mandatory requirements requires onerous documentation—the building operations and maintenance manual. It’s my experience that the highest-quality builders of, typically, custom homes, always assemble an O&M manual for their homeowners. This will be a burden for production builders and builders of other lower-end structures, at least the first time around. It should be easy to develop a template that can be readily adapted to multiple projects without too much work. Although the construction waste requirement seems like a pain, all the jurisdictions I work within, spanning five counties, already have a 50% minimum waste diversion requirement and landfill documentation that makes it pretty easy to track. It’s unlikely that anyone will have to develop their own unique waste diversion plan. If so, CalGreen includes a sample plan and associated work sheets.
The requirement that I think will irritate some folks is that HVAC systems have to be designed using ACCA Manual J, D, and S. The only place I see designed mechanical systems is on some high-end houses. Most HVAC contractors do what are called field design systems, a great euphemism for “seat of the pants.” They don’t know or care about ACCA, they don’t have the certified software, and they don’t have the time or interest to do a formal design. It will be interesting to see how that part of the code evolves.
Tier I is the lower of the two voluntary CalGreen code levels. The tier system permeates many of California’s energy-related mandates. Tier I is defined by the investor-owned utilities, the California Energy Commission, and other parties as 15% over the current Title 24, which is updated approximately every three years. Tier I is the minimum require