Green Building checklist your starting point #checklist #greenbuilding

1. Hong Kong
Green Building
Checklist
by John A. Herbert
www.kelcroftasia.com
March 2014

2. GREEN INVESTMENT
Investment Planning Triangle
First focus on design related to building,
micro-climate, and envelope to minimise
energy consumption, then optimise
the engineering systems, and finally special
features such as renewable energy.
Features
Systems
Building
Envelope

3. Community Spaces

4. COMMUNITY
• Developments inhibit or contribute to the
establishment of strong communities and
neighbourhoods, create cohesive communities
• Multi-use provide residential, commercial, mixed
use developments reducing travel emissions,
providing local employment, and healthier
district eco-communities
• Educate the occupants, stakeholders, explain the
eco-features and how to use facilities, for
example must separate and recycle (see training)
• Create spaces for local scale social business
opportunities in the community for the
community, and or art/exhibition spaces

5. Transport Policy

6. TRANSPORT
• Having multi-use providing residential,
commercial, mixed use developments reduces
travel emissions, providing local employment,
and healthier district eco-communities
• Nearest MTR/Cycle paths
• EV charging facilities

7. Water Conservation

8. WATER SYSTEMS
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Construction entry and vehicle wash with recycled water
Specify water efficient fixtures and equipment
Water efficient landscaping minimizing the use of potable water for irrigation, use
high efficiency irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation
Drainage system infrastructure for separate black water, greywater, and rainwater
including storage tanks
Use alternate water sources, greywater, or rainwater harvesting for flushing water,
irrigation, cooling tower make-up water, fountain make-up water
Collect air conditioning condensate for reuse
Salt water reduction – use toilet cisterns with lower water volume, sensors for
urinals, reducing the burden on municipal waste water systems
Control storm water run off control during construction
Provide twin water tanks to facilitate periodic maintenance inspection and
cleaning without service interruption
Use cooling tower blowdown water for reuse, for flushing water or non potable
purposes
Manage risk, control Legionella

9. Building Reuse

10. MATERIALS
• before breaking ground plan for demolition and reuse of all
materials
• Specify products that have recycled material
• Use local materials minimizing emissions related to import and long
distance transportation
• Choose Rapidly Renewable Materials such as bamboo, and cork
• Specify low/no VOC materials for example adhesives, sealants,
coatings, composite products and carpet systems
• Avoid use of pesticides and other chemicals that may leach into the
land and or groundwater
• Manufacturing is very energy-intensive, durable products and
materials with lower replacement frequency have lower impacts
and reduce transportation impacts.
• Select building materials that will require little maintenance
(painting, retreatment, waterproofing, etc.), or whose maintenance
will cause minimal environmental impact.

11. No CFC

12. GLOBAL WARMING POTENTIAL
• Choose materials, including building
insulation, engineering system insulation and
refrigerants with the lowest environmental
impact or choose cooling systems without
traditional HCFC refrigerants;
• Eliminate the use of CFC’s

13. Deferred Maintenance

14. PROCUREMENT
• Procurement and environmental management
policy based on environment impact above
financial considerations
• Procurement to minimise excessive packaging
and packaging waste
• Demand products and services with producer
responsibility

15. Retro-Commissioning

16. COMMISSIONING
• Commissioning ensures that the building and
its engineering systems are calibrated to
operate as intended verified by independent
third party quality control assurance.
• Design for future recommissioning requires
best practice thinking and exemplary records
and documentation

17. Training

18. TRAINING
• Train building operators, employees, and
buildings users in building facilities use
• Invest for occupant buy-in
• Encourage recycling waste, etc. to match the
facilities provided

19. HVACR

20. HVACR SYSTEMS
• Flexible for the range of conditions (prevailing weather, occupancy)
• Provide local controllability for individual control of the thermal,
ventilation and lighting Condition only the occupied zone, locate
control elements and sensors locally in the occupied zone
• Create landscaped micro-climate areas particularly around
entrances/air intakes (refer streetscape)
• Reduce energy consumption while maintaining minimum required
ventilation for occupant comfort, for example using VSDs on fans,
motors, and other mechanical equipment
• Use enthalpy wheel, heat pipe, run-around loop or other energy
recovery devices to recover energy from the air exhaust for precooling or pre-heating the primary air
• Choose Economiser for off peak cooling

21. Domestic Hot Water

22. DOMESTIC HOT WATER
• Install high-efficiency domestic hot water
installation for the application
• Eliminate dead-legs to prevent water waste

23. Lighting

24. LIGHTING INSTALLATION
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Consider Natural light
Install high-efficiency lighting fittings
Provide usable local daylight control system
Air-conditioned spaces - Lower lighting energy
consumption also lowers cooling demand

25. Energy Label

26. APPLIANCES
• Choose high efficiency energy and or water
labelled appliances for economic and
environmental advantages over conventional
equipment

27. Waste

28. WASTE
• Plan for future and flexibility
• Deliver flexible waste management infrastructure
for waste streams today and tomorrow, creating
collection and recycling spaces to suit community
scale projects
• Zero landfill, use of “waste” for creating biofuel,
compost, or as raw material (glass) for ecoblocks, furniture, etc. that are demanded, used
locally, and can be reused/recycled
• Provide open house facilities, transparent
operation, involve education, local schools and
institutes

29. Natural Light

30. PRODUCTIVITY
• Provide human scale connection between the
indoor spaces and outdoor environment through
the introduction of sunlight and views in a glarefree way.
• Design courtyard, atrium, clerestory windows,
skylights, and light shelves.
• Provide landscaped area, common area, sky
gardens, and or terrace spaces with human scale
connection to the environment, spaces to suit the
climate and usage during summer/winter.
• Encourage e-management, interface for local
climate control, to reduce paper systems

31. Shade

32. HEAT ISLAND
• Eliminate or shade paving area, and dark roof
surfaces, and or
• Provide vegetation green roof areas (which
also assists storm water management) and or
• Cool roof with reflective surface (which assists
cooling demand)

33. Light Pollution

34. LIGHT POLLUTION
• Eliminate light trespass from the building,
development and site, lowering disturbance to
the community, neighbourhood and
improving night sky access

35. Biodiversity

36. RESTORATION
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Restore damaged ecosystems
Avoid wetlands, pristine areas
Preserve/create wildlife habitat
Increase biodiversity

37. Local Business

38. SITE SELECTION
• Proximity to public transportation
hub/interchange MTR reduces time and
emissions for building users travel, encourage
walk-ability and local cycling paths
• Availability of local facilities and stores
minimises costs for travel and emissions
• Brownfield sites, avoid using any virgin land,
park lands, wetlands
• Preserve prevailing wind and view corridors

39. Mass Planning

40. MASSING
• Building envelope form to encourage seasonal
prevailing wind passage
• Avoid shapes and forms that create high
velocity flow areas or and stagnate zones for
all pedestrian level areas (used or unused)
• re-purposing an existing structure is the most
sustainable option, create flexibility for future
usage

41. Streetscape

42. STREETSCAPE
• Design flexible human scale spaces for the
community to encourage exchange interaction,
not the convenience of managers
• Provide accessible water features for local, microclimate
• create alfresco dining opportunities creating local
business and employment
• Space for art, culture, sculptures, and street
furniture from recycled materials
• Green landscape areas are required, however it
should have smart irrigation system

43. EXPERTISE
John A. Herbert
BEAM Pro, GGP, FCIPHE, MASHRAE, MAEE, HKAEE
info@kelcroft.com.hk