or oil tricity and water as well and reduce the natural resource impact by advance framing different types of materials materials that are manufactured nearby and those types of things so ok so that's kind of a green building is so what is the green building code or standard you know what's what's that got to do with our you know building department per se well there are several   building programs throughout the country as you well know there is a list about a mile long we in maplewood and the state of minnesota have the international building code and the international residential code and other mechanical co that we carry to higher ground which are required yes and now over the last couple years the international code council who develops codes with assistance from around the other states in the nation have developed international green construction code for residential or for commercial and national green building standard for residential homes which it's actually designed to be a mandatory document like the others but it can be voluntary ok so you know for the conspiracy theorists out there and channel sixteen land is this some plot by the the evil government to increase fees and take over rights of people and it's a know what's the what's the what's of lydia's well it's that's a good point but it's kind of how i got into this in the first place as i saw a lot of different programs out there and i saw the need for it and the city of maplewood is leading the charge on that by the way but when we first looked at it we saw a lot of programs that some of the things that you had to do wouldn't fit in minnesota wouldn't fit maybe they could be designed for a southern state or out on the coast somewhere so this code was put together to basically not have you don't do things you don't need to do like the commercial green code is not a rating system it is actually a little bit more than that there are tools in there where you meet the minimum like you would any other front of course but you would you would get a payback savings on that over time by using less fuel by using different types of framing materials by using less water and you could  there are many things that you don't have to do another program so you'd save money there so now it's not a conspiracy it's actually a pretty good program well you know i know you're a noted and liberal there nic being a veteran of the united states marine corps and stuff i know you're a liberal tendency there so i get a little bit concerned that that people that think that this is another level of government intervention that's just trying to shove down people's throats but what i'm hearing you say is that this is a well thought out mechanism for people to save energy also save money i suppose you could go on to saving the environment and this type of thing that i said it's not met when we adopted a maplewood which we're working on doing we brought this program up through the various boards we brought it through our staff we've brought a program up to our city council workshop so everybody can know exactly what we're doing everything is open and honest and we're we field all the questions bailable so going forward there it's a revolutionary code there's no question about that but it's also evolutionary in that it's  changing all codes change you know there's a three year cold cycle and all of them are right now that the international green construction called for commercial buildings is up for another review in maine this will be the third version in a short period of time so there's very important committees i am on the international green construction code development committee not a grant but i am a committee member and we will review but i just got to be yesterday there's almost two thousand code changes to go over in that document alone by the end while we stop right there because you know this is going it's a junket to texas right or wherever it's going to be i looked at your schedule and you're working from what eight o'clock in the morning tell eight or nine o'clock at night the meetings go on that's correct that's unbelievable for a you know a conference that you know they have made that lasts that long but people come before you and petition for different changes and things like out how does that worked there's a panelist fourteen of us on the committee and and there's hundreds of people in the audience that have submitted these core changes and they come up and give testimony and then what happens is this committee looks at their testimony has questions that they need to and the committee votes if we want to move forward or not or if we want to modify that code change with another court change for example that my make it work better and then at the end of the day which will be in november the the the the i c c body will vote on the document that's the building officials the building officials and will vote on are we going to accept this or not and again like i said it's evolutionary and it is going forward there are a few things in there that you know that i don't particularly like and i'm hoping that those things will get taken care of at the may hearings specifically to energy and water there are other things but  those things need to be an overlay do the existing codes because this is something that we're using as building inspectors and building officials and city planners there's a piece in there for them for site development and the engineering department as well for storm water management things like that i don't think you have to make the case for you know building codes anymore i mean you know really all you have to really look at is two examples what happened in haiti just this last year and what happened in japan you know to what happened in haiti and i think a lot of that has been attributed to strict and strong building codes that would be true mr ranson i think the only building that wasn't affected in haiti was a u s embassy and that was built on t c so now we've established the need for the green building code both commercially and now we're going into residential and so let's just talk a little bit about residential because that's where most of our viewers are probably interested in how they can save money with some simple things they can do at home by implementing parts of the green building code well the green building codes it's a national green building standards this is what it looks like right here and this is this is a level system but it is full of different types of things that you can do to get there it does it's one of the very few and it  really makes it you can see it's not a very thick book at all for residential but the good part about it is it also covers new homes it covers additions renovations existing buildings so it just every building in maplewood that we have this residential you could use this for including if they're called a second unit he wanted to have the whole street go down this road we could do that and hopefully as the program continues  on we're going to build in and senators incentives to do that because we don't have the mandatory authority to have it because we can exceed what the state requires and the state would say that this would be exceeding the minimum well you know when you get talking about the state you know i know that that there's a big debate going on right now in the legislature with the certain proponents of the legislature trying to basically gut safety aspects of the building code i'm talking about because i understand that you know if you have a sprinkler goes off you do have some potential damage water damage to your property and it tetra center but that can be replaced what what can't be replaced is the death deaths  injury that people have by and sprinkled buildings this very good point you know a little known fact to some is that maple would have sprinkler ordinance it's not an ordinance it's actually  appendix chapter from the state that they developed over a third thirty years ago where you could sprinkler buildings and exceed what the code required and maplewood in its wisdom back thirty years ago adopted that so m of their commercial buildings are sprinkler but that doesn't really go to single family dwellings and we're talking to is single family dwelling sprinklers that is in the legislature right now it is in the building codes is an international residential code does require it we haven't adopted the code at the state level so i'm not sure i don't know if anybody knows where that's going to end up but the sprinkler requirements have come before the committees and the green building  because there is no question that a sprinkler system would not only knock the fire down which would help with the smoke that would get into the atmosphere or also limit the amount of destruction to the building itself  so there have been cold changes brought forward to do that they haven't passed yet and when the residential portion goes forward next year to for their revisions that could very well be  on the screen the city environmental commission has sponsored the home energy squads by with xcel energy and so there are some interesting things that have happened there and so let's take a look and see what what we have o for our commercial break am a member of the environmental and natural resources commission of the city of maplewood there are seven of us on the commission all of us appointed by the city council our mission is to protect preserve and enhance the environmental assets of the city of maple it we have formed some subcommittees within our commission to work with neighborhood groups to try to help them find ways to work within their own neighborhoods to enhance the city's environment xcel energy presented to us one energy efficiency program called the home energy squad involves a visit by energy experts who review your home's energy efficiency  because there were so many people they could send out a squad for an entire week all day long every day to work on the program as a result they were also able to reduce the cost of the program for the thirty  cost ranges from fifty dollars to eighty dollars if you sign up with a group of your neighbors three of them in fact on the same day to participate in the home energy squad visit xcel energy will reduce the cost even further from your original low price we encourage you to think about working together on an environmental project with your neighbors please let us know what your neighbors and you are doing or thinking about doing to improve your environment your stories and ideas can inspire other neighborhood groups and we too can help you so and you know one of the new things that's going on with some of the energy audits that they do for those is water audits water our artists are also getting very popular in the green building world expression existing buildings you can go in and you can save a lot of water just by by  our using it and your fixture use and changing your water closets all doing things like that so that's very important program works well ok so now we kind of talked around the subject who who regulates to green building construction i mean let's talk about you know the commercial aspect and the residential aspect to it how does it how that regulated it in at what level well i would say now and in the it's been somewhat not regulated regulated only by the particular program that a designer or a homeowner or building owner chooses going forward it would be it's a design team concept so the owner the design professionals architect mechanical engineers and whatnot and the building people at the city of maplewood along with city planners and city engineers will have to work together to formulate we're going to go with a particular building or project so it would be regulated by the city of maplewood we would do the plan review we would help we would help with the design we're not designers but we would we would help them with that and we would do the field inspections of course and we would document the files for permanent records that we would have so now and that's mainly kind of geared towards the commercial aspect right now that would be both because if you are going to choose a single family dwelling you want to you want to meet this coat you are you want the incentives you want to do the right thing and so you would come to the city of maplewood with your builder and your designer you have one and we would start with your lot where's your lot is and it is it in feel odd is we're not talking about functionally or anything like no no no no this is where the planning department would come in you know distance the wetlands things like that the engineering department to look at slopes retaining some of the water on the property doing different things like that and then we would go over we were designed to design team would create a checklist of things above and beyond the building code you know the international residential code that's going to be done and and then we were just follow through like we would on any other normal inspection process of course would be a lot more album and we expect that but that's maybe good news for the for the homeowner or the business owner that there is extra attention to the inspection of the building as it's being built i mean that can only be a plus for the for the eventual owner of the building i would think absolutely a lot of the inspections we do today are green inspections you could say you know for a damper a fee and getting water way from the buildings insulation inspections or mechanical inspections and stuff like that there's a lot of green elements of what we're doing already so as you know to we're certified nationally to do the green building i know we have two people you and and jason gratian brash that are both certified and what is only like five in the state of minnesota i think there's i think there's four in the region three were to be the state area while i know what is going after maplewood has always been that way when it comes to education they want the best for the residents that are there and if we can if we can go out and do that then we'll do it so now as we move forward how you know we have you've come to the city council you've talked about it you went through all the commissions i mean this is not something that's happened overnight what's the next step neck well what we're going to do next is after the may hearings we'll be able to sort out some of the things that i felt were were issues that would be difficult for builders and inspectors to actually do the work i think that will get cleaned up they will bring it back to the city in the form of going ordinance on a program and with that we're going to be looking at different types of incentives for people that want to build on it because again for city buildings and city finance buildings we would consider it mandatory the city can do that because we own and so all of our buildings including our existing buildings which you know that larry far and i've been working together and we just did a program for last month right in the retrofittin city hall on the savings were very interesting and the commercial building part is also covers additions existing buildings or renovations so we can go through all of our fire stations all of our public works buildings and city other buildings and community center and we can we can bring them up to meet this code and by doing that we will meet the highest level standards we can for our own buildings or will be setting the example for the rest of maplewood and the rest of the state actually and so anyhow having said that it will be mandatory for our buildings and city funded buildings and it will be voluntary for everyone else so if a person must come in and build a home if they meet a certain level then we'll be able to  maybe have a cash incentive maybe advertise incentive for a contractor you could award somebody a certificate of completion for a green building to meet this code at a city council meeting and i might be a nice  marketing tool for some developers that are building houses and stuff that that they are green building and meet certain standards of the century sort of a quality assurance document i agree and we're always looking for people want to do this but there's a lot of confusion on what to do and this is going to clarify a lot of what we actually do some brash put together this handout we just started this a week or two ago now that on our website not yet no we just we just created this and we're going to create a spot on our website for and future things to come and basically what this says is what is green building and how can you do it if you're building a deck you could build a green so i didn't have to  study or just a porsche or addition renovation basement finish there are there are things that we can do to help you meet the requirements of this code and do the right thing conserve energy conserve water and  actually enjoy better indoor air water for things and so all we need to do is call and set up a point because there is a there is a certain amount of work that we need to do to get started well you know it just to be there i mean you know i mean i think we're very fortunate we have you and jason that can guide us on this and again it's voluntary so people are not it's not being shoved down people's throats it's it makes sense it's economical  and it is for just a simple matter of having this extra inspection of your property is being built i'm sure some developers and builders aren't real keen about that but as a property owner you know i think that's that's really a good selling point just for the beginning building program whether whether caution exter dollar or not i think that's a good point and even even the developers and the