This Building Green on Green blog chronicles the $5 million, top-to-bottom renovation of Tremco Incorporated’s 40-year old headquarters, which will transform the building into a showcase of sustainability. Located on the appropriately named Green Road in Beachwood, Ohio, we intend to create a truly high-performance, sustainable facility that integrates our rich array of corporate solutions and highlights the use of construction best practices.
Our objectives are to improve energy efficiency and conserve water; reduce operational costs; provide a safer, healthier facility; and protect the natural environment by reducing our carbon output, lowering the local heat island effect, and recycling and reusing material to keep it from being hauled to a landfill. It is our goal, upon completion, to become one of the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) few LEED Gold certified facilities in Ohio.
Construction Best Practices
Construction best practices that WTI, the general contractor on the project, and its subcontractors will follow to increase the project’s sustainability include:
- Onsite sorting of materials
- Recycling of all non-hazardous material
- Chain-of-custody documentation for all off-site recycling
- Reusing materials as applicable
- Verifying that materials are certified for LEED credit
Sustainable Features
The renovation’s most noteworthy sustainable features include:
- Four types of sustainable roofing systems
- A vegetated roof featuring local plants. Low impact lighting and a water capture system will be integrated with the roof, as will a pathway of recycled materials. Signs will describe the roof’s features and provide information about the plant palette.
- The ENERGY STAR® qualified Rock-It™ roof surfacing system, composed of white gravel set in white adhesive.
- A white, reflective, single ply system installed beneath a rooftop photovoltaic (PV) system.
- A thin-film rooftop PV system that will be used to generate electricity for the building. A second PV system on a white reflective roof will be installed on the South building.
- A Dryvit Outsulation Plus® MD exterior wall system featuring Dryvit’s TerraNeo™ finish. The system provides an energy efficient, insulated façade and can be applied directly to the existing slate, eliminating the time and potential waste of removing the façade.
- High-performance, double pane, tinted windows that exceed minimum energy standards. Tremco sealants and gaskets will be used, as will Tremco’s Proglaze® ETA (Engineered Transition Assembly) to ensure an airtight transition from window to wall.
- New sidewalks, with decorative concrete from Increte Systems, that will be supported by gravel from one of the building’s existing roofs.
- A 1.8kW rated wind turbine installed on the property to help generate electricity.
- Numerous interior upgrades such as ADA-compliant restrooms, interior window treatments, elevator modernizations with eco-friendly technology and ADA compliance.
- Mechanical/Engineering/Plumbing upgrades such as new control system that ensures an accurate operating schedule of HVAC and lighting as well as improved zone control; modifications to the central air handling system to enable variable flow, resulting in significant energy savings; and replacing the cooling tower with a variable speed model that also eliminates the need for water treatment.
The result, made possible by our fellow RPM Building Solutions Group companies and other partners, will be a sustainable, high performance building that is energy efficient, has limited environmental impact and operates with the lowest possible life-cycle costs.
