Pima County, Ariz. (Mar. 5, 2012) -  A new Pima County web site provides you with the tools to design “Net-Zero” energy homes, apartments, offices and retail buildings that won’t use more energy than they create.

The information can also be used to remodel a structure to save energy costs.

The website, http://www.pima.gov/netzero, has a residential section and a commercial section for apartments, retail and offices with calculators based on the City of Tucson/Pima County Net-Zero Energy Standard.

“We are pleased to have another terrific tool for helping the community reduce energy use. Energy bills are a significant portion of the cost of running a business or owning a home,” said Leslie Ethen, Director of the City of Tucson’s Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development.  “Resources like this and the City’s Green Business Certification program are ways in which we can help businesses and homeowners reduce these costs.”

Working with a few basic facts about the design of the building, such as the shape of the roof, the orientation of the building and number of stories, the website can calculate the building’s “energy budget.”

The website provides a “recipe card,” or set of energy efficiency building elements, to be incorporated in the design.

The website also has a calculator to determine the financial performance of the building.

The site is useful to homeowners, commercial builders and commercial property owners, who can use the information for new construction or for renovation of existing structures, to reduce energy costs.

Net-Zero homes and apartments can save residents money every month, said Rich Franz-Under, Pima County’s Green Building Program Manager.  A typical home owner can save between $40 and $80 a month because of significantly lower utility bills, he said.

Pima County and the City of Tucson are the first governmental jurisdictions in the nation to develop a building standard to achieve Net-Zero energy.

The City of Tucson’s Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development (OCSD) provided the funding for the project through an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Pima County Development Services, Building Safety and Sustainability made up the principal research group on the web project, with assistance from the University of Arizona College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Tucson Water.

Pima County led the development of a regional green-building rating system for homes in 2008. Using that knowledge, the County worked with its collaborators to develop the Net-Zero energy code.

Pima County, Ariz. (Nov. 15, 2011) – Pima County’s efforts to “go beyond code” to provide guidelines for Green Building and sustainable projects are included in a new federal guide to “Creating Effective Green Building Programs for Energy Efficient and Sustainable Communities.”

The Going Beyond Code Guide is designed to help state and local governments design and implement successful “beyond code” programs for new commercial and residential buildings.

These guidelines, such as those developed by Pima County, encourage energy efficiency and other sustainable elements in the construction and operation of buildings, without having to mandate them by creating additional building codes.

Rich Franz-Ünder, Pima County’s Green Programs Manager in the county’s Department of Development Services, helped shape the Going Beyond Code policy options noted in the Guide to Green Building.

Pima County is included along with the cities of Scottsdale, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Longmont, Colo., as an example of best practices to emulate.

The guide to “Creating Effective Green Building Programs for Energy Efficient and Sustainable Communities” describes model green building guidelines from around the United States.

The goal of Green Building, Franz-Ünder said, is to advance energy efficiency by reducing waste and by building water and energy efficiency into the construction of homes and businesses.

The new document is based on the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project’s (SWEEP) “Going Beyond Code” guide, which also includes Pima County. The new guide was prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Program in collaboration with SWEEP.

The guide, which is free, is available online and can be downloaded as a pdf  file at http://www.energycodes.gov/publications/resourceguides/packets/gbc_guide/GoingBeyondCode_LoRes.pdf.

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Pima County, Ariz. (Oct. 4, 2011) – Pima County and the City of Tucson’s chief building officials are proposing that their separate Building Codes Boards of Appeal be combined to hear appeals of code interpretations.

They are also proposing that joint building, electrical and mechanical/plumbing code committees be consolidated into a single joint building-code committee/Board of Appeals.

The joint city-county Outdoor Lighting Code would remain intact  to fulfill the city’s and county’s joint mission of protecting dark skies as a cultural and economic resource, said Yves Khawam, Pima County’s chief building official in the Pima County Department of  Development Services.

Khawam said a consolidated building code model has been working well around the country and is recommended by the International Code Council, http://www.iccsafe.org. The organization publishes updates to the model codes on a three-year cycle as the building industry changes and codes must be redrawn.

The proposed committees are:

Building Code Committee/Board of Appeals: This panel would propose updates to the building-related codes as well as hear appeals on code interpretation.

Outdoor Lighting Code Committee: This panel would continue to update the Pima County and City of Tucson outdoor lighting code.

Each committee, as proposed, would have seven voting members. Members would be jointly appointed by the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council.

Names of appointees would be solicited from professional organizations, including the Arizona Builders Alliance, International Dark-Sky Association, American Institute of Architects and American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers.

A resolution that would affirm these changes will be considered by the Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council sometime in the next eight weeks.