It’s big, it’s green, but is it really a good thing?

The new NAHB-ICC National Green Building Standard (NGBS) guidebook hit mailboxes on Friday. I arrived home to this delightful picture in my in-box (see picture at right), along with an equally playful e-mail from my fellow shelter nerd, Bill Beasley.

Bill and I put in many hours reading and typing up comments on the new standard as it evolved. He came with me to the NAHB offices in Washington, D.C., to sit in the peanut gallery as representatives of our local green building community, demanding a credible, comprehensive, and easily understandable standard for builders and designers who are just beginning to move beyond Energy Star to incorporate a full range of green building systems into their work; one that would give positive feedback as they improved their practices to true, high-performance, green building.

剥去标准如果绿色洗手，一次一个行业

When we finally walked out of that cavernous boardroom in the bowels of the NAHB “Death Star” building in D.C., we had stood up to the concrete industry in its attempt to eliminate credits for frost-protected shallow foundations. We also had stared down the steel industry in its aim to get recycled content and durability credits for virtually everything it produces. We had a credible standard coming together and were reduced to bickering about mandating that all fireplaces have gasketed doors and combustion air intakes, and any green-built house should be disqualified if it had a traditional stone fireplace with no gasketed door!

如此账单和我（以及全国各地的其他人）在星期五晚上举行，手中的亮点检查，看看最终使其进入标准。

该酒吧被设置为低廉：包含

The new NGBS has a lot more mandates than the old NAHB Green Building Program, but none of them are onerous. It does have a very low threshold to entry (222 points), so much so that the Bronze Level is just barely more challenging to reach than Energy Star. This was expected because one of the main goals of this program is to attract existing builders to green building by giving them a high likelihood of success at the bottom of the scale.

但它还设置了黄金和祖母绿水平（分别为558和697点）足够高，建设者可以向上移动到真正的高性能甚至净零，而无需切换到LEED-H标准以测量其高级性能。在商业上工作的许多建筑师和建筑商都会发现与住宅项目的LEED-H合作;但是，对于那些只有居民的人来说，NGBS是一个真正的祝福，刚刚开始在绿色建筑和寻求提供绿色建筑核查激励措施，使当地建筑实践达到更高水平的城市。

If LEED-h is the brick church on the hill, the NGBS is the tent revival down by the river.

将有绿色洗涤收费，分数223分的房子将比恰好符合能源明星的房子。但是这个程序将获得大量建设者和设计师从整个系统的角度接近他们的项目，而不是只是放下一些竹地板和高性能的加热系统，并呼叫绿色。它为我们提供了一个重要的新工具，可以在全国范围内提升酒吧。

And yes, you can still give your client a certified green home with an open stone fireplace.