Maui Nui consultant at leading edge for energy efficient design

John Bendon

It’s 10 at night. You’ve turned off the unneeded lights and locked up your business.

Do you know what your air conditioning is doing?

John Bendon can tell you if it’s wasting energy and adding to your costs.

His Green Building LLC is one of the only firms on Maui to provide building and energy performance inspecting and green building consulting services. The company is at the leading edge of the movement to incorporate energy efficiency, environmental quality and resource preservation in building design and operations to reduce costs for an owner while providing healthier living spaces.

Green Building LLC conducts energy audits and performance tests on existing structures to advise owners on how they can make more efficient use of energy and water, reduce emissions and improve the quality of the indoor environment. Through the use of advanced equipment including infrared thermal imaging, Bendon said he can analyze building envelope performance and see where the air is leaking out and adding to the cost of keeping a room cool.

The business plan involves both performance testing of existing buildings and consulting to designers before a building is constructed.

“We’re looking at what a project needs at the beginning of design to address factors that relate to its place in the environment. We analyze building energy consumption through energy modeling, look at how building components affect performance, analyze water consumption, and address material use and indoor air quality issues.” he said.

“We are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Accredited Professionals that can help in developing green projects through an integrated design process. Our goal is to help realize best practice measures for building performance that are based on tested building science techniques.”

In time, energy efficiency in design and use of evolving technologies to reduce demand on finite resources can be expected to become standards.

Bendon’s Green Building LLC is not only prepared to offer information on cost-effective energy efficiency technologies that can be deployed in buildings in Hawaii, he will help to train a new generation of designers, builders and building inspectors in green technologies and building practices as Certified Energy Raters and LEED Accredited Professionals.

He will be an instructor in a new program to be offered by the University of Hawaii/Maui Community College through VITEC in energy management and building science. It will be an 88-hour course involving both classroom and field work with the equipment that is used in assessing energy efficiency of a structure based on standards established by RESNET, the Residential Energy Services Network.

Training in energy efficiency and building assessment should be in demand in 2010, as the state and Maui County move to require higher standards for energy use and resource conservation, Bendon said. He said he understood that the county will implement a version of the International Energy Conservation Code in 2010.

Maui County adopted the Hawaii Model Building Energy Code in 2005 and Mayor Charmaine Tavares is advocating building standards that consider energy efficiency as well as structural integrity and safety.

The Maui Economic Development Board believes services offered by Green Building can benefit the Maui Nui economy as a whole by reducing demand for fossil-fuel energy, said MEDB President Jeanne Unemori Skog.

Montessori classroom

“That the data developed by a company like Green Building can improve the quality of the living spaces in homes and businesses is bonus. Having a Maui-based specialist in this new but growing field for LEED development can only boost the ability of our community to become a more energy efficient and healthier place for generations to come,” she said.

Green Building proved its capabilities with a recent project at the Montessori School of Maui, which expanded on its Makawao campus with three classroom structures utilizing natural ventilation and daylighting with a photovoltaic system that will cut its power bills. The LEED Silver certified project is the first commercial new construction project certified under the LEED rating system in Maui County.

Born and raised on Maui, Bendon is a graduate of Seabury Hall, who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado. While in school, he said he worked during the summers in construction, eventually being appointed project manager for a planned unit development senior housing project in Colorado.

His environmental senses were disturbed by the amount of waste he observed in construction projects, but he also realized he was not inspired by research in environmental science. He returned to Hawaii and enrolled in a graduate program in building and construction management where he discovered the green building initiative.

Upper Elementary Building with recylced tire retaining wall and play structure in foreground

“I learned about the green building efforts, wrote a term paper on it and decided this is what I wanted to do,” he said.

He is accredited as a LEED professional by the U.S. Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org) and is certified as an energy rater by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), which is the governing body for residential energy rating services in the country.

Originally intended to support loans, the energy rating standards provide a mechanism for providing the home with a home energy rating system score — the HERS score — to evaluate energy usage based on common metrics.

His associate in Green Building LLC is Jean Young, an electrical engineer turned teacher turned project manager for green building consulting.

LEED involves more than energy efficiency. The overall theme for LEED is “stewardship of resources,” which includes emissions controls and limiting the demand for water and impacts on the natural environment.

A lot of programs are in place already to make this happen. More information can be found on the Web site.

Jean Young

“There are people who are willing to go green, but it’s not enough that you have people who are willing to do the right thing. You have to make it financially viable. Often if it doesn’t make economic sense then it will not get done.”

But he is not waiting for government action, seeking projects that will prove financial viability of LEED design by reducing long-term operational costs.

“Even if there are no government incentives, our role is to explain to the public why they should be doing it anyway, and how we can have it make financial sense.” he said.