Synergizing Sustainability

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As the construction industry continues to move toward embracing green materials and building methods, a New Jersey construction company is utilizing and promoting a combination of sustainable building techniques in hopes of turning the green building movement into a revolution.

“We don’t believe there’s any building where all three technologies—mass-wall building enclosure, energy-recovery ventilation, and alternative energy—have been brought together in the same building,” says Daniel Gans, cofounder of Hoboken Brownstone Company.

These three technologies, which Gans and Hoboken Brownstone cofounder George Vallone—both of whom proudly identify themselves as New Jersey natives—were inspired to use after consulting with New York City green architect Michael McDonough, are mandated in Europe but have yet to be enforced by American building code officials.

Vallone and Gans aim to demonstrate the value of these three techniques with Van Leer Place, a sustainable, mixed-use development of more than 400 homes and 7,500 square feet of retail space to be built on the brownfield site of the former Van Leer Chocolate Factory at 110 Hoboken Avenue in Jersey City. Their first step won’t be a small one—they must replace the seven-acre site’s arsenic-contaminated soil.

While many American construction companies have begun using alternative energy systems like solar and geothermal, Vallone and Gans argue that these alternative systems can’t be fully utilized without proper building enclosure and energy-recovery ventilation (ERV).

Vallone and Gans have learned from McDonough, whom they consider a mentor, that even though an alternative energy system is an integral element of ecofriendly design, it can’t work properly in a building that is constructed using traditional methods.
Instead, McDonough purports, using adequate building enclosures made with autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) and ERV are crucial to making sure that a building’s alternative energy systems function properly.
“Building enclosure is the most important thing. It’s responsible for the most amounts of energy savings, if it’s a good building,” says Vallone. “And if it’s [the] typical kind of building that gets built in our country, it’s responsible for the most amounts of energy lost.”

Mass-wall building enclosure, says Gans, slows down the rate of thermal decay. In the winter, “it keeps the building warmer longer,” he explains, “and the opposite in the summer when the air conditioning cools the building down.

“So when the building begins to heat up when the air conditioners click off, that cool thermal energy gets returned to the interior space. It keeps it cooler longer, and that’s what the mass wall is all about.”

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