I just found out yesterday from our LEED for Homes Provider that on Monday, May 16th, he had the certification call with the U.S. Green Building Council. As he had expected, we are certified at the gold level with 94 points! Hooray! I’ll get an email certification within one week and four nice paper certificates in the mail in about 3-4 weeks.
So. This is all very anticlimactic. You’d think I should get some check in the mail or something. If we lived in New Mexico, we would get a sustainable building tax credit of $17,100. (For gold level, New Mexico rewards homeowners $6.85 per square foot for the first 2,000 square feet, and $3.40 per square foot for the next 1,000 square feet.) Anyway, this is Minnesota. We did get a $500 rebate from Xcel Energy for being rewarded an Energy Star Home. That’s something! What else is there to be happy about?
1. Knowing that our utility bills are 35% of what they normally would be, had we not gone for LEED certification.
2. Knowing that our home is green not just because I say it is, but because the internationally recognized governing body of green buildings, the USGBC, says it is so.
3. I’m done with this huge project!
4. It also happens to be my mom’s 70th birthday today!
For those of you curious about how we got our 94 points (out of a possible 136), that will be my next post.