Reaching Gold LEED Certification Takes Hard Work

Doonesbury "We Did It!" from Election Night, November 5, 2008

Reaching Gold LEED certification means more than you can imagine. When we first started out with this challenging process, we met people who thought we were crazy. We were discouraged by some who thought the task was far to difficult to accomplish for a small business of my size and to expensive to achieve .  They told me that I didn’t have to become LEED certified just to call myself a “green spa” .  But to me it was more than calling ourselves a green spa.  LEED is a score card through the US Green Building Council which proves your authenticity.

Not many people can say they are LEED Certified. 

They were right about one thing, I didn’t have a huge budget to pay for the professionals that ordinarily do all the research and work to achieve this status. But that thought is exactly what made this such a rewarding feat. In order for us to accomplish this Gold LEED certification, we had to do the work ourselves. That very thing is what makes this project so unique and so personally rewarding. My brother, my father, myself and even my two boys contributed to the success of this project.

We did the research and the grunt work.  We sorted the metal studs, wire, electrical parts, ceiling tiles, and more. We were the ones who actually “got our hands dirty” and measured walls, marked out the floors, researched the materials and ran around to all the different suppliers researching what was available to us.  We had to learn the LEED process and requirements all while doing the actual work.  We were the ones who worked the hardest and achieved our personal goal.

At first we were completely overwhelmed with everything but in the end, the challenging process is what makes this so personally rewarding.  We didn’t just pay someone else to do the work, WE did the work.  So now saying we achieved Gold LEED Certification for New Construction really means WE ACHIEVED our dreams. ….-we became the FIRST LEED Gold Certified Spa in the country.

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