Setting new sustainability standards
Water shortages and rising energy bills are driving the nationwide demand for sustainable property. We look at how green intitiatives in this sector are setting up SA for a brighter future
Water shortages and rising energy bills are driving the nationwide demand for sustainable property. We look at how green intitiatives in this sector are setting up SA for a brighter future
A’s property sector is becoming greener every year. According to the 2018 World Green Building Trends report, the number of developers belonging to the Green Building Council of SA (GBCSA) rose from 31% to 51% between 2015 and 2018. This will likely translate into more green developments, including residential projects.
The report shows that by 2021, 48% of South African developers will dedicate 60% of their projects to
Sgreen endeavours – up from 28% in 2015. Various elements are driving the market, including the increasing cost of water and energy and their declining availability. “Water shortages and loadshedding make resourceefficient homes increasingly attractive,” says Anthony Stroebel, GBCSA board member and head of strategy for the Pam Golding Property Group. “Properties listed with green attributes such as recycling, energy efficiency and water
“Water shortages and load shedding make resourceefficient homes increasingly attractive” Anthony Stroebel, head of strategy, Pam Golding Property Group
“Homeowners, tenants and investors want to know what is being done to reduce the impact on the environment” Nicholas Stopforth, MD, Amdec Property Development
saving features receive considerable attention.”
NEW AWARENESS
Sustainability is about more than keeping your utility bills low and safeguarding your water and electricity supply. SA’s property industry is driven by increasing awareness around environmental issues such as climate change. “Homeowners, tenants and investors want to know what is being done to reduce the impact on the environment,” says Amdec Property Development MD Nicholas Stopforth.
Grahame Cruickshanks, the GBCSA’s managing executive of market engagement, confirms growing environmental awareness among South Africans, particularly regarding the impact of their lifestyles. “This is influencing the decisions they make about the homes they want to live in.”
The GBCSA’s independently verified certification systems, Edge and Green Star SA, offer consumers peace of mind by providing a reliable measurement of their homes’ environmental performance.
Jessica Hofmeyr, Century Property Developments sales, rentals, marketing and operations executive, shares Cruickshanks’ opinion. “People are more educated on the subject, and sustainability is becoming a deciding factor on where they stay,” she says. “The demand grows by the day.”
RESILIENT DESIGN
What makes a home, apartment or entire residential development sustainable starts with how it is built, says Cruickshanks.
“Many developers are using the best practice approach to designing a building’s envelope – walls, floor, and roof – appropriately for the region, taking into account specific elements such as insulation, correctly sized and oriented windows and doors, shading, as well as building materials with the correct thermal mass. This is the ability to store and release heat at different times of the day,” he says. “Technology is added to enhance a building’s performance.”
Green architect David Talbot, founder of multidisciplinary consultancy Platform, explains that it all boils down to resilient design, which is defined as the intentional planning of buildings, landscapes, communities and regions in response to vulnerabilities to disaster and disruption of normal life.
“Resilient design has become a genuine trend among developers and architects, one that helps occupants deal with Eskom and water outages,” Talbot says. “Individual homeowners are looking at this more and more, too. It is almost a fundamental requirement and no longer a nice-to-have.”
WATER-WISER
In arid SA, water is a big issue, particularly from a property development point of view. As the effects of water constraints are becoming more palpable around the country, more developers are going the extra mile to save every drop. Simply installing rainwater tanks is no longer enough.
“We have implemented systems that detect water leaks immediately, and our latest developments such as The Precinct within the Waterfall Area, The Parks in Riversands and The Campus in Auckland Park have grey-water systems in place,” says Hofmeyr.
Amdec Property Development, too, has upped its water-efficiency offering. It has fitted its most recent development, The Yacht Club in Cape Town, with a reverse osmosis plant that provides 35,000 litres of clean drinking water every day, taking it off the municipal water grid completely. Amdec’s future Harbour Arch development will be equally water-wise. “With water scarcity being the new normal, developers must implement waterwise strategies from the ground up,” Stopforth says.
CLEVER LANDSCAPING
When looking at lowering a development’s water
“We aim for designs that introduce the maximum amount of natural light to reduce the requirement for artificial lighting” John Chapman, director, Rabie Property Group
footprint, the role of landscaping cannot be ignored. This goes beyond planting water-wise vegetation. Val de Vie in Paarl, for instance, has implemented innovative irrigation technology interventions that have decreased its Pearl Valley Golf Course’s irrigation footprint by a third over the past summer season.
The type of paving can also help residential developments be more sustainable. At Century
City in Cape Town, Rabie Property Group is doing its bit by, where possible, having storm water running into the ground instead of draining off hard surfaces and roads.
“This assists with the natural regeneration of the water table within developments,” says Rabie’s director, John Chapman.
“By designing your development’s landscape in a certain way, you can also capture storm water in retention ponds,” adds Talbot. “Municipalities are encouraging civil engineers and developers to build such ponds in their developments’s landscaping to retain and store excess rainwater, which can be used for irrigation or even to flush toilets.”
WASTE NOTHING
Another trend among developers is to reduce their projects’ waste output. According to Talbot, the construction phase of property developments tends to generate a lot of waste that often goes to landfill. Fortunately this is starting to change, thanks to new legislation.
“The City of Cape Town has implemented rules that prescribe that waste management plans have to be submitted along with building plans. This is pushing contractors to recycle more waste rather than send it to landfill,” Talbot says.
Innovative building techniques that produce less waste than when using bricks and mortar are also gaining traction. Crosslaminated timber (CLT) construction, for example, involves the use of large prefabricated sustainably produced wooden panels to build walls, roofs and floors. According to Talbot, the environmental impact of CLT is lower than that of many conventional building methods. “Bricks, for instance, need to be fired, which uses a lot of energy. In Europe CLT is even used to build multistorey buildings.”
MORE THAN SOLAR
Energy efficiency has always been a key driver of the green building sector in SA – one that more property developers are now taking to the next level. Solar panels alone no longer suffice.
“From an energyefficiency perspective, we focus on LED lighting, better façade design, double glazing and other efficiency measures,” says Amdec investment manager Antonie Jordaan.
In addition, Rabie Property Group accommodates solar panels where possible and installs heat pumps instead of geysers across its projects.
“We aim for designs that introduce the maximum amount of natural light to reduce the requirement for artificial lighting,” says Chapman. “This, along with energy-efficient glazing, reduces heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter, thereby decreasing a building’s electricity usage and lowering its carbon footprint.”
While there is a price tag attached to these solutions, the investment certainly is worth it, Chapman adds.
“Harvesting energy from the sun and using long-life LEDs reduce the running costs over the long-term life cycle of a development.”
RETROFITTING
As the number of green developments grows, more homeowners retrofit their existing homes. This also applies to developers like Century Property Developments, which constantly re-evaluates its plans from a sustainability point of view. “We have built a solar plant at our Carlswald and Crowthorne luxury apartment complexes in Midrand,” Hofmeyr says.
“Both complexes feature new water-management technology that allows us to monitor the amount of water used. We have installed rainwater catchment systems too.”
Talbot confirms the popularity of retrofitting, adding that it is not limited to residential projects. “Big funds like Growthpoint are retrofitting their existing spaces with green building technologies and having them rated.”