Let me vent please....

I need to vent for a moment, so please bear with me. There is a group of people out there somewhere that back in the early '90's thought up of a good way to rip people off, make a ton of money, and make anyone involved in construction hate life. Perhaps they were sitting at home, unemployed from their construction or architect's job, and said, "hey, how can I annoy the living crap out of my former employer?" I'll invent a program that sounds good, but really accomplishes nothing. In the meantime, I'll make it really expensive, so I make a ton of money even though I do nothing with it. What do you have? LEED!

Yes, LEED. It is some green building idea that is a day late and a dollar short. Unless you're the one who thought of the idea, then you have plenty of dollars. For a mere $400, you can sign up to take the test to be LEED certified. For another $10k or $20k, you can register your project as LEED approved. If you have a question for the LEED people, it will only set you back a measely $500. And starting this year, to maintain your LEED certification, it costs $50 per year. All so I can put LEED AP after my name, like a doctor puts MD after theirs, and so your project can stick a piece of paper in a $5 frame from Walmart saying your building is LEED certified.

Now, you ask, what am I getting so riled up over? This concept, in theory, is great. It requires you to design and build something with the environment in mind. In reality, it is a royal pain in the #$%. You have to document everything, up to and including how many screws you used and where they came from, and design things around words like evicivity and thermotranspiration. Yes, those are real words. But Karl is a certified mechanical professional engineer, and my friend who I am taking the test with, is a certified civil professional engineer. You'd think they would have heard of these words. NO! And speaking of the test, I have to take a test to say I am LEED certified. This test can probably rival the bar, or the test architect's have to take, or, as my friend has confirmed, the professional engineer test. All so I can put LEED AP after my name at work, and know that the albedo of a surface should be around 29. Don't ask me what that means. I read it last night, but I don't remember.

So, the picture at the top of the post would be what I look like when studying to take this test. It's hard to really be motivated to study for something you think is total hogwash and a complete waste of time. But then again, when I am done, I can determine how to use recycled gray water to flush my toilets, know that green seal is for paints & coatings and green label is for carpet, or how to determine the glazing factor of a window. How many of you can do that? Hopefully, none of you. You don't need to deal with the insanity.