Lebanon, NH Summit on Juniper at 401 Mt. Support Rd., a community developed by Michaels Student Living, LLC to provide graduate student housing for Dartmouth College, has been awarded Gold Level LEED certification. North Branch Construction constructed the four, four-story apartment buildings awarded the Gold Level LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The project put a high priority on the quality of the indoor environment by delivering balanced ventilation to each individual unit. The system provides residents with a continuous supply of filtered fresh air supporting their health and wellbeing.

Each unit is also certified for EPA Energy Star v. 3.1 program. This requires performance testing to prove the design is functioning as intended with regard to heating, cooling, and ventilation systems. This program requires that residence units are sealed from the outside environment and also provide audio and olfactory separation between individual units.

Meeting both USGBC LEED Gold and the EPA Energy Star v. 3.1 program requirements is very meaningful. Energy Star rewards a building’s energy efficiency, while LEED incorporates specific design or engineering measures, such as indoor air quality, that the building must use to achieve the Gold level award. Energy Star is ultimately determined by a building’s energy use (or estimated energy use) in relation to similar buildings. 

“The USGBC LEED and EPA Energy Star programs are important and meaningful programs that consider a building’s impact in terms of its environmental performance and operating costs over the building life cycle,” said Joseph Campbell, president of North Branch Construction. “In conjunction with the developer, Michaels Student Living, LLC, we were able to build a community that provides energy efficient and highly livable housing options for students in the Dartmouth College community.” 

JSA, Inc. of Portsmouth, N.H. was the architectural design firm on the project and Vanasse Hangen Brustlin (VHB) of Bedford, N.H. provided civil and landscape engineering services.