Home Commercial Construction Residential Construction Sustainable Building Why JM? Solutions For Your Industry

Sustainable Design

Building sustainably aligns with health care's broader goals by promoting the health of building occupants, the surrounding community, as well as the global environment. High-performance green buildings promote a healing environment for patients and a more comfortable and productive workplace for staff. They also have clear business benefits, reducing energy use, and lowering operating costs over the lifetime of the building.

Lower Operating Costs

Hospitals use more than two times the energy per square foot of a typical commercial office building.¹ It is essential to reduce these costs wherever possible. Using JM building products can help achieve this sustainable goal by:

Optimizing energy efficiency with JM building insulations.

By maximizing R-values, and paying close attention to air moisture barriers as well as thermal bridging issues, you can reduce utility costs by optimizing your building's energy performance. JM can provide a full range of roofing and building insulation solutions that can help optimize your building's energy usage, a critical step for improving both energy conservation and operating costs over the life of the building.

Reducing heat loss by insulating mechanical systems.

Temperature changes from uninsulated delivery lines force mechanical systems to work harder and use more energy than necessary. JM offers a full array of products to insulate air ducts, hot and chilled water piping, tanks, and other equipment such as compressed gas piping.

Reduce Environmental Impact

An ongoing goal of the health care industry is to promote the health of not only its patients and staff, but also the communities around them and the planet itself.

JM has taken a leadership role in helping designers:

Choose building materials that contribute to sustainable goals.

Building sustainably requires choosing materials based on life-cycle analysis. The fiber glass used in Johns Manville insulation is an inherently sustainable material made from sand, a naturally and rapidly renewable resource. In addition, JM building insulation products use a minimum of 20 percent post-consumer and 5 percent pre-consumer glass content.

Evaluate the environmental quality of building materials.

Johns Manville has taken a leadership role in reducing or eliminating the use of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and other environmental contaminants that can have a lasting effect on people and the environment. With JM next-generation insulating materials, you can now use Formaldehyde-free™ ceiling, wall, floor and duct wrap insulations.

Find success in environmentally preferable purchasing.

JM has found that although architects may specify sustainable materials, such as JM Formaldehyde-free™ building insulation, the product that is actually installed can vary. We recommend that hospital project teams establish procedures to ensure that the specified or preferred products are actually installed and that these products are also specified in the facility's maintenance guidelines.

Enhance Community Relations

How a building impacts the surrounding area can have a direct effect on relationships with its neighbors and community. The efforts of owners and designers to consider the environmental impact of their buildings are often rewarded with positive community impressions. One effective way to reduce environmental impact occurs in the early planning stages:

Building on a more sustainable site.

One of the elements of a sustainable site is reducing urban heat island effect. Dark surfaces can retain heat and later release it into the surrounding environment, increasing peak energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution levels, and heat-related illness and mortality.² Reflective JM roofing products can help overcome the urban heat island effect and contribute to a more sustainable site. Whether you're planning a vegetative or reflective cool roof, we can help you meet building regulations, lower the building's operation costs, and reduce its environmental impact.