NKBA Report: Increased Spending on K/B Materials

The materials being utilized at the request of homeowners in kitchens and baths reveal “a tendency toward increased spending by consumers,” a newly-released report by the National Kitchen & Bath Association concludes.

According to the NKBA’s first-ever “Kitchen/Bath Industry Outlook” report, released at the 2007 K/BIS in Las Vegas, the increased use of high-end kitchen and bath products — including granite countertops, multiple sinks, solid surface vanity tops and wood cabinetry — supports the finding that kitchen and bath spending is increasing, even in the face of housing market softness, and that kitchen and bath price points are rising — a finding also reported by Kitchen & Bath Design News (April 2007).

The NKBA said that its latest consumer survey revealed that nearly 70 percent of the new and remodeled kitchens installed in the U.S. during 2006 utilized wood cabinetry, while 27 percent of the countertops used for those kitchen projects consisted of granite. In addition, the NKBA said, nearly 28 percent of the new and remodeled kitchens in 2006 had multiple sinks.

Other product-use findings:

• Nearly 71 percent of all sinks used in new and remodeled kitchens in 2006 were double-bowl, and more than 5 percent were triple-bowl.
  
• Wood vanities were used in nearly 70 percent of new and remodeled bath jobs in 2006.
  
• Some 95 percent of the total bath jobs in 2006 had a new lavatory sink installed.

Green Building

USGBC Commits $1 million to Green Building Research

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) today announced that it will commit $1 million to green building research. These funds will be targeted at increasing research in areas such as energy and water security; global climate change prevention; indoor environmental quality; and passive survivability in the face of natural and man-made disasters.

“Our pledge to invest $1 million in research is a reflection of USGBC’s commitment to its vision of a sustainable built environment within a generation,” said Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO and Founding Chair of USGBC.

“The industry needs to take giant steps forward in construction, renovation and operation practices if we want to see large scale improvements to health and environmental conditions in this generation,” said Fedrizzi. “Our board has identified research as a key strategy to accomplish that, and has set aside a pool of research dollars so we can act now, even while encouraging others to increase their own research commitments.”

“Research will help us advance the practice of building science,” said USGBC Board Member Vivian Loftness, of Carnegie Mellon University. “It should also track and validate as quickly as possible the profound connection between green buildings and human health and productivity. We sense this connection intuitively, and we’re beginning to have some astonishing data about fewer absences in schools, greater productivity and fewer injuries in business, even higher sales in retail environments. The kind of research we need is that which proves the business case so profoundly that an organization’s commitment to building green becomes the easiest and best operational decision they can make.”

USGBC’s commitment comes on the heels of its recently published Green Building Research Funding: An Assessment of Current Activity in the United States, which found that research related to high-performance green building practices and technologies is woefully underfunded by all sectors. Using this work as its basis, the USGBC Research Committee will publish a national green building research agenda this fall that identifies key research areas for advancing building performance and market transformation.

“Building operation consumes 40 percent of energy and 71 percent of the electricity in the U.S., and accounts for 39 percent of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, which is directly influencing global climate change,” said USGBC’s Vice President of Research and Education Peter Templeton. “Given this impact, it’s critical that the building sector makes exponential performance improvements and research, development and deployment activities a top priority.”