Virginia Vineyard Earns LEED Gold Status

PURCELLVILLE, Va. — North Gate Vineyard (NGV) has announced that it has achieved LEED Gold certification for its winery as well as its new tasting room and wine production facility. According to Mark and Vicki Fedor, owners of the vineyard, sustainability was a priority from the onset of the project.

The project team was all locally based and consisted of O’Neil Architects as the architect and Brickstone Homes as the general contractor. Both firms are based in Leesburg, Va. Gretchen Coleman Commissioning Group of Roanoke, Va., served as the project’s LEED commissioning agent.

“The green building movement offers an unprecedented opportunity to respond to the most important challenges of our time, including global climate change, dependence on non-sustainable and expensive sources of energy and threatens to human health,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chair of the U.S. Green Building Council, in a statement. “The work of innovative building projects such as North Gate Vineyard is a fundamental driving force in this movement.”

NGV is the first winery in Loudon County to achieve LEED certification and the second winery in Virginia to achieve the green certification. The project features a solar array on the south-facing roof consisting of 96 photovoltaic panels, which will produce 22kW of electricity. This means the building is completely solar powered and uses net metering to sell the excess electricity back to the grid for credits.

The standing seam metal roof has a highly reflective surface in order to reduce heat gain. The roof, constructed of highly recyclable steel, also features a long lifecycle. Local, reclaimed, recycled and sustainable building materials used in the project include wood tables, a bar top made with recycled wine and beer bottles, bamboo flooring and a fireplace made with stone from the nearby Shenandoah vein. Additionally, more than 85 percent of construction was diverted from the local landfill and recycled.

The facilities at the winery use high efficiency heat pumps for the buildings’ HVAC systems as well as energy recovery ventilators to temper fresh air coming into the building and remove stale air, which minimizes energy loss. The high-efficiency, insulated building envelope has R39 and R51 walls in ceiling and attic spaces, a fully insulated floor slab and a continuous exterior insulated wall sheathing system to create a thermal break.