Site and Location Strategies for Residential Projects
Location and site credits score the home's address and how the lot is treated during and after construction. Most of these points are map-and-measure facts, so the exam tests thresholds and the difference between a poor site and a well-designed one.
Prerequisites
- Floodplain Avoidance (LT): no home within the 100-year floodplain.
- Construction Activity Pollution Prevention (SS): an erosion and sedimentation control plan, stabilized soils, protected storm drains.
Location credits
- Site Selection: avoid prime farmland, public parkland, habitat for threatened or endangered species, and land within 100 ft of wetlands, water bodies, or parkland.
- Preferred Locations: infill, previously developed land, or a site already served by water, sewer, and roads.
- Compact Development: points for density, measured in dwelling units per acre of buildable land - a large lot does not help.
- LEED-ND location: a home inside a certified LEED for Neighborhood Development plan earns the location credit.
On-site credits (SS)
- Site Stewardship: keep disturbance close to the home and driveway (roughly a 40 ft limit), preserve existing vegetation, restore native plants, buffer watercourses.
- Landscape Design: no invasive species, reduced turf, native or climate-adapted planting.
- Non-toxic Pest Control: integrated pest management, physical termite barriers, no pesticide applied near the foundation.
- Heat island: shade hardscape with trees or use high-SRI paving.
Worked example
Lot A is two greenfield acres twelve miles from town. Lot B is a 0.2-acre infill parcel with existing sewer, half a mile from a bus stop. B earns Preferred Locations and supports Compact Development; A likely fails Site Selection outright if it is prime farmland and scores zero on location. Brownfield remediation cost on B does not reduce its LEED points.
Traps that cost marks
- Reading the 100 ft water and wetland buffer as advice rather than a disqualifying limit.
- Claiming transit access without a measured walking distance.
- Confusing lot size with density.
- Forgetting the erosion-control prerequisite leaves an inspection trail.