CalStar Products, Inc., headquartered in Silicon Valley, officially opened its green brick and paver plant in Caledonia, Wisconsin in January 2010 and has already received plenty of recognition for their mission to lead through science-based solutions.

CalStar’s fly ash bricks and pavers help reduce energy and carbon footprints associated with projects from the Architectural side, without compromising building performance or budget. According to the CalStar website, the company’s goals also encompass national priorities of “supporting energy independence, mitigating climate change, preserving natural resources, recycling industrial by-products and creating green jobs”.

Architectural facing bricks and durable pavers are CalStar’s current products, and though both products contain 40% pre-consumer recycled content, for this article, we’re focusing on the former, Fly Ash Bricks (FAB).

The FAB meets or exceeds the same metrics of comparable masonry products (traditionally clay bricks), is available in modular and utility sizes, and with eight color options. Plus, the energy associated with manufacturing FABs is significantly reduced from the baseline energy and emissions associated with clay bricks. “We have about an 85% reduction in energy and CO2 associated with our bricks, versus a normal clay brick,” says Julie Rapoport, CalStar’s VP of Product Management. To put it into perspective, the FAB only uses 15% of the energy required to produce a clay fired brick, and has 15% of the associated carbon emissions.

That means, for a 100,000 unit project (over 19,000 sf of wall, for example) utilizing FAB (as opposed to clay fired bricks) would save 85 tons of landfilling, 210 tons of new raw material, 40 tons of CO2 emissions, and 500 million btu of energy.

As previously mentioned, the FAB is competitive in price as well, which makes specification for LEED projects a no-brainer. And recycled fly ash for a product base gives the FABs a solid contribution to LEED Materials & Resources (MR) credit 4, Recycled Materials, as well as reducing overall waste by using a material that would otherwise be considered manufacturing waste as a filler product.

CalStar’s fly ash bricks and pavers have been recognized by Architectural Record as one of the outstanding new building products of the year and Editor’s Pick in the Concrete, Masonry, and Exterior Improvements category. The product’s modular size is 3-5/8" x 2-1/4" x 7 5/8", and utility size is 3-5/8" x 3-5/8" x 11-5/8".

Finally, CalStar also has a free LEED calculator on the CalStar website, to help the project design team obtain the documentation needed for a project.

 

This product may contribute to earning points for the following LEED BD+C credit:

Materials and Resources Credit 4: Recycled Materials

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