Imagine Homes doesn't build houses like they once were built. But this doesn't mean the company is forsaking the traditional home construction ideals of care and craftsmanship. It just means Imagine is building homes with an eye toward site sensitivity, energy and water efficiency, and indoor air quality.
"We saw a need in [our] marketplace," says John Friesenhahn, president of the recently launched San Antonio-based builder. "[Customers] were asking for homes that they could afford but that didn't have a cookie-cutter feel and also that wouldn't ruin our area's beautiful natural habitat. We thought, 'Well, if we don't start building architecturally classic homes that have less impact on the environment, then what is San Antonio going to look like when our kids are grown?'"
Into Its Own
By any standard of measurement, green building is hot. As oil hovers around $70 a barrel, interest in conservation and energy efficiency has come to dominate the consciousness of the average American consumer. The subject even has its own exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., "The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design," which will close in June and then travel to other cities.
For years the purview of the Birkenstock-wearing hippie fringe that built homes with straw bale, rammed earth, and recycled building products, green building has become an integral part of commercial, public, and civic construction. Businesses, governments, and educational institutions are seeking to create buildings that use less energy and are healthier for human habitation.
According to the NAHB, 14,600 green homes were built in 2004, up from 2,500 in 2000. In addition to state and local green building programs that have cropped up over the years, builders can certify their homes through voluntary national programs such as the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) or Masco Contractor Services' Environments for Living program. They also can build green using the NAHB's Green Home Building Guidelines or the EPA's Energy Star program. These programs offer guidelines on how builders can improve their homes' site development, energy efficiency, and overall sustainability.
Despite its increasing popularity, however, green building remains a complicated topic that often leaves builders scratching their heads. What exactly is green building? What does building a green house entail? What does it cost to build green? And what are the minimum features a house must have before it can be considered green?
A Flexible Recipe
According to the ca.gov/" target="_blank">California Integrated Waste Management Board, a green (or sustainable) building is a structure that is designed, built, renovated, operated, or reused in an ecological and resource-efficient manner. Such a building saves water and energy, conserves natural resources, uses salvaged materials or products made with a high recycled content, and reduces its overall impact on the environment, among other things.
"Everyone has their individual opinions about what are the necessary and essential ingredients to make a house green," says Margo Thompson, research associate at the NAHB Research Center in Upper Marlboro, Md. "There are a lot of different ways to slice it."
Indeed. For example: Is it better to use wood from sustainably harvested and renewable trees or a longer-lasting, man-made product that requires a fair amount of energy to manufacture? Wood siding lasts 25 years or more but requires more maintenance; the synthetic product requires less maintenance and can last 40 years.
Or how about this: Say a builder uses bamboo flooring instead of oak. Bamboo is a rapidly renewable grass, which saves old-growth trees, but it is primarily manufactured in Asia and thus has to be shipped halfway around the world to reach U.S. builders, using fossil fuels in the process.
"All-or-nothing green is good, but it's just not practical," says Jennifer L. Languell, president of Fort Myers, Fla.-based Trifecta Construction Solutions, a company that helps builders realize the benefits of green building and sustainability. "You have to define what green means to you."
Languell says she usually informs her builder clients about the components of green construction and advises them to set benchmarks they want to achieve.
Devising an Energy Strategy
A good way to begin green building is to adopt a strong energy strategy. "For almost all climate zones, energy efficiency is probably the place to start," says Thompson. "It's one of the easiest areas to understand."
Imagine Homes understands the concept well, having devised an energy plan that aims to minimize callbacks while maximizing conservation.
"We're using 100 percent blown-in cellulose insulation, and we're doing blower-door testing and duct-blaster testing on every home to check for leakage," Friesenhahn says. Though it might seem excessive (and expensive) to do a blower-door test on every house, the company feels it's important. "If I know we're testing the duct systems, I may not get that call down the road that there's a heating or cooling problem in the house," Friesenhahn explains. "If I can eliminate the service call, it will save me money on the back end."
In addition, Imagine's homes feature low-VOC (volatile organic compound) carpet, padding, and paint to improve indoor air quality; low-flow plumbing fixtures; and tankless water heaters. The result: The builder estimates that its homes are 20 percent to 30 percent more efficient than required by San Antonio's energy codes.
But an energy-efficiency strategy also can be as simple as how you orient the house, says architect Peter Pfeiffer, principal of Barley & Pfeiffer Architects in Austin, Texas: "The city of Austin did a study 15 years ago that showed that if production builders simply altered the exterior elevations of their plans to reflect the way the house is facing, they could cut the energy consumption in half."
For example, a house with a west-facing front would have fewer windows and a shading porch to deal with the harsh sunlight, whereas a house with a north-facing front could have more windows. As Pfeiffer notes, a single-pane window in the shade is more efficient than an insulated window in the sun.
A tight building envelope also is extremely important, Pfeiffer says, because a leaky house is responsible for a large amount of wasted energy. "Air infiltration is probably the second major source of energy consumption or cause of excess energy consumption [after poor site orientation]," he says. It's essential that builders use housewrap, Pfeiffer cautions.
One builder that has spent a fair amount of time improving the tightness of its building envelopes is McStain Neighborhoods in Louisville, Colo., one of the early pioneers in building and marketing green homes. In addition to DuPont Tyvek housewrap, McStain is big on properly installed window, door, and roof flashing, says Jeff Mednick, the company's special projects manager.
McStain builds primarily with engineered framing lumber and finger-jointed studs (to reduce landfill waste), tankless water heaters, low-E windows, and 2x6 exterior walls with blown-in cellulose insulation. Under the Energy Star program, the builder tests all of its homes for tightness, and it recently started experimenting with sprayed foam insulation--an excellent product for creating a tight building envelope. "It is superior to fiberglass because it stops airflow and stops humidity," Pfeiffer explains.
One could argue that it is easier for the company to implement a green building program than it would be for a larger builder. But size doesn't matter. For example, Los Angeles-based Pardee Homes, which builds about 3,000 homes a year, made a commitment in 2001 to build all Energy Star homes, and it took the company less than a year to phase in the program. "We now use some form of green principles in all our houses, but Living Smart is our sustainable brand," says marketing vice president Joyce Mason.
Pardee's homes feature sealed duct systems to eliminate air leaks into nonliving spaces, highly efficient glazing, fluorescent lighting, and photovoltaic cells for solar electric power, among other items. The homes exceed federal codes by 30 percent, Mason says.
Pfeiffer and Languell contend that it's even more important for high-volume builders to use sustainable techniques because these builders are responsible for up to 95 percent of the new homes in the country. "We could build custom homes one at a time to be totally efficient or off the [electrical] grid, but baby steps with large builders have a much more cumulative effect on the problem," Languell says.
Cost Concerns
Most builders agree that sustainable homes provide energy and health benefits, but many believe cost is a problem, which is why production builders have been slower to incorporate sustainability features than architects and custom builders with wealthy clients who can afford to pay more for such items.
"Some builders feel that it impacts [up-front] cost and that there may not be a payback," says Robert Rivinius, president and CEO of the California Building Industry Association in Sacramento. "We believe [green building] needs to be voluntary, and it needs to be cost-effective," says Rivinius, arguing that California's already strict energy codes play a role in the state's lagging homeownership numbers. "You have to have people who are willing to pay the cost," he continues.
Some builders have done exactly that. Naples, Fla.-based Gulfstream Homes vice president Steve Peel estimates that green building features increase the price of his company's average house by $4,500 to $6,500, but he believes the features have helped propel sales nonetheless, although he can't quantify exactly how much because the Naples market has been so hot.
Similarly, the sustainable features that Ideal Homes uses add about $3,500 to the cost of its houses, but president Vernon McKown says making strategic changes such as reducing duct leakage by 20 percent has been cheap and has had dramatic energy-saving benefits. "We like to look at things that have a five-year return on investment," McKown explains. "If the cost [of the feature] is $500 or less or has a significant savings, our buyers tend to like it."
Either way, Ideal's approach hasn't hurt sales. "What we've found is that on the high end it's harder to sell, but it's easier on the lower end of the market," McKown says. "We're saving our customers $50 per month on their utilities. But high-end buyers don't give a damn about saving money on their utilities."
The California Integrated Waste Management Board agrees that a green building may cost more up front, but the board says the end result is lower operating costs over the life of the building. "We generally say green building adds a 2 percent to 5 percent increase in hard costs," says McStain's Mednick. "But what's the [real] cost if you factor in energy savings?"
Architect Pfeiffer argues that sometimes the benefits of a green home are immediate, because some sustainable products--a metal roof, for example--enable home buyers to lower their insurance premiums. Other items, such as tankless water heaters, can bring tax benefits.
"Just imagine you have a house with a $1,500 mortgage payment, a $300-a-month utility bill, and a $100-a-month insurance bill--it's really costing you $1,900 a month to own that house," Pfeiffer says. "What if the house had a $1,550 mortgage payment, a $100-a-month utility bill, and a $50 insurance bill? Which house is more affordable?
"The problem is that too many builders and bureaucrats aren't looking at the big picture," Pfeiffer continues. "It's not payback we're talking about; it's immediately cheaper to own the better-designed home."
Don't Forget Marketing
Marketing is one of the most overlooked issues in the green building debate. What good is a green home if the buyer doesn't see the value in it? Strangely enough, builders are abandoning the term "green" in favor of more-effective words. "There's a movement toward high performance, efficiency, and health," Languell says. "The word 'green' doesn't tell consumers what the features will do for them." Languell says the terms "health" and "energy efficiency" are more effective with buyers.
"A lot of the equation is with the salesperson knowing what the buyer is interested in and explaining the benefits," Friesenhahn says.
Ideal Homes' McKown puts it this way: If you tell customers they can spend $5 and save $10, that's a no-brainer. "Once your sales guys have figured out a way to communicate it to their customers, it sells itself," McKown says.
--BUILDING PRODUCTS
--This story first appeared in Builder magazine.
Starting Out
These tips can help you start the process of siting, building, and selling a sustainable home:
• Pick just a couple of green strategies and focus on them. Experts say energy efficiency is your best bet.
• Look for features that have a five-year return on investment. Evaluate the payback of features carefully.
• Maximize your site's natural topography to reduce drainage and grading costs.
• Design with passive solar gain in mind.
• Modify your exterior elevations to reflect the lot's orientation and maximize energy efficiency.
• Use radiant reflective roofing materials to keep houses cool and energy costs down.
• Use housewrap to create a tight envelope.
• Reduce duct leakage.
• Perform blower-door tests to save money later. An energy audit can tell you whether your techniques are working.
• Forget the word "green." Instead, sell "high performance," "energy efficiency," or "health." These terms resonate more clearly with buyers.
• Showcase the benefits of green houses to help you differentiate yourself from the competition.
• Tell buyers why your houses are different.
• Give buyers a logical reason to pay a little more for sustainable features, such as the money and the natural resources they'll save.
• Create a logo to help buyers identify your green products.
• Train your sales staff to explain green benefits to buyers.
• Join a voluntary green building program. A group's identifying label is good for recognition and marketing.
--N.F.M.
Mithun Architects. The 129-acre High Point redevelopment project in Seattle has a sophisticated site plan, including a natural drainage system that retains 98 percent of the stormwater on the site. Mithun Architects designed 600 Energy Star-qualified rental units that were built using modified advanced framing techniques to avoid waste, super-efficient combination hot water and heating closed-loop boilers in every unit, airtight drywall construction, and fresh-air vents in each living space. 206-623-3344. www.mithun.com.
McStain Neighborhoods. Single-family houses and townhomes in this Stapleton, Colo., community are built to Energy Star standards. The homes are sealed during framing to eliminate drafts and feature blown-in cellulose insulation that provides R-38 ceilings and R-21 exterior walls. Other standard elements include a 90 percent efficient furnace, sealed ductwork joints, low-E windows, and airtight recessed lighting. It costs about $6,600 per home to build to this level, but McStain Neighborhoods estimates that monthly utility bills will be less than $100. 303-494-5900. www.mcstain.com.
Pardee Homes. Built under the company's Living Smart program, the homes at Pacific Highlands Ranch in San Diego are capable of producing 50 percent or more of the energy they consume. In addition to optional solar panels and other sustainable features, the homes have R-19 roofs and R-13 walls, sealed framing, water-conserving fixtures and fittings, recycled-content materials, on-demand water heaters, low-odor paints, and porous driveway pavers that allow water drainage into the soil. 310-475-3525. www.pardeehomes.com.
Beazer Homes. In order to obtain a Gold rating under Masco's Environments for Living program, the homes of Verano at Bartram Park, in Jacksonville, Fla., will exceed model energy codes by 30 percent. The homes feature a fresh-air system, sealed combustion appliances, sealed framing to eliminate drafts, R-30 attic insulation, and 13-SEER cooling units. The program's comfort guarantee promises that the temperature at the location of the home's thermostat will not vary more than 3 degrees from the center of any conditioned room within the thermostat's zone. 904-886-3460. www.beazer.com.