Green Building Elements

“Greater energy efficiency drives consumers to choose a green-built home,” according to a survey by the National Association of Home Builders.  With the cost of fuel skyrocketing, and consumers looking to fuel efficient cars to help at the pump, it is no surprise that they would also be looking for energy efficiency from their buildings.

According to the survey, which polled 800 registered voters about how important certain features would be in their decision to build a green home or remodel their current home to be more green, 64% said that energy efficiency would be the most important feature, the healthier environment of green homes came in second at 55%, and 49% percent believed it would be the right thing to do for the environment.

Home builders and designers who can provide energy efficient homes will have a better chance of surviving the recent housing slump.  While general home sales are down, recent studies have shown that the sale of green homes is remaining steady.  Green houses also tend to be worth more.

The one concern most consumers have is the cost of green homes.  While tax credits and rebates help, home owners should be looking at the long term benefits of owning green.  With lower energy and maintenance costs over time, the additional premium is worth it.  Also, as technology and building techniques evolve, construction costs will come down.

In today’s volatile fuel market, energy efficient buildings are going to be all the rage, and delivering quality homes at a reasonable price will help many builders rise above the slumping market.

Solar water heaters are far more efficient and have a much shorter payback period than do solar photovoltaic systems.  Getting heat from direct solar radiation is extremely simple (just step outside on a sunny day), and can be done with far less complex systems than what solar PV requires.

Starting in 2010 all single family homes in Hawaii will be required to have solar hot water heaters. A bill signed by the state’s Republican governor, Linda Lingle, makes the state the first to require solar hot water for all new residences.

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Let me first preface this post with the following: I’m not a construction professional. I’m just a curious homeowner seeking out the best building materials for my home. With that said, I was familiar with three options in residential construction - concrete block, wood frame or the super green alternative, rammed earth.

Turns out there are new options that combine the wonderful qualities of Portland cement with recycled post-consumer plastics (Rastra) or recycled wood fibers (Durisol).

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As I walked around last year’s Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in Las Vegas, I asked where I could find the green products. I was encouraged to put on my walking shoes and make the trek to a minor hall where I found about twenty square feet devoted to five or six products that left little impression on me. Much has changed, it seems, in only one year. Green is the buzzword at this year’s show, helped in no small part by the host city, Chicago, showing off its green-ness through LEED building projects going up within sight of the convention center. Just about every booth displayed information on how green their products were. “Green building has become the spark that has added some life to this industry,” a representative from MasterBrand Cabinets told me.

Water saving innovators Kohler and TOTO made green the focus of their booths, proudly displaying the Watersense stickers on their high efficiency toilets. TOTO, who recycles 100% of their china, has developed a universal toilet bowl whose tank can be interchanged from a 1.6 gallon per flush to a 1.28 gpf e-tank. Read the rest of this entry »

The Green Options Media Network that Green Building Elements belongs to started out as a group blog called Green Options a year ago today. I was one of the green building writers on board when it started. In the course of that first year, and all the changes we’ve gone through, Green Options has become a network of related blogs, and I’ve moved to now be the lead writer for an entire blog devoted to green building and sustainable design. (It’s perhaps also appropriate that Green Building Elements got its new look just in time for this anniversary.) It’s a big enough field and there’s enough interest that we have four people (so far) writing about green building.

Writing about green building gives me a chance to explore and find out about new developments and new products. When I went to the Greenbuild 2007 Conference, I walked through the exhibition hall and saw numerous manufacturers whose products I had already written about and who I was familiar with. In some cases, I got to ask more detailed questions, or to see products in person that I had only read about on websites up until then. There were a number of instances, though, when I could tell the rep in the product booth, “I’ve written about your product.” Nothing else has given me as strong a sense of being in the forefront of something much larger.

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Today is a cold, wet dreary day. Which inspired me to dig the Kandle Heeter out of the garage.

Parked next to my mouse, this little device brings the temperature of my 8×12 office up from shivery to cozy - not quite enough to take my lovely handknit wool socks off, but a great antidote against a dreary January, and a definite cat magnet. Read the rest of this entry »

Wildfires aren’t usually on my radar, because I don’t live in a region that is much susceptible to them. But, in the past couple of weeks, everyone has become more aware of them. They have been widely across the news because of the number of serious wildfires in southern California recently. At the same time, recent news coverage has also looked at drought conditions which are being felt in Georgia and North Carolina. While these two are be peripherally linked in other ways, it makes some sense to look at these issues from the perspective of sustainable building.

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Efficient materials can sometimes seem to be the ideal path for green building. If we can find a way to more efficiently produce the materials we need to build our buildings, it would seem that we would be well on our way to reducing our impact on the planet.

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For all our technological advances, our buildings remain incredibly dumb constructions. Automobiles have multiple onboard computers that help maximize their performance and improve efficiency and coordinate the various systems. But the average house has very little, if any, control to aid in its operation despite the wide range of conditions (from below freezing winter nights to scorching summer days) they are forced to deal with. Even large, complex buildings operate with fairly minimal control systems. Yet we expect them to provide a standard comfortable environment for us year round.

We need some smarter building controls.

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Editor’s note: In Part 1 of “How to Find a Green Builder,” Philip addressed some of the general concepts underlying green homebuilding; today, he discussses specific guidelines for green homes, and the professionals that can implement those ideas.

Looking for a builder may not be the best first step, either. Working with an architect, rather than having a builder try to “green up” an existing plan that they have built before, may lead to a much more satisfying project in the end. Builders may believe that they can add some green features to their existing product line, but I think much better results are had when a client works with both their architect and their builder in order to create a green building as a team.

Architects are perhaps better situated to offer their clients advice about the variety of options they are considering without trying to sell them something. There are also issues such as passive solar design that require a much broader approach, like an architect offers, than what most builders can offer. Much of green building already incorporates “not doing more work but doing more thoughtful work.” Working with an architect engages that thoughtful planning process, and leads to better and more fully considered plans and better homes.

This is also why there are not lots of green “plan book” plans. Factors such as the region of the country you are in, as well as the orientation on the building site (to name just a couple), will have a large effect on how the house performs. A very efficient, appropriate design for a house in Vermont will probably be totally inappropriate if it is built in Arizona, for example. And there are far too many cases of subdivisions with the same house plan built on both the north and south sides of the street, completely ignoring how the sun is going to affect each house.

Another point that was made at the conference was that before investing in an expensive system like photovoltaic panels (which have a relatively long payback period in Michigan) you should first make the house as efficient as possible. First of all, the costs of improving the efficiency of the house are lower than the costs of a PV system, and secondly, if the house is running efficiently, the PV system will be providing a greater percentage of the house’s energy needs. Take the “low hanging fruit” first, before getting into more elaborate systems.

>> Learn more about How to Choose a Solar Installer for your Home at Renewzle.

Consider as well what “green” means for your particular project. A photovoltaic solar panel installer might well be a green builder, but they are probably not the ones I want to talk to about installing formaldehyde-free cabinets in my kitchen. Again, I would tend to prefer people with good, broad experience in their field of expertise. But the things that matter to you should help drive the selection process.

When building a new home, a homebuyer can use EnergyStar requirements, for example, as criteria for a more efficient house. Another option would be the pilot program of LEED for Homes, if the house is being built in one of the twelve regions of the country where the program is currently available. These guidelines can be used to get a home that meets some independent criteria for green.

This is not to say that there are not resources avialable to help you find the people you will want to work with on your project. Professional organizations can sometimes help guide you to the people best able to work with you. Local chapters of the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB/HBA) and the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) may have committees on green building. Speaking from local experience, the southeast Michigan NARI was instrumental in organizing the “Remodel Green Midwest” conference I wrote about a few weeks ago, and they have a very active committee on green building. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) also has resources to help you find an architect, as well as advice about working with an architect.

Lastly, you will probably want to talk to several different people in order to find someone you are going to be comfortable working with. If you don’t interview more than one, then you should have some very good references about them from people whose opinions you can trust. Ideally, you should talk to a few people to get information and find the right person to work with. Building a house should be a collaborative effort, not a product selection.