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What’s in Your Green Building Library?

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here are my top three picks for every green homebuilder’s library. They’re all easy to read, practical, filled with useful info, and packed with jobsite photos and handy diagrams. You can buy all three for around $100 total.

Green from the Ground Up: A Builder’s Guide by David Johnston & Scott Gibson. A lively yet thorough overview by Colorado builder Johnston – I’d like to make it mandatory reading for my clients!

Residential Energy by John Krigger & Chris Dorsi. Simply the best – the appendices alone are worth the purchase price. They even include a copy on CD.

 The JLC Guide to Energy Efficiency just out from the Journal of Light Construction. Lots of real-life new and retrofit examples from JLC’s top contributors. Varied opinions, but brutally honest about what works and what doesn’t.

Close on the heels of these would be anything EEBA puts out. So what are your favorites? Comment or reply and let me know!

Filed Under: Builder tips, Pam Worner

Don’t Just Build Green, Sell It! Here’s How

November 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Check out Dean Homes’ Sustainable Building Practices web page: itt features one of their projects with rollover links to a description and photo of each sustainable feature. This interactive tool is the best consumer education I’ve seen yet on a builder’s website – nicely done, Dean!

Building green isn’t enough – you’ve got to sell it, and that means promoting and educating. To make promotion easy, ENERGY STAR offers a wealth of free marketing materials: logos, signage, doormats, you name it! Educating your buyers starts with educating your real estate agents. Pioneer Pacific emphasizes their energy-efficiency features in weekly agent meetings, including one featuring a talk by building science guru Mark LaLiberte. Mark asked the agents if anybody knew what the ‘e’ in ‘low-e windows’ stood for, not really expecting an answer. “Emissivity,” one of them immediately responded. (Yes, that is the right answer.)

I’ve shopped ENERGY STAR homes and heard site agents say it’s an ENERGY STAR Home because it has ENERGY STAR appliances. What are yours saying? (If you need help, I offer clock-hour classes on selling energy-efficient homes.)

Filed Under: Builder tips, Pam Worner, Selling green homes

Verified Homes Sell Faster and for 30% More!

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

MLS data for Seattle/King County has shown for years now that certified homes sell for a premium, but new data shows 3rd party verified ones do even better. Over the past two years, 3rd party verified homes in Seattle sold for an amazing 30.5% more – averaging $475K vs. $360K for non-certified homes. Despite the higher price, the 3rd party verified homes still sold in 10 percent less time. All of which prompts Ben Kaufman of Greenworks Realty (whose firm analyzes the Northwest Multiple Listing Service data every month in their e-cert reports) to ask, “Why aren’t more builders building and certifying 3rd party certified homes?” The smart ones are: roughly 30% of the new homes built in King County over the past year were certified to either Built Green, ENERGY STAR Homes, or LEED for Homes (although not all Built Green homes are 3rd party verified…yet).

Filed Under: Industry trends, Pam Worner, Selling green homes

Ductless Heat Pumps Go Mainstream

November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

They’re 300% efficient, easy to install, provide cooling as well as heating, and eliminate ductwork – what’s not to love about ductless heat pumps (DHPs)?

So far, they’re mostly being used to retrofit existing electrically heated homes or in areas without natural gas service. New home builders have been wary of buyers being put off by seeing the unit on the wall, but take a look at them below in First Lamp‘s gorgeous modern townhomes in Seattle.

The design-build firm took two steps to minimize the visual impact of the Mitsubishi Mr. Slims: 1) they located them where they wouldn’t be the first thing you saw when you entered the room, and 2) they installed them in recessed niches a couple of inches deep. The result? They closed the sales of both townhomes a week after they hit the market.

Remember that week of 100-plus-degree days we had in 2009? You can bet somebody’s going to be offering homes with DHP cooling the next time that happens – why not you?

Filed Under: Cool projects, Energy efficiency, Pam Worner

The Secret to Hitting Green Project Goals

November 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The best insurance to make sure your green project hits its goals? The pre-con meeting: key people sitting down before construction starts and talking through what needs to happen. And by ‘key people,’ I don’t mean just owner/builder/architect – I mean framing, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, insulation, and drywall (plus your third-party verifier, of course!). It’s the subs who will make or break your blower door test, for example, so it’s really smart to make sure they understand how their work impacts air sealing. Why meet with everybody together? Because the line between work scopes is getting blurrier all the time and because you’ll come up with solutions to issues you didn’t even know you had.

Kudos to Nick Smith of Central Highland Builders for setting up just such a meeting for his new ENERGY STAR project, Ferncliff Village on Bainbridge Island!

Filed Under: Builder tips, Pam Worner

Tight Homes + VOCs = Trouble

November 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When you think ‘VOCs,’ don’t think paint – think formaldehyde, which offgasses for years and causes cancer. Combine that with tight homes and exhaust-only ventilation (window trickle-vents don’t count) and you’ve got a powerful reason to choose formaldehyde-free cabinets and trim. OK, you say, but what if the homeowners stuff the house with particle-board furniture? CertainTeed’s hoping to remedy that with their new VOC-absorbing gypsum board, AirRenew, which will be independently tested on OR and WA pilot projects this winter. Meanwhile, start thinking about balanced ventilation – whether with an HRV, a fresh air intake into your furnace ducting, or other source of supply. I bet it’ll be required in the next version of the state energy code.

 

Filed Under: Builder tips, Healthy homes, Pam Worner