Customer Images of Plan 2235C

We love to get images sent to us from happy customers and proud homeowners.  Here’s a couple of shots of a version of plan 2235, which is 2235C.

The New American Home (TNAH)

The New American Home (TNAH)

Green? By what standard?

I was recently at a meeting between local leaders, discussing how the newly released National Green Building Standard (NGBS) fits in with existing state and city level green building programs and incentives.  There were a number of interested parties involved, including builders, designers, local utility companies, performance testers, city departments and state non-profits.  I was extremely happy that we had such a wide range of perspectives present; the conversation was most interesting and I’d like to quickly share some of the thoughts that came from the group.

As you are probably aware, there are many certification programs available to help a green builder gain credibility in the marketplace and verify his work meets recognized standards. The NGBS is one of the latest to be offered nationally, and hopes to join both the LEED for Homes and Energy Star programs in gaining wide recognition amongst consumers, and sits next to over fifty state and locally recognized programs.  In the state of Oregon, Earth Advantage and Built Green both have pretty good brand recognition.

Third party verification is deemed important in most successful programs, and the NGBS is no different.  The interesting difference, however, seems to be with performance testing.  Both the Energy Star and LEED programs require testing, while the NGBS only requires visual inspection for compliance.  With visual inspection, there’s no proof that the home performs as designed, only that certain elements are present.  What is important here is consumer awareness of the difference.  Much of the group present advocated performance testing as the element that is certifiable, and determined that a physical test was a major factor in avoiding greenwashing.

Also interestingly, it was discussed that the NGBS offers a fixed national view of what is considered green at its various certification levels, with an extremely low entry point for compliance.  With the NGBS, any home that meets Energy Star requirements is legible for Bronze certification without any additional work. The issue there is that Oregon Energy Code is somewhat aligned with typical Energy Star requirements, so the levels of insulation required to be “green” are not much more than code.  A test I conducted using Plan 22151A sailed through Bronze on paper with only code specifications, and standard construction practices.  The crux?  Select a good site.  My conclusion was that the right size home on a well chosen lot should be pretty easy to get NGBS Bronze certification locally.  Are we saying all new homes built in Oregon are green?  Certainly not by our standards.

High Performance at Zero Cost

When evaluating systems to incorporate into your green home, it is easy to get caught up in direct cost comparisons of similar products.  For instance, it is easy to compare the costs of an 80% and 90% efficient gas furnace.  There are up-front costs, and then there are operating costs.  Even though the 90% furnace will undoubtedly cost less in the long run, the extra up-front costs can often be disillusioning.

A holistic look at the home as a system can help a builder bear those costs in the budget by reducing costs with additional strategies.  Here’s a quick-fire way to actually reduce construction costs while simultaneously improving the energy efficiency of a home:

1. Move the mechanical equipment inside conditioned space. Doing so will mean you do not have to insulate the ductwork, and will additionally result in less duct material costs.  This is simply a choice made in the design stage of the project, and costs nothing extra.
2. Reduce the amount of needless wood you use in framing. Use two stud corners,  get rid of cripple studs under windows and implement rim joist headers to reduce the lumber bill and increase space for insulation.  Make framing contractors stack all off-cuts in the garage, so they can be used for shorter pieces or even blocking.  Doing so will also reduce the amount of waste you will pay to have taken away.
3. Seal the envelope. This will cost a little extra to do, but will save some extra money further down the line.  Home sealing specialists are available who can come in and caulk and foam all the penetrations in the building envelope, reducing air leakage by as much as 30%. Don’t forget to balance the system with appropriate HVAC ventilation!
   
   
4. Hold your insulation contractor accountable. Improper installation of insulation is what causes it to lose its practical value.  Alternate solutions can easily increase costs, so simply have your insulation contractor do the job right.  No compression, gaps or holes, please.  Insulation guy can’t do it properly without lots of added costs?  Get a new insulation guy!
   
   
5. Properly size HVAC equipment. Often required by local building codes but not properly policed, correctly sizing the heating and cooling equipment can result in smaller equipment necessities.  Smaller equipment means bigger budget for higher efficiency models.
   
   
6. Do your homework. Communicate with local utility companies, non-profits and state agencies that offer incentives for implementing high-performance features.  Often a matter of paperwork, incentives can improve your bottom line.

The result?  A home that’s properly insulated, energy efficient, and cost effective for both builder and homeowner.  A happy relationship all round!

Location Selection Tools

As the old adage suggests, location is everything.  Resources available in the neighborhood of your home will determine how efficient the lifestyle of the homeowners can be, before you even get to pouring your foundations.  In my opinion, considering the distances to local amenities such as schools and stores is as important to your construction project as considering which utilities should be brought to the site.  When building in rural areas, the extra distance to resources incurred throughout the lifetime of the home means extra energy consumption, vehicle emissions and time taken in bringing all those resources to the home.  Good location selection can be extremely lucrative to the homeowner’s pocketbook, energy efficiency, quality of lifestyle, and also the environment.  In my extensive work helping builders select the best sites for homes meeting LEED or NAHB Green Building Program requirements, I have found several online tools are of great use:

First, Google Maps and Yahoo Local are obvious picks for searching the internet to find local stores, offices, banks, hospitals, public transit stops, and other items which can earn points for certification.

Secondly, many local building departments have their geographical data online, so areas of environmental importance (such as wetlands, steep slopes, flood plains) can be avoided.  Some even offer Google Earth KML data files, so the data can be displayed on a planet model.

Lastly, and most usefully, Yahoo Pipes can be used to plug all those sites together, and provide an interface that a builder can use to reduce the time taken conducting searches.  With this great tool, you can search multiple sites such as Google and Yahoo Local for multiple search words such as ‘banks’ or ‘restaurants’, filter the results based on distance from your site, list only two from each category (those legible for points) and display them on a map.  In addition to quickly determining the points you are likely to achieve, you can use the map to document your findings for certification as well as add to your Homeowner Information packet.   You can copy to tool I created, or learn how to build your own here.

Of course, it’s important to remember that not ALL resources will be found on those sites, so if you’re a few points short, additional search tools may be needed (a phone book?), but in a lot of cases, I’ve found the Pipes tool satisfies the search requirement extremely quickly and effectively.

Happy building!

Sourcing Materials – Sustainable Selection Criteria

There are several deciding factors that each builder uses when sourcing materials and products for use in the homes they build.  Traditionally, these have been elements such as price, suitability, quality, and availability.  The order of importance in ranking these elements is somewhat decided by us individually, influenced by external forces such as budget and client expectations.

With our sustainable construction goals, we can add additional criteria to the list above, and simply rank products as they best fit.  This is the beginning of life-cycle analysis, which we discuss in more detail in a later article – for now, however, we are just interested in outlining the basic criteria we can quickly use to determine suitable products to use.  There are three main elements of consideration noted in national certification programs such as LEED^Ò for HomesÔ or the NAHB Green Building ProgramÔ. Products that feature one or more of these elements are considered ‘Environmentally Preferred Products’.

Local Products: Consider products that are mined, farmed or manufactured locally.  The idea is that nearby natural resources are often suited to the local climate and can increase the durability of a home, and also reduce embodied energy costs accumulated through transportation.

Recycled materials: Encouraged for reasons that are fairly obvious and well-known, recycled materials redirect waste from landfill and reduce resource consumption.

Certified Products: Farmed trees, (as well as other plants which are used as the base for many building components) are sustainable because the resources they use are renewable and replenished.  Using natural materials can also reduce the use of harmful chemicals we are exposed to.  Products that have these elements validated through certifications such as FSC, SFI or GreenSeal are preferred.

When added to the elements originally discussed, our selection

criteria now include itemssuch as manufacturing location, durability, chemical content, price, quality, certifications, recycled content and availability.  The order of importance of these criteria is still an individual decision and totally dependent on your project goals, but a good understanding of the important elements will help you integrate sustainable practices into your every-day operations.  The GreenSpec Guide for residential products is an invaluable resource when narrowing down products which match the criteria discussed, leaving us to order them given our own individual order of importance.

Energy Trust Home Performance Score is coming…

The Home Builders Association is holding an event for the new Energy Performance Score that helps homeowners understand energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. 

As part of the Ultimate Open House tour, the event starts April 18, 2009 and runs through April 19, 2009 from 10am to 6pm at 11501 SE Aquila Street in Happy Valley. The new Energy Performance Score (EPS) displays the home’s energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions. An EPS helps homebuyers understand how a home will perform, and also allows them to comparison shop based on energy use, carbon impact and estimated energy savings. Energy Trust will offer home buyer education on the EPS at the Firenze house by Marnella Homes. The builder has left portions of the home unfinished for the show, giving visitors a unique “behind the walls” view of the energy-efficiency features, including blown-in-blanket insulation and extensive air sealing practices, plus a peek at the high-efficiency heating, cooling, ventilation and water heating systems.

For more information visit http://www.homebuildersportland.org, or for Green Home Plans visit http://www.mascordefficientliving.com

Studio 26 also featured in Residential Design and Build magazine

The Studio26 team continue to get in the press with the recent publication of Residential Design and Build.  Studio 26 masterfully built a home based on Mascord plan 2412 to NAHB Green Building Program guidelines, earning GOLD certification.  The Residential Design and Build article mistakenly states that the Green Building Program was recently passed as an ANSI standard.  That of course, was the NAHB National Green Building Standard.  Studio 26 followed the National Green Building Guidelines, a different measurement.  Be careful not to confuse your standards!

For the best green home plans on the planet, visit http://www.mascordefficientliving.com

Green Building is the Economy’s Bright Spot

WASHINGTON, D.C.—New studies and reports point to green building as one of the growing bright spots for the U.S. economy.

In fact, as economic experts call for a recovery plan focused on green jobs and infrastructure, as consumers look to live in more economically sustainable homes, as businesses strive to cut operating costs, and as our national security needs depend on an end to reliance on foreign energy sources, green buildings’ ability to deliver solutions to these pressing challenges promises to change the way we view the building industry.

“As research comes in from diverse sources examining the interest in green buildings among a wide range of Americans, the numbers keep painting the same picture: The future of our built environment clearly centers on energy efficiency, water reduction, systems that encourage cleaner indoor air, the use of recycled and more sustainably developed materials, and communities that coexist with their environments,” said Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO & Founding Chair, U.S. Green Building Council. “Over and over again, Americans are saying the same thing: The key to a prosperous future is sustainability, and the triple bottom line—environmental responsibility, economic prosperity and social equity—is imperative as we move forward.”

According to Turner Construction Company’s “Green Building Barometer,” 75% of commercial real estate executives—including developers, rental building owners, brokers, architects, engineers and others – say the credit crunch will not discourage them from building green. In fact, 83% said they would be “extremely” or “very” likely to seek LEED certification for buildings they are planning to build within the next three years. The U.S. Green Building Council’s nationally recognized LEED® green building certification program provides third-party review and certification of buildings’ design, construction and performance in five key areas of environmental and health concern, including energy efficiency, water efficiency, materials and resources use, sustainable site development and indoor air quality.

Other key findings from this and other studies, conducted over the past year among constituencies ranging from consumers and homeowners to commercial real estate executives, include:

70% of homebuyers are more or much more inclined to buy a green home over a conventional home in a down housing market, according to McGraw-Hill Construction’s 2008 SmartMarket Report, “The Green Home Consumer.” That number is 78% for those earning less than $50,000 a year, showing the increasing access to green buildings for all members of our society. In fact, 56% of respondents who bought green homes in 2008 earn less than $75,000 per year; 29% earn less than $50,000.
More than 80% of commercial building owners have allocated funds to green initiatives this year, according to “2008 Green Survey: Existing Buildings,” a survey jointly funded by Incisive Media’s Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com, the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Some 45% plan to increase sustainability investments in 2009.
That same study showed that 60% of commercial building owners offer education programs to assist tenants in implementing green programs in their space, up 49.4% from last year, illustrating a growing understanding of the importance of environmental awareness among employees and customers in addition to the use of green materials and systems.
LEED-certified projects are directly tied to more than $10 billion of green materials, according to a Greener World Media study on green building. That could reach more than $100 billion by 2020, contributing to a vibrant industry that could drive an economic recovery.
The Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in a September 2008 study, found that a national green economic recovery program investing $100 billion over 10 years in six infrastructure areas would create 2 million new jobs. The investments would include retrofitting existing buildings to improve energy efficiency and investing in wind power, solar power and next-generation biofuels.
The opportunities for creating a built environment which performs at a higher level and works for building owners rather than against them and their tenants are many and varied. New buildings can be built with greener construction methods and designed for long-term operations and maintenance savings. Likewise, our nation’s vast existing building stock can be made greener—and the studies show that building owners are interested in doing so. Incisive Media’s “2008 Green Survey: Existing Buildings” found that almost 70% of commercial building owners have already implemented some kind of energy monitoring system. Energy conservation is the most widely implemented green program in commercial buildings, the survey found, followed by recycling and water conservation. Nearly 65% of building owners who have implemented green buildings say their investments have already resulted in a positive return on investment. And 84% of respondents to Turner’s “Green Building Barometer” said their green buildings have resulted in lower energy costs, with 68% reporting lower overall operating costs.

As green buildings help companies cut costs and build sound financial situations, the Center for American Progress’ study shows how such green investments on a wide scale can ignite the economy of the nation as a whole. A $100 billion green infrastructure investment over 10 years, with a focus on green building retrofits and investment in alternative energy sources, could be paid for with proceeds from carbon permit auctions under a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. That’s roughly the same amount of investment as the tax rebate checks sent as part of the April 2008 economic stimulus plan but would create 300,000 more jobs. Also, about 22% of total household expenditures— the goal of a tax rebate stimulus plan—go to imports, while only about 9% of purchases for green infrastructure investment would.

Building and design professionals, product manufacturers and others getting involved in green building are establishing themselves as leaders in a rapidly growing industry, McGraw-Hill Construction’s Green Outlook 2009 report “Trends Driving Change” shows. By 2013, the overall green building market (both residential and non-residential) is likely to more than double from today’s $36-49 billion to $96-140 billion. Green building is estimated to be 10-12% of the current commercial and institutional building market; McGraw-Hill predicts it will represent 20-25% of new commercial and institutional construction starts by 2013. And it’s possible these predictions could be conservative: In 2005, McGraw-Hill predicted green building would make up just 5-10% of the market in 2008.
For more information, please visit USGBC at www.usgbc.org and LEED at www.usgbc.org/LEED

See article at http://mcmorrowreport.com

Energy Star

Features of ENERGY STAR Qualified New Homes

To earn the ENERGY STAR, a home must meet guidelines for energy efficiency set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. These homes are at least 15% more energy efficient than homes built to the 2004 International Residential Code (IRC), and include additional energy-saving features that typically make them 20–30% more efficient than standard homes.

This label identifies a home as having earned the ENERGY STAR

And with homebuyers increasingly interested in green building, energy efficiency is the place to start. That’s because the energy used in homes often comes from the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, which contributes to smog, acid rain, and risks of global warming. So, the less energy used, the less air pollution generated. And the easy way to make sure a new home is energy efficient is to look for the blue ENERGY STAR mark, the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency. Learn more about how Green Begins with ENERGY STAR Blue (130KB).