Green Options

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This post was originally published on June 29, 2008.

With many cities experiencing a real estate “slump”, homeowners around the country are looking for ways to stand out from the slew of homes on the market, while improving their home’s resale value. Other homeowners are planning for the future: a future of ever-rising energy prices.

Regardless of your situation, you may be asking yourself if green home improvements increase the home’s value. The answer isn’t as straight-forward as some might hope.

The old rules still apply…

Before we dive in, there are a few things to consider when thinking about making home improvements – green or not. First, remember the three rules of real estate: location, location, location. The return on your investment will depend on the value of your house and others in the neighborhood, as well as your local housing market. Other factors like the quality of the workmanship, and how soon you move after making the improvements weigh in as well.

Do you long to live in an attractive green home with the latest and greatest in green building technologies, but know you can’t afford to build one? Then you and I have something in common.

But do you know about all the amazing green condo developments cropping up across the country? There are gorgeous, cutting-edge eco-friendly condos available or being built now in cities all around the U.S. We can’t possibly cover them all in this post, but we’ve selected a good sample. I will cover green condos in the West next week. Read on to find what might become your dream green home!

In Chicago, eco18 is an interesting development currently underway. Located in Chicago’s South Loop area, it provides access to plenty of public transportation options and also green spaces. eco18 is striving to attain a Gold Certification under the LEED program of the US Green Building Council. This is a lofty goal and we hope they make it! Their plans include a massive green roof, solar water heating, geothermal heating and cooling, rainwater reuse, energy-efficient lighting and much more. You can get a 1 bedroom/1 bath unit for around $285,000 or a 2 bedroom/2 bath unit for about $430,000. Learn more about eco18 here.

Editor’s note: Modular (or prefabricated) housing is hot, and our friends at Low Impact Living have the lowdown on some of the companies driving this trend. This post was originally published on Thursday, June 12, 2008.

It seems everyone is “going modular” these days with the rapid growth in the movement of green prefab design and construction. The buzz in modular construction is causing a rush of new designs, innovative products, and advanced modular systems being introduced. The goal of prefab is still the same as minimizing waste while maximizing efficiency. To learn more about prefab design and what makes it a compelling form of green building, please click here.

No longer are the days when just calling yourself a prefab company is considered environmentally progressive. Homes are now being made from materials like reused shipping containers, recycled steel, and certified sustainably-harvested wood. The new challenge for prefab companies is balancing the economics of innovative sustainable design with the realities of construction and raw material costs.

We want to highlight some companies doing some very interesting work in the prefab space.

Envision Prefab shows their commitment to the environment by attempting to maintain a zero carbon footprint in both manufacturing and production of their models. Their e-House reuses shipping containers transformed into seamless interior spaces, while including a laundry list of green systems such as tankless water heaters, solar panels, and LED lighting.

Air leaks in a building cost money. Find out how to fix them in existing buildings, and suggestions for designers on how to prevent them.

Follow this homeowner as she learns about energy efficient windows, and, most importantly, finds out if they really do save money.

Austin, Texas builder Clark Wilson has been in the homebuilding industry for over twenty five years, serving as president of Doyle Wilson Homebuilder, Inc. and then as CEO of Clark Wilson Homes, Inc. before retiring in 2002. Eager to get back into home building and aware of the growing demand for green homes, Mr. Wilson took over a small company named Green Builders, Inc. in 2007 with the goal of turning it into the largest builder and developer of green homes and communities in the United States. Only a year old, Green Builders, Inc. has already won the award for 2008 Single Family Affordable Home of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders.

When considering his return to home building in 2007, Mr. Wilson decided that the world did not need another behemoth home builder. “Austin is a hotbed of green,” said Mr. Wilson. “We’ve had green building programs since the 80s. With Green Builders, Inc., we wanted to bring green building to the masses.” By shifting building priorities toward saving money through energy and water savings, and by seeking out environmentally friendly products that don’t drive up the price of the home, green building has made traditional non-green building, in Mr. Wilson’s estimation, obsolete. “We’re priced competitively to non-green builders. They’re going to have to catch up. Green building needs to be widespread. We want to position ourselves as the Whole Foods of homes.”

I don’t know how you spent your weekend, but we spent ours with hands outstretched, feeling for hot, attic air shooting out of electrical outlets, ventilation fans and air vents. After months of crazy-high electric bills, we decided to get to the bottom of why it was costing so darn much to cool our rather small home.

Enter the HERS Rater (Home Energy Rating System).

It turns out there are wonderful people who will come to your home, put up a strange looking contraption called a “blower door” on either your front door or entry to the attached garage. A fan is turned on, the pressure is measured (our house was brought to -50 Pascals) and the cubic feet per minute of air that is rushing out of the house is measured.

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).

The iconoclastic owner of the San Jose tract home featured in this article takes exception to the notion that green is expensive.  Green, to him, is rooted in conservation of all resources, not the least of them being money.

Frank Schiavo’s compact, tract-built, three-bedroom ranch-style home in a modest San Jose neighborhood demonstrates that remodeling to create a cutting-edge green home is neither difficult nor expensive. Heated with sunlight and cooled by night air, his home is comfortable, quiet and tasteful, filled with light and local art. With only modest investments in a sun room, extra insulation, new windows, a very small array of rooftop photovoltaic and solar hot water panels, his electricity bill for the coldest, cloudiest months of the year averages a few dollars a month. His gas bill is even more modest.

What’s most impressive about Schiavo’s house isn’t that it’s so comfortable and practical for him to own, it’s that it demonstrates that lofty resource conservation goals can be achieved on a modest remodeling budget.

Author’s note: the following article on home heating is the first in an eight-part series. The series specifically targets climate found in the San Francisco Bay Area, but has applicability elsewhere.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heating and cooling amounts to 46% of all energy consumed by our homes. Water heating uses another 14%. In coastal California, where extreme heat is rare and winters are mild, a properly sited, well designed passive solar home can generate its own heat and hot water, and do without air conditioning.

Historically, few homes are so well sited or built. Since our area has more heating days than cooling days, most homeowners need a heating system. What few know is that many indoor air quality problems can be by-products of forced air heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems installed in their homes.

Relaxation!
Fashion!
Celebrity!
Botox!
Booze!
Interiors!
Green!

Yes, most of this list refers to the Brit series Ab Fab but if Eddy and Patsy turned in their smokes and cocktails for organic and sustainable munchies then they too would be excited for the opening of the Epi Center MedSpa, the first LEED certified MedSpa in the country. (Another LEED spa exists in D.C. but it isn’t a MedSpa). So, because fictional characters from a long ago Brit TV series couldn’t check out this just opened San Fran based spa, I decided that I had to do it.