Green Pages

By Christa Gala

“Energy is going to be at a premium in the future so saving money is a no-brainer. Living in a healthier home is a no-brainer,” says Chad Ray of Olde Heritage Builders and chairperson of Green Home Builders of the Triangle. “Building a home that requires less maintenance and lasts longer and building a home that has less impact on our global environment—all of those things are called green today, but it just makes sense that all buildings in the future will be built this way.” Ray just might be right. There are no shortage of green projects in the Triangle. Could we be looking at the new status quo? We’ll let you be the judge.

Developing Green: Briar Chapel- Chatham County
Going by the numbers, Briar Chapel has a good thing going. Fifty-five percent of folks who visited the community purchased a home within thirty days. Shannon McSwiney, the community’s marketing manager, is proud of that figure but can’t take all the credit.

Even if you’re not a numbers person, Briar Chapel is pretty impressive. Set on 1,600 acres just minutes from Chapel Hill on 15-501, nine hundred of those acres have been set aside for natural areas, which will account for roughly 24 miles of community walking and biking trails.

And every builder must build “green.” There’s that term again, but what it really means is that every home must incorporate Energy Star standards and build under the Green Home Builders of the Triangle program. “All of the homes have to come in at a minimum of a bronze level, but many of the builders are building above that,” says McSwiney.

Eventually, Briar Chapel will be the largest green community in the Triangle with more than 2,300 homes. “With the number of homes that will eventually be built here, we’ll rival the size of Pittsboro,” says McSwiney.
As a community, Briar Chapel will be ecologically responsible as well. The development plan required the construction of a waste water treatment plant and a reclaimed water spray irrigation system.

“The reclaimed water spray irrigation system will be used for irrigation of designated open space and landscape areas; this will help to recharge groundwater instead of using groundwater or public potable water, thereby reducing the demand on the public drinking water supply,” says McSwiney.

Erosion-control buffers are greater than required by the state. Development and site plans also take advantage of certain natural features. For example, thirty percent of the home sites are situated to face south for increased solar capabilities. And all landscaping at Briar Chapel requires drought-tolerant and native landscaping in an effort to reduce the need for irrigation. As the numbers show, feedback has been positive.

“What we’ve been told is that our green building program as well as the entire community’s commitment to the sustainable development has really been a key differentiator for the community, especially during this economic time,” says McSwiney. “They’re very excited knowing that by building a home in Briar Chapel their home is automatically 15 percent more energy efficient, and they’re able to take advantage of cost-saving measures in their energy and utility bills and have a healthier home.”

Building Green:
Project 1: Olde Heritage Builders 

While green may very well become the new status quo, there are two long-standing tenets of the real estate and building industry that aren’t budging: location and looks.

“You have to build a quality product in a good location,” says Chad Ray of Olde Heritage Builders. “If you built the greenest home in America in the worst location and it didn’t look good, you’re still not going to sell it. You can’t abandon all the other things that work—quality, location and being a trustworthy business person.”

Ray’s most recent home is 3,040 square feet and is located in Zebulon’s Wakefield Meadows neighborhood. Listed at $439,000, it’s the home he’s most proud of, although all Olde Heritage homes are green-certified.

“It scored and tested better on all of our energy tests,” says Ray, noting the home was tested by a third party, Southern Energy Management. “It scored a HERS rating of 54. That means the home is 46 percent more energy efficient than a standard built ‘code’ home.”

All green-certified and Energy Star homes must have been tested by a third party. “That’s the teeth behind certification,” says Ray. “It’s one thing for me as a builder to say this is a green home; when you have a third-party company that you pay to come in and test and score your homes, that proves to the consumer that everything you’re telling them is accurate.”

In addition to a sealed crawlspace, foam insulation, energy star rated windows and passive solar design, the home also has reclaimed heart pine floors that are more than four hundred years old. One of Ray’s friends purchased an old textile mill in Hamlet, NC and its structural framing timbers were recycled into flooring.
Outside the home is drought-tolerant landscaping as well as shrubbery and trees that encourage wildlife feeding. The cost of doing all of these “extras” is one to two percent more than a home built to code, says Ray.

“In the future I think the ‘green’ term will go away when you can build a better home for equal or even less cost than the practices we use today,” says Ray. “Any new technology starts out as more expensive but as the consumer drives up demand, the cost of those processes, because they become more efficient, become less costly as well.”

Project 2: Wood Wise Design & Remodeling

For twenty years now, Hank Wall has completed more than four hundred projects as founder of Wood Wise Design & Remodeling. He also thinks energy efficiency and “green” building is going to go mainstream—so much so that he recently formed a new company: Eco Building Group, LLC.

The Umstead Retreat, located just 100 yards from the entrance to Umstead Park, is his first project. He’s had hundreds of folks walk through the home and has also held it open for events. “I’m enjoying touring the house,” says Wall, whose home is listed at $899,900. “Unlike most builders whose goal is to simply sell the house, for me showing the house is part of why I built it.”

Wall’s favorite rooms are the kitchen and master bathroom, the latter with a free-standing tub and tons of tile. It also has a dual-flush toilet. What is that? Basically, button number one provides much less water for, ah, number one. And for the other, guests select the button that provides a full flush, 1.6 gallons to be exact.

Both the kitchen and master bathroom have their own tankless hot water heaters. “In every other house in the neighborhood…there’s a tank of water that is heating twenty-four-seven even if you go on vacation. It’s a huge waste of heat, electric or gas.”

The lighting is smart, too. The entire kitchen is outfitted with recessed LED lights from CREE, a local company. So that’s a double-bonus—LED lights use less energy and they aren’t being shipped a long distance.

“You pay more up front for LED light bulbs, but in a residential situation they should last seventeen years without changing and they don’t put out much heat,” says Wall. Another item with a local connection is the Bosch dishwasher, made in New Bern, NC. All of the kitchen appliances are from Bosch’s new green line.
The Umstead Retreat also has a purified air system and energy efficient windows. From the outside, however, it looks just like a conventional home, and that, says Wall, is exactly the point. “It’s fairly traditional looking. I wasn’t trying to make this eco-house look too much like a seventies solar house, but just to have it look like a beautiful, comfortable, well-designed house.”

Remodeling Green: Common Ground Green Building Center
Cabinets, flooring, countertops

Open just two-and-a-half years, Common Ground Green Building Center in Durham is fast becoming known for offering hard-to-find products and materials for people who are chemically sensitive. It’s also a treasure trove for those looking for distinctive design.

Ann Sun, one of Common Ground’s kitchen and bath designers, recently helped a North Raleigh couple redesign their late seventies kitchen. The centerpiece of the new kitchen is a giant island made of concrete and recycled glass. “It’s like a work of art,” says Sun. “She actually incorporated some of her personal glass in the top.”

As a countertop material, concrete is not only durable and non-toxic, but also non-porous once it’s sealed. Plus there’s no waste. “They form exactly what you need for the precise measurement that you need it to be,” says Sun of the custom concrete fabricators she used for the project.

The other countertops in the new kitchen are bamboo; the flooring is a material called Marmoleum® by Forbo. “It’s a floating floor system,” explains Sun. “Traditionally it’s the old-school linoleum, but it’s completely non-toxic. It’s made out of linseed oil and wood flour.” In addition to tile, Marmoleum® is certified as Asthma & Allergy Friendly™.

The homeowners love their new kitchen. “They really wanted to keep the kitchen light and airy but yet fun; that’s why we’ve got those splashes of red on the floor and the red light fixtures,” says Sun. Cabinets were maple with a formaldehyde-free lemon finish, and a new buffet takes the place of an old pantry with bi-fold doors.

One of the homeowners was a landscape architect, and she and Sun worked on creating a kitchen that would best suit the couple now that their kids were grown. “What we do is give the homeowner guidelines to help gain their vision,” says Sun. “We talk to them in detail about how they operate in the kitchen. Both cooked often and also entertained a lot so we took all of that into account.”

Mainstream Green: Homes by Dickerson
Triangle wide

At the beginning of 2009, Homes by Dickerson made a telling decision. From that point on, every home they built—even the speculative homes—would be green-certified and Energy Star rated. The interesting part is that Homes by Dickerson made the move not only to be “green” but to be competitive.
“It’s a growing movement,” says Jon Showalter, comptroller of Homes by Dickerson. “There are other companies out there too that have jumped on board. We’re not the first.”

Maybe not, but they’re a great example of how “green” homes are becoming more mainstream, available now at accessible price points. Homes by Dickerson builds all over the Triangle; homes in its Austin Creek subdivision in Wake Forest are priced right at $200,000.

“When folks think about a green home, sometimes they jump to the things that make a home really green,” says Showalter. “They want to see solar panels on the roof, and they want to see the super- efficient HVAC equipment and real cutting-edge technology. Certainly those things are fantastic but they also come with a price. Our goal has been to bring green more into the mainstream type of building.”

So what did the company do differently in 2009; what does it continue to do today? “We’re training our framers to frame in ways that maximize our insulation values to make a tighter house,”says Showalter. “The old way of framing made gaps in the insulation barrier. Those add up and become more and more of a detriment to the insulation value.”

Another change has been getting the bonus room—the finished room over the garage—to feel like the rest of the house. Traditionally, those rooms soak up the outside weather because the space beneath it is unfinished. So it’s steamy in the summer and cold in the winter.

“Over time that insulation (in the bonus room) settles onto the sheetrock that’s the garage ceiling and that allows an air space to be between the insulation and the subfloor above,” explains Showalter. “A pretty simple thing to do is to just block off the ends of the floor joists with scrap framing lumber and that prevents the air from getting above that insulation.”
Homes by Dickerson is also using foil-backed plywood. “It reflects about 97 percent of the sun’s radiant heat, which is going to keep the attic temperature about 15 to 20 degrees cooler than a house built next door that doesn’t have that foil-backed plywood,” says Showalter.

Understanding Green
by Rebecca R. Newsome, MIRM

Green Certification in the Professional Real Estate Agent Arena

We have emerald green, kelly green, lime green. Greenbacks, green beans, greenbelts. Green envy, green grocers, green thumbs. And oh yes, the most talked about green of recent years – green building. Most everyone understands the concept… In short, it’s the systems approach of siting, designing, and constructing sustainable structures with a highly efficient use of resources while protecting human health and the environment. Numerous components comprise green building, depending on just how “green” a builder or a consumer wants a structure to be. One element is crystal clear, however: Green building is not only here to stay, it’s the foundation that will allow future generations to live comfortably with a reduced impact on the environment.

Seasoned real estate broker Joe Norwood of Chapel Hill’s Allen Tate Company has held a long term interest in green building. Throughout his 17-year career as a Realtor® and as a member of Green Home Builders of the Triangle, Joe has worked with many builders who were green pioneers in this area.
“Living green is just the right thing to do,” says Joe. “Europeans have been practicing green for years from a standpoint of driving less and walking more. They’ve always appeared to me to treasure and conserve their natural resources. I’m thrilled that the US and especially the Triangle have now embraced green as a way of life. These practices save money while saving the environment. It’s very exciting.”

Joe is a pioneer himself in that he is among the first few area Realtors® to become certified as a green expert. Joe’s initial objective was to obtain the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) Green Designation. This involved successfully completing coursework designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of what it means to build and live green. Joe then went on to obtain the EcoBroker® International Green Designation, further endowing him with resources to become a green ambassador.

“I knew a lot of the terminology and concepts going into these classes,” says Joe, “But what I really enjoyed was learning the details. One of the most important factors in understanding green building is that a house is a system. From design and homesite positioning, to building materials, roof overhangs, windows, doors, water heaters, HVAC, plumbing, even landscaping… Every component works together to form the whole house system. It’s all very interesting. Various ‘shades of green’ can be achieved based on an individual or family’s desires.”

“People don’t necessarily have to build new homes in order to go green,” Joe continues. “Existing homes can become ‘greener’ via simple things like utilizing energy efficient light bulbs and air filters, or improving caulking and sealing. Significant long term savings result from making green improvements, especially in terms of installing components like Energy Star appliances, solar panels, and geothermal systems. Tax credits and rebates are available that make improvements more affordable in the short term too.”

“Greening a home is not as complicated as many think it is,” Joe summarizes. “I view my role as a resource to provide answers to the questions surrounding green. Green is the way of the future. I’m very happy to be a part of it.”

Follow Joe’s lead and get on board with green today! For more information, visit www.GreenHomeBuildersoftheTriangle.com, www.greenresourcecouncil.org, and www.ecobroker.com.

What is a Hers score?

The HERS Index is a scoring system established by the Residential Energy Services Network. The lower a home’s HERS Index, the more energy efficient it is in comparison to the HERS Reference Home, which is comparable to a conventional home built to code.

Each 1-point decrease in the HERS Index corresponds to a 1 percent reduction in energy consumption. So a home with a HERS Index of 85 is 15 percent more energy efficient than a conventional home, and a home with a HERS Index of 80 is 20 percent more energy efficient.

An ENERGY STAR qualified new home, required to be significantly more energy-efficient than the reference house, must achieve a HERS score of at least 86. From www.energystar.gov.