Green is dream home’s primary color

House first in state to earn homebuilders group’s earth-friendly certification

Katie Wilson, with her 2-year-old daughter, Neva Kate, stands in front of their house in Mountain Home that has been awarded the first Green Building Standard certification in Arkansas from the National Association of Home Builders.
Katie Wilson, with her 2-year-old daughter, Neva Kate, stands in front of their house in Mountain Home that has been awarded the first Green Building Standard certification in Arkansas from the National Association of Home Builders.

— Katie Wilson’s dream home blends the old and the new, from the vintage chandeliers to the modern geothermal heating and cooling unit.

Home to Wilson, her husband, Matt, and their four children, the French country-style house is new construction. But that’s not the impression Wilson sought to create.

“I wanted it to look and feel like a house that has been here ... a long time,” she said.

http://www.arkansas…">Living green

Even with its rustic stonework, wooden beams and family antiques, the house isanything but heirloom. The 6,000-square-foot house is the first in Arkansas to achieve Green Building Standard certification from the National Association of Home Builders.

The certification recognizes new houses, remodeling projects and housing developments that meet benchmarks in energy, water and resource efficiency; indoor environmental quality; lot and site design; and homeowner education.

The Wilson home was designed and built by Anderson Construction of Mountain Home with input from the owners.

Jeff Morrow, senior manager for the association’s Green Building Standard program, said Anderson is one of only a few builders in the nation to attain the program’s Gold Level certification.

The standard program for residential buildings has four levels of certification, beginning with Bronze and moving up to Silver, Gold and Emerald.

“They’re really ahead of the curve on this thing,” Morrow said. “They’ve got something to brag about.”

The residential certification is among a growing number of programs nationwide that seek to standardize sustainable building and development practices. The best use thirdparty validation is to make sure the standards are met, experts said.

Nationally, “green” building represents about 2 percent to 3 percent of housing production annually, according to the homebuilders association.

Nonresidential green construction is particularly on the upswing. The green market represented 10 percent to 12 percent of nonresidential housing starts in 2008 and should make up 20 percent to 25 percent by 2013, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.

NEW STANDARD

Scores of buildings in Arkansas - public and private, commercial and residential, old and new - incorporate into their design, renovation or operations environmental considerations from energyefficient appliances to integrative approaches in building design and operation, land use and transportation.

The Green Building Council established its certification in 2000. The council says its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Development program is for all building types, including homes, schools, retail and existing buildings.

“It’s really the standard for green-building certification across the board,” said Ashley Katz, the communications manager for the Washington D.C.-based council.

Twenty-nine projects in Arkansas have attained the council’s certification, including the Clinton Presidential Center and Heifer International headquarters.

Stitt Energy Systems’ office-building addition and renovation in Rogers earned the program’s Platinum rating, its highest certification.

Also, Philander Smith College in Little Rock broke ground last month on a 60-bed, three-story dormitory that is registered to achieve certification.

The National Association of Home Builders Green Building Standard is a year old, although the organization established green-building guidelines six years ago.

All told, about 800 projects nationally have been certified under either the association’s standard or the previous guidelines, Morrow said.

“It needs to be a wholehouse approach,” said Jared Kauffman, who oversaw the Wilson project as Anderson’s construction superintendent and company co-owner.

NO COMPROMISE

At his office in Mountain Home, Kauffman flipped through a 2-inch-thick bound notebook that details the Wilson home’s green elements. Record-keeping is vital to demonstrate to a certificationcompany that the project met the standard, he said.

Subcontractors had to agree to recycle their waste, including cardboard and discarded soda cans, Kauffman said. And the lot wasn’t bulldozed clean; rather, trees were inventoried and only those that had to be removed were cut down. Earth moved for construction was stockpiled and reused.

“It was probably the cleanest building site I’ve ever seen,” said Wilson, a stay-at-home mother of four children, ages 10, 8, 6 and 2. Her husband is a physician.

The family planned itsdream home for more than five years before hiring Anderson and had always planned to incorporate green construction techniques and products.

“There’s so much out there. You can find things that are green so easily,” she said. “It wasn’t difficult at all. We didn’t have to compromise on anything.”

The floor and roof trusses were pre-assembled off-site, a practice that produces less waste than typical framing techniques.

Low-VOC paints that emit fewer fumes were used, along with Energy Star-rated appliances and windows, formaldehyde-free plywood, a sealed direct-vent fireplace, low-flow shower heads and faucets, and water-conserving toilets.

One of the biggest energyefficient components was the use of spray-foam insulation, Kauffman said. “Seals everything. There’s no air gaps at all.”

The other “big thing” was the geothermal heating and cooling unit. “It’s an expensive unit. But your energy bills will probably be about a third” of a conventional furnace or heat pump, he said. “And it’s real simple to maintain.”

The unit can also qualify for a federal rebate of up to 30 percent of its initial cost, he added.

His father, Anderson Construction President Bob Kauffman, said the Wilson house is designed to be 45 percent more energy-efficient than a standard house of equal size.

“They wanted a good, energy-efficient house to beginwith,” Bob Kauffman said. Building it to the Gold standard “didn’t change their budget one bit.”

Building a house to the association’s Bronze level can add 1 percent to 3 percent to the construction cost, Morrow said. Building to the Emerald standard can add 15 percent to 20 percent, he said.

GREEN EDUCATION

Homeowners who incorporate green building features should more than recoup the initial costs with savings on energy bills over the life of the house, he said.

“Make sure you get what you pay for,” advised David Stitt of Stitt Energy Systems, which designs and builds sustainable houses rated by thirdparty evaluators using the nationally recognized Home Energy Rating System.

Expensive touches such as granite countertops hold their value for a relatively short time, he said. “But a green-built home with more insulation and a high-efficiency heating and cooling system can save a homeowner $100 a month,” he said.

It’s important that lenders and appraisers as well as homebuyers recognize the value of green features and their savings, he said.

The National Association of Home Builders said it is trying to educate appraisers and lenders to recognize first-time costs and long-term savings of green products and construction.

Arkansas has “some good developers and practitioners” in green construction and development, said Stephen Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center in the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

The state lags, however, in the development of public policy that encourages integrative design and development, he said: “That’s the way to achieve sustainability.”

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/23/2010

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