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Builder's business plan in the green

Nohl Crest Homes will make all its homes energy-efficient, certified "green." It will unveil the first, in Fish Hawk Ranch, in the March Parade of Homes.

By JUDY STARK
Published January 14, 2006

Nohl Crest Homes has announced that starting this spring, every home it builds will be certified "green" by the Florida Green Building Coalition.

That means the homes are energy- and water-efficient; they offer appliances that use less energy than is standard; their yards and gardens use native plants that require little water; they're packed full of insulation; and they avoid paints, coatings and floor coverings that emit toxic gases.

Nohl Crest, based in Oldsmar, will roll out its green plan at the Showcase Home it is building for the Tampa Bay Builders Association Parade of Homes, which opens March 25. The home, the Windermere model, is under construction at FishHawk Ranch in Lithia. From then on, as Nohl Crest moves into new neighborhoods in planned communities around the Tampa Bay area, every home will be certified green. Its homes in the Garden District section of FishHawk Ranch will be the first such neighborhood.

Nohl Crest builds about 150 homes a year, ranging in price from $500,000 to $1-million. The company says it is the first Tampa Bay builder to seek certification from the green building coalition. Green features will add 3 to 6 percent to the home price, but the tradeoff is lower utility bills.

Green building "is going to be here. It's not a matter of if, but when," said Judy Preston, Nohl Crest's vice president for marketing. Developers of master-planned communities where Nohl Crest would like to build are starting to talk about requiring green building, she said, so the company decided to "be out there and ready."

"It's good business," she said, "because down the line we're all concerned about the use of water and energy."

Once thought to be of interest only to environmentalists, green building is now about as mainstream a movement as there is. This week, at the National Association of Home Builders convention in Orlando, attended by 100,000 builders and others involved in the housing industry, one of the demonstration houses is a "green" home, packed full of energy-efficient devices and materials to lower energy bills and water usage. NAHB's eighth annual green building conference in March, in Albuquerque, N.M., is expected to attract 1,000 participants.

Closer to home, Lakewood Ranch, the huge planned community on the Manatee-Sarasota line, requires all its home builders to build green. WCI Communities, based in Bonita Springs, builds all green homes at its projects in Venice and Ocala. Pruett Builders in Sarasota specializes in energy-efficient homes with healthy indoor air. The Fechtel Co., a Tampa-based custom builder, is a regular award winner for its energy-efficient luxury homes. Energy Star appliances are common in model homes and appliance stores all around the area. Some builders' homes are certified as Energy-Star compliant, i.e., their homes are 30 percent more energy-efficient than codes require.

The Florida Green Building Coalition (www.floridagreenbuilding.org) a nonprofit group of builders, architects, suppliers, and representatives from real estate, government, academia and other disciplines, has established certification guidelines for environmentally responsible building. To be certified green, a home must score at least 200 points on a scale that covers eight areas: design, energy, water, site, health, materials, disaster mitigation and general.

The Windermere will be certified green when the home is completed, final tests are done and the home is inspected, but its preliminary score on the FGBC's checklist was 234 points.

Builders get 100 points for simply fulfilling the requirements of the statewide energy code. They earn additional points with environmentally friendly features many of them already incorporate in their homes (low-flow toilets, efficient appliances). Or they can increase their totals with additions that may be as simple as more insulation, more ceiling fans or drought-tolerant landscaping.

"Normal builders are probably 80 percent of the way" toward green certification; they just don't know it, said Jennifer Languell, chief executive officer of Trifecta Construction Solutions, who evaluated the Windermere's plans for the coalition's certification. "They perceive this as a huge change, where it's really a fork in the road vs. a U-turn. Most builders want to do the right thing but aren't aware it was this easy."

That's one of the complaints about certification: Critics say it's too easy to be green, and builders should be held to even higher standards. Builders get the same number of points for giving buyers a homeowners' manual that they do for providing a central dehumidification system or central vacuum.

The response is that ultimately it's buyers who drive the market, and builders will respond to what buyers say they want and are willing to pay for. A buyer may feel comfortable buying an Energy Star-certified refrigerator or washer and dryer, but a tankless hot water heater, which Nohl Crest will offer, may take some education, and a solar tube heater may be years away in customer acceptance. Products and systems that price themselves out of the market benefit no one.

Builders at Lakewood Ranch at first thought their green upgrades would add $2,500 to the cost of a home, Languell said. But after only six months, the suppliers realized the builders were buying in such quantities "that now it's only a $500 increase."

Builders insist on a reliable, mainstream supply chain of products and building components that are backed by warranties before they'll risk trying something new. "The sources for green products and materials has grown and improved," said Karen Childress, environmental stewardship manager for WCI Communities and president of the green coalition. "Now it's the major distributors, the carpet manufacturers, the suppliers, that are coming out."

Last summer's attention-getting utility bills, followed by rate increases and rising fuel costs, are expected to heighten interest in saving energy and money. Parents who worry about their children's asthma and allergies or their own lung health may be attracted to homes with no paint or carpet aromas and low dust levels.

"It may be small, it's only one house, but every buyer with a green home is doing their part to improve the environment or at least to protect it," Childress said. Energy efficiency and saving money are often the first things that attract buyers to a green home, she said, but there's a general sense that people "feel good about doing the right thing."

- Judy Stark can be reached at 727 893-8446 or stark@sptimes.com

"We're trying to educate buyers that a green home can look like every other house on the street. It just performs with better efficiency and provides a healthier environment for the homeowners," said Jennifer Languell of the certifying company Trifecta Construction Solutions.

Here are some of the components Nohl Crest plans to incorporate into its green homes. The builder is already using some of these elements.

- Energy Star appliances, which use 30 percent less energy and 20 percent less water than is standard

- Tankless hot-water heater, which provides hot water on demand rather than maintaining a large tank of hot water at all times, whether in use or not;

- More efficient furnace filters

- Paints with low levels of volatile organic compounds from the Sherwin-Williams Harmony line

- Minimal use of carpet to avoid off-gassing and retention of dust and dirt

- Ductwork protected during construction to keep drywall dust and construction dirt out

- Central vacuum

- A cistern, or rain barrel, to harvest runoff

- Drought-tolerant native plants

- A detached garage, which keeps pollutants and dangerous gases away from the home and is in harmony with the traditional neighborhood design in the Garden District

- Sprayed-foam, formaldehyde-free insulation

- Zoned air conditioning system with a Seasonal Effective Energy Rating (a measure of efficiency) of 16 (the code minimum is 13)

- Swimming pool that uses salt purification and ozonation systems rather than chlorine

- Ductwork sealed with mastic

- Double-glazed windows

[Last modified January 13, 2006, 08:17:05]