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New American Home revises standards for green

What distinguishes the 25th New American Home? It's lavishly appointed with environmentally friendly features.

By Judy Stark, Times Homes and Garden Editor
Published February 23, 2008

ORLANDO - Tampa Bay area builders need not feel overshadowed by the New American Home, a showcase house that was unveiled in Orlando last week at the International Builders Show. Some of them have been building like this for years.

The house - a white-columned Southern Colonial with four bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths in 6,725 square feet - is the first to receive a gold rating under the new Green Building certification program, introduced by the National Association of Home Builders at the show.

The association hopes home builders across the country will participate in the voluntary program to distinguish themselves from their competitors and make green mainstream in residential construction building.

"This house is so green, St. Patrick should be cutting the ribbon," said Bill Nolan of Orlando, one of the organizers of the New American Home. Each year the industry creates a showcase home at the builders show that is supposed to be "a harbinger of design and products." This is the 25th New American Home.

The home's green features include solar thermal collectors for tankless water heaters, autoclaved aerated concrete block for the first-floor exterior walls, expanded foam insulation on the inside of roof sheathing to keep the attic cool, and whole-house lighting controls. Native plantings reduce the need for water, provided by zoned irrigation. The house is said to use 42 percent less energy compared to a similar home in the area, including a 62 percent reduction in cooling energy demand. Ductwork is in air-conditioned space. Half the house has solar hot water; the other half has tankless water heaters. Appliances are Energy Star rated. The paint gives off a low level of volatile organic compounds. The front hall acts as a cupola to draw hot air up and out.

Similar eco-friendly, energy-saving building methods and materials have been available to buyers around the bay area for several years now. Nohl Crest Homes and Hannah Bartoletta Homes are building green. A model at Color Key Cabana Homes in Indian Shores in May became the first home in Pinellas County to be certified by the Florida Green Building Coalition. A home in St. Petersburg built by Darren Brinkley just received gold certification from the federal LEED for Homes energy-efficiency program and a Hernando builder says he's building one that will achieve platinum certification. When the Tampa Bay Builders Association opens its Parade of Homes on March 1, the showcase home - this year at FishHawk Ranch - will be the third consecutive certified green home.

"This is a two-year house we built in 10 months," said builder Charlie Robertson of Robertson Homes in St. Cloud, an Orlando suburb. At times there were 60 to 80 workers on the site. The finish carpenter slept in a mobile home on the site to provide security for tools and equipment. The builder brought in lunch many days for the work crews so as not to lose time on lengthy breaks. Other days there were venison and pig roasts.

Meeting the deadline

It's a lavish house, no question. Besides the interior spaces, there are 2,950 square feet of covered outdoor space: a huge "solana" - a salon - for entertaining with a bar and sliding glass doors that open out to the pool deck. The home is in a gated, 11-homesite enclave called Water's Edge at Lake Nona, a couple of exits beyond the airport. It is immediately adjacent to the site where the University of Central Florida is building a medical school. A VA hospital, a children's hospital and a research center will complete a medical community whose professional staffs may well be interested in big houses and who can afford the $4.8-million price tag.

Robertson was chosen to build the house in August 2006. At the same time, the builders association decided not to hold the show in 2007 and this year in Atlanta, as originally scheduled. Instead, they kept it in Orlando. Atlanta didn't have the convention space to accommodate the huge trade show, which this year had 1,900 vendors in 1-million square feet of exhibit space. "Typically a builder has four or five years' lead time," he said.

The homesite had to be reasonably near the Orange County Convention Center, where the builders show is held. Robertson, mindful that eventually he has to find a buyer, wanted to build "a higher-priced house on a lake, which has a better chance to sell." Then the team selected a designer, Dan Sater of Bonita Springs; the interior designer, Ron Nowfel of Robb & Stucky; and the style of the home. Robertson's wife and business partner, Judy, mourned the loss of historic homes along the Gulf Coast in Hurricane Katrina, so the decision was made to build something in that antebellum style.

'Free' can be costly

The goal for the organizers of the New American Home "is not to sell the house," Robertson said, "but to show off all these products" so showgoers can take ideas home with them. Builders and architects will cherry-pick features and materials to incorporate into the homes they build, which may be less glamorous and more affordable than this one. Buyers who can afford homesites like these, in the range of $1.5-million, are more recession-proof than the rest of us.

Those donated products aren't entirely free, Robertson said. Kohler donated about $80,000 in plumbing products, but Robertson had to pay his plumbing contractor far more than his usual rate to install the high-tech valves that operate them. "I paid premiere dollars to a roofer" to put up donated concrete tiles, Robertson said, and he paid both for the slate on the porch and the river rock in the master bath and for their installation.

"When you look at the numbers, you're not really getting it for free, unfortunately," he said, and those higher installation costs drive up the price of the house. "We'll make money on the house, but not more than on a normal spec home." He lowered the price from $5.4-million once he had a good sense of what the home actually cost, and said the only complaint he heard during last week's builders show "is that it was too low priced."

Judy Stark can be reached at jstark@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8446.

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Visiting the house

What: The New American Home, showcase home built for the International Builders Show

Where: Water's Edge at Lake Nona, Orlando.

When: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Sunday and March 1 and 2.

Admission: $10 donation benefits charity that restores historic homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast.

Information: (407) 709-0292.

Directions: From Interstate 4 near SeaWorld in Orlando, take Exit 72 and drive eastbound on State Road 528, Beachline Expressway (toll). Exit at State Road 15/Narcoosee Road and turn right (south). Drive about a mile and turn right on Dowden Road. Turn left into Water's Edge at Lake Nona (Greenshire Way); left onto Hartford Maroon Road; right on Randolph's Orchard Lane; left on Northlake Parkway; right on Woodward Winds Drive. The house is at 10379 Woodward Winds Drive.

[Last modified February 22, 2008, 16:41:03]