Going green
Earth-friendly home construction moves into the mainstream
By Sharon Stangenes, Chicago Tribune staff reporter
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Carmela Lopriore, 27, considers herself "green at heart."
"I do want to make as light a footprint as possible" on the Earth, said Lopriore, an employment recruiter who recently graduated from Chicago's Loyola University.
So when Lopriore went shopping to buy her first home she chose HomeTown Aurora, where she liked the design of the affordable, energy-efficient houses. The development was described as pedestrian-friendly and she could get a home site overlooking trees and a park.
"This was the vision of America I had seen in my mind," Lopriore said of the Bigelow Homes project that tells buyers it espouses a philosophy of "green building and environmental sustainability."
In an era where McDonald's is promoting fresh salads, sales of organic foods are soaring and smoking is taken outside because of indoor air quality concerns, green building, once a niche concept, is on the brink of breaking into the mainstream.
The National Association of Home Builders this year announced voluntary Model Green Home Building Guidelines to help builders across the country put more environmentally friendly practices into constructing homes.
Green building refers to saving natural resources -- land, trees, water, air, and fuel -- while building more durable and comfortable structures. The NAHB guidelines for homes is one of several programs -- the others developed for public and commercial buildings -- which aim to insure new and renovated buildings in the future are environmentally sound and are healthy places to work and live.
Municipalities across the country, including Chicago and several suburbs, are studying or adopting standards developed by a national coalition called the U.S. Green Building Council, for public buildings and commercial projects.
Interest in the council's LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) standards, first unveiled in the late 1990s, has grown "exponentially," according to architect Bill Sturm, partner at Serena Sturm, Northbrook, which has designed green buildings for two decades.
Chicago, where Mayor Richard M. Daley is recognized for his tree-planting and green roof initiatives, requires new or mostly renovated public buildings, from fire stations to libraries, to meet LEED certification.
In addition, the city has a combination of LEED and green roof guidelines for any development which receives city money or financial incentives such as Tax Increment Financing (TIF).
"Over the last 10 years, (green building) has gone from being a fringe thing to being much more in the center," observes Victoria Post Ranney, president of Prairie Holding Corp. Ranney is co-developer with her husband George of the Prairie Crossing development which opened in Grayslake in 1994.
One of the first area large-scale projects trying to strike a balance between nature and housing, the 676-acre development has 359 energy-efficient houses, 350 acres of open space, a working organic farm and market and a community center in a barn. Now in its final phase, 36 condominiums designed by Chicago architect William Worn of Worn Jerabeck Architects are being built within easy walking distance of two train stations. The community's charter school recently built the first LEED-certified educational structure in the state.
"In the 1970s, there was a terrible energy crisis and people were concerned about energy conservation," Ranney recalled. "But some of the technology was not good and people said `We're done with that.'"
Not only was much of the fledgling technology bad 30 years ago, it often didn't look good -- think blue solar panels on roofs and in yards.
And those who wanted to incorporate "green" features into a conventional-looking home often paid a steep price.
Today "technology has gone a lot further and makes it more doable and affordable," Ranney said.
Those advances, as well as the high cost of energy, tales of so-called moldy and "sick" buildings, and an attitude shift on the part of Americans are factors as well, Sturm suggested.
"Our kids are being raised in a little different way and their concerns are a little different than ours were," he said, referring to the priority younger buyers, such as Lopriore, attach to saving the Earth.
Improved energy efficiency has been one widely accepted "green" idea, thanks in part to efforts by the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to promote programs such as Energy Star ratings for homes and appliances.
Prairie Crossing, for example, was the first in a Department of Energy "Building America Initiative" in which new homes were inspected to qualify for using at least 30 per cent less energy for heating and cooling than conventional homes of the same size.
More homes today are far more energy efficient than 25 years ago. However, most of those houses are high-end, not average-priced.
Signs of change are beginning to dot the horizon.
Bigelow and Town & Country Homes are among the local production builders that make energy-efficient construction part of sales presentations to prospective buyers. Cambridge Homes is among the builders which has marketed some Energy Star units to buyers 55 years and older on the premise that those living on a fixed income want the lowest possible utility bills. Airhart Construction is among the builders boasting Energy Star certification on some all-ages housing.
Wisconsin's largest builder, Veridian Homes based in Madison, built all of its 558 residences in 2004 to meet the state's Energy Star and Green Built Home certification.
Aurora-based Bigelow Homes has been a leading proponent of energy-efficient, affordable houses. The company offers buyers a three-year heating guarantee.
"We guarantee that heating costs will not exceed $400 a year. . . . We will reimburse the owner the difference if the cost of heating is higher," said Mike Venetis, vice-president of marketing for Bigelow.
While quantifying the savings in monthly utility payments has been one of the easiest ways to sell "green" construction, energy efficiency is just one element in that broadly defined -- and elastic -- term.
Water conservation, use of renewal or recycled construction materials, preserving natural vegetation and determining how a home is situated on the site are some other aspects, said Ray Tonjes, chairman of the NAHB subcommittee which developed the group's Model Green Building Guidelines.
"Conserving natural resources goes into the types of materials a builder uses," said Tonjes, owner of Ray Tonjes Builder, Inc., a construction company in Austin, Texas, where "green" building was conceived more than 20 years ago.
"Here in Texas we use a lot of white limestone in lieu of brick and it is quarried within 25 miles of where we are building. It is a native material, readily available and durable," said Tonjes.
By using a plentiful local resource, "we lower the cost of transportation and lower the amount of energy used to bring materials to the building," he said.
"It starts with the design of the home and the more efficient use of space in the home," Venetis said. "You not use only less materials when building, but the homeowner will use less resources while living there."
An efficiently designed plan can mean better buying of materials and less waste in construction, he added.
Some re-engineering of traditional framing, for example, provides the same structural strength, he said.
"You are using half as much lumber," he noted. "If you can design to reduce the waste, it reduces the labor, which is a cost advantage."
The NAHB developed the voluntary guidelines in a "fast-track effort" over the last year as a response to "an increased interest in conservation and good stewardship," Tonjes noted. "Fifty dollars a barrel oil has a lot to do with it."
The NAHB guidelines are not without critics. Some architects and other long-time advocates of green building in commercial construction say the voluntary guidelines lack the scope of their requirements. NAHB officials say the USGBC, which drew up the guidelines for commercial buildings, was invited to be part of the program, but did not participate.
If home builders have been slow to adopt such changes it may be in part because they have not been a priority among buyers. A 2004 NAHB survey found 37 percent of buyers say the impact on the environment of their new home is not a concern or a consideration in their purchase. Forty-six percent say they want environment-friendly homes but are unwilling to pay more. Only 17 percent say they would pay more for a resource-saving housing. While still a small percentage of the total home buying public, the number is on the upswing. It was 14 percent in 2001.
As clean air and healthy surroundings become stylish, almost spiritual to some, interest in green building for all prices seems to be accelerating.
Within the year, Tonjes predicts, "We will start to see more volume production builders coming on board, and that will start to drive the whole market."
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