Unraveling the Shades of Green

RISMEDIA, Jan. 16, 2008-(MCT)-Your house may be touted as environmentally friendly — but is it?

Finding a “green” home in Columbia is getting easier as builders branch into the business of being environmentally friendly.

But as the movement catches on here, how do buyers know what’s legitimate?

That depends a lot on the buyer, Columbia builders say.

“Part of being green and understanding green is across the board a responsibility to be educated,” said Bill Wichlei, vice president of construction for Hallmark Homes International, which is beginning work this week on 11 green town homes in Hampton Forest. “Builders need to be educated. Home buyers need to be educated on what being green means.”

One way to do that is to search Web sites and read books about green building. And it’s important to familiarize yourself with the different types of green building programs available, said Bin Wilcenski, who is heading the new Green Building Council for the Greater Columbia Association of Home Builders.

“You just want to make sure you understand the program the builder is working with,” he said. “They should be willing to tell you exactly what they’re doing to be green.”

Wilcenski said just adding energy-efficient windows and appliance and “calling that green is really green washing it.” He said there should be testing and verification from a certifying organization.

But “being green” isn’t easy to define.

“There’s not just one level. It’s not ‘green’ or ‘not green,’ ” Wichlei said.

The consumer or builder can take green to different levels.

It could mean building an energy-efficient house and then keeping the thermostat in check to reduce energy use.

Or it could mean positioning a house on the lot so it takes full advantage of the sun’s energy, using highly renewable resources such as bamboo for flooring and constructing most of the home in a nearby factory so fewer materials are wasted and fewer resources are used shipping them to the home site.

No matter what level, the goal is the same: reducing the impact of home building on the environment.

David Watkins, construction manager for Columbia-based Shumaker Homes, has been studying green building for the past two years and plans to build 137 green homes in the Wellesley neighborhood in Lexington. The model home is almost complete and four spec homes will be started this week.

The craftsman-style homes — which Watkins estimated cost about 6% to 9% more than the typical Shumaker home — will come with energy-efficient appliances and a three-year energy-use guarantee. For example, energy bills for the 1,950-square-foot model home are guaranteed to be no more than $71 a month; differences will be reimbursed.

The homes will be certified green under two programs from the National Association of Home Builders and Environments for Living, a Florida-based green building program.

Each requires building homes to specific standards and allowing builders to go to different levels of green building. And each requires documentation and verification throughout the building process.

Watkins said programs like these help give legitimacy to claims that a home is built “green.”

The Wellesley homes will be built with features such as insulation made out of recycled newspaper; paints, caulking and flooring that don’t contain harmful, volatile organic compounds; 50% compact fluorescent lighting; and the most energy-efficient windows available.

They’ll be “just short of solar and radiant floor heat,” he said.

And solar is Watkins’ next project to tackle, although he admits that trend probably won’t catch on here for another five to seven years. Incentives and rebates from energy companies are needed to make solar an attractive alternative because of the high installation costs.

The Hallmark homes also will be built to the standards of the National Home Builders Association. They will include an aluminum-foil backing to reflect the summer’s intense sun, low-volume plumbing fixtures and engineered wood products that don’t require cutting down 100-year-old trees.

The first 11 homes are expected to be complete in about three months. If the building system works, Hallmark will build the remaining 89 homes in the neighborhood to the same standards, Wichlei said.

Once the company establishes a green building system, Wichlei said they should be able to keep prices in line with standard-built homes.

“We sell houses for first-time home buyers, so we need to be practical and realistic,” he said. But “every step you take toward being green is better than the last one.”

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