green homes

Green Open House Tour: Green Retro-fit: Built in 1818 and renovated with a grant from the state, one home on the Green Open House Tour now features modern green building systems.

The NESEA (Northeast Sustainable Energy Association) is hosting an open house on Saturday, October 4, from 10 am to 4 pm. The organization has coordinated with home owners and facility managers to provide access to numerous green buildings. Visit the site to see if there is an open house in your area and drop in to ask questions and see the installations that make new and remodeled homes more energy efficient. Just click on the map search, enter your zip code, and click GO. You can also search for projects that involve a specific type of green feature, like a geothermal heat pump, grey-water collection, or LEED rating in the drop down menu at left. I’m going to visit a home built in 1818 in Andover, MA that exhibits grid-tied Photovoltaics, a geothermal heat pump, a tankless water heater, and an alternative fuel vehicle for daily use.

Post submitted by ThinkDwell.

ThinkDwell, Inc. joined today with U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman as part of a new national energy-saving initiative—the U.S. Department of Energy’s Builders Challenge.

“For ThinkDwell, building high-performance homes is a priority,” said Suzanne O’Leary, President of ThinkDwell, a company that provides highly affordable custom green home design nationwide. “We welcome this voluntary initiative, and look forward to working with DOE to build consumer awareness of the benefits for building highly energy efficient homes.” ThinkDwell also offers LEED Certification (documentation of how green your new home is) and quality control services for small projects, including mold- and allergen-free certification.

The EnergySmart Home Scale, or E-Scale, serves as a tool for marketing energy-efficient homes. Consumer interest has been increasing in the top energy-performing homes, and now there is a tool that clearly allows builders and designers to rate the level of efficiency.

“ThinkDwell believes it is possible to build new homes that are more efficient than code by 30 percent or better at little or no net cost,” continued Ms. O’Leary. “We can achieve these efficiencies on tight budgets. High technology is not necessary to achieve energy efficiency in our market. Small homes have an advantage: they use less energy than larger homes to begin with. With high quality design features and innovative affordable building strategies, we assure that the home project will not only come in on budget, the owner will experience the benefits of having a home that is customized for their needs while saving money on energy bills for the duration of the time they live there. We believe this kind of high-performance building is the right thing for our nation, our natural environment, and our customers.”

Any company in the industry can voluntarily join the Builders Challenge. Contact ThinkDwell if you would like more information. www.thinkdwell.com

Postgreen of Philadelphia has contracted ZeroEnergy Design of Boston to perform energy consulting on the 100K House project in order to design the most energy efficient home possible on a small budget of $100,000 in the Delaware Valley region of the US. Postgreen and ZeroEnergy Design are determined to create an urban infill home that uses only 53% of the energy consumed by a standard new home while using a substantially smaller construction budget than is typical in the area. The combined effort is part of a case study - The 100K House - being built by Postgreen in an effort to prove that quality, green homes can be built for the same or even less cost than traditional homes. Postgreen is working on a construction budget of only $100,000 USD to build the infill home in Philadelphia with the goal of achieving high energy performance and a LEED Platinum rating. The average US home of the same size will consume 2.5 times as much energy as the 100k house. "In order to accomplish the lofty energy goals for the home on our budget, more time and care must be taken during the planning and design phase of every aspect of the home from insulation to HVAC equipment," states Chad Ludeman, President of Postgreen. "ZeroEnergy Design is the perfect company to ensure that we will get the most bang for our buck in terms of energy efficiency on the 100K House and we are excited to have them be part of the project," continued Chad. ZeroEnergy Design focused on cost effective passive aspects of the house first, looking for additional ways to conserve energy. Then the active systems that consume energy were analyzed for efficiency, including heating, cooling, ventilation, hot water, appliances, and lighting. And finally, renewable energy systems were considered with solar thermal being the top contender. Each improvement was reviewed on a cost versus benefit basis, considering the incremental change upon the home’s annual utility bills and Postgreen’s strict construction budget. “Knowing that 38 of the 136 possible points for the highest LEED certification score are energy related, any performance improvements we can make will not only be good for the LEED rating, but also good for the environment and the homeowner’s utility bills,” said Jordan Goldman, Principal Engineer of ZeroEnergy Design.

About Postgreen: Postgreen is a real estate development company focusing on modern, green and affordable buildings and homes in Philadelphia's urban neighborhoods. Our success is measured using a triple-bottom-line approach that ensures that each project benefits not only the bottom line, but the people in our community and the planet as a whole. Find out more at http://www.postgreen.com

About ZeroEnergy Design: ZeroEnergy Design is a professional services firm providing Custom Home Design and Energy Design services for residential new construction. The unique collaboration between in-house architectural designers, mechanical engineers, and financial analysts drives a competitive advantage and enables the firm to deliver fully integrated design for high performance homes. (ZeroEnergy Design was formerly known as Independence Energy Homes). Find out more at http://www.ZeroEnergy.com

As green buildings become more mainstream, real estate brokers will become key players in marketing these buildings to potential buyers. However, there are as yet few mechanisms available to allow brokers to speak with authority about the sometimes technical features of green buildings.

One program, Ecobroker®, is attempting to change that. According to its website, http://www.ecobroker.com, EcoBroker is an educational and marketing program “designed to help communities across the United States and internationally take advantage of and encourage energy efficiency and sustainable design in real estate properties." The program provides continuing education credits as a way to educate real estate brokers and industry affiliates about green buildings through a series of courses that allows them to become certified EcoBrokers® and address buyers’ and sellers’ increasing sensitivity to building features like energy efficiency and environmental design.

The program, which is available online, addresses environmental issues such as radon, asbestos, lead, water, mold, indoor air quality, and other issues that may arise during real estate transactions. It also covers energy efficiency technologies, sustainable energy options, and green mortgage options for energy efficiency improvements. It explains green home certification programs, such as Built Green® Colorado, Energy Star Qualified Homes, and LEED. So if you're in the market for a green house, see if there are any Ecobrokers in your area before you start to look. It could make finding your green dream home a whole lot easier.

               Green washing and the “not-so-clean” way of describing a home for sale.

 As an internet platform for green, energy efficient and sustainable homes, Listed Green has come across some creative verbiage used by some sellers. In the environmental business we call this “green washing”. Green washing is when someone uses “green” terminology to help drive more interest to an otherwise typical (in this case) home for sale, in a currently flat and bloated real estate market. These “green” terms could be words such as:

• Solar

• Stewardship

• Eco-friendly

• Environmental

• Healthy environment

We've seen ads that would say “a solar home”, when all they really had was a wall that faced south. Or maybe the home just has CFL’s (compact florescent lighting) and not much else. Although these improvements help in a small way, there are homes out there that are making heads turn and ideas flourish in a BIG way.

Listed Green likes to see and loves to promote, innovative building technologies that we believe will make the quickest (and the biggest) change in the environment regarding the way we live, the homes we live in and the way we build them. Things we take for granted every day, have a direct impact on global warming. The toilets we flush, the indoor air we breathe, the utility bills we pay; all these affect the environment and our health.

There currently are so many new technologies in home building, we could make a huge impact right now, not years from now. We can now heat all our water with solar and not the black stuff you see on roofs, but glass tubes that absorb UV rays year-round; recycle all our grey water (sinks and showers) and redirect that water to flush our toilets; building design and orientation to take advantage of the natural heating and cooling effects in a particular location; construct living environments utilizing innovative building materials that may come from recycled or renewable sources that also offer a tremendous R-factor – a one-two punch in not only saving our limited building material resources, but also less requirement from fossil fuels and the like, to heat and cool our homes everyday.

Listed Green strives to make a difference in educating the general public about what makes a home truly “green” and helping bring an elevated increased value to these exciting energy efficient improvements, to a level that they really deserve in the real estate marketplace today and in the years to come.

Remember everyone, West Coast Green Expo and Conference will be in San Francisco, Ca., September 20-22nd. again this year.

We hope all will try to attend as this will be a great event for sustainable living.

Listed Green will also be exhibiting and look forward to "speading the word" about energy efficient, sustainable living.

See you all there.

If you're in North Texas in late Sept thru early Oct, feel free to come by the Green Built Parade of Homes - it will consist of 7 resource-efficient, GREEN homes - the event will consist of resource-efficient, GREEN homes, showcasing the construction guidelines set forth by the HBA's Green Built North Texas program.  These guidelines address strategies for improving energy efficiency, water efficiency, indoor air quality, material usage, site management, waste recycling and homeowner education.

For more information about this event, visit www.dallasbuilders.com.