Which home green certification is right for you?
Lessie Miller knew she wanted to build an eco-friendly house. But I didn’t know there were so many different types.
“There are many points of view on this. Do you want it to be a ‘healthy’ home? There is the energy aspect and recycled products. “You just want to buy locally produced building products?” the San Jose, California, resident explained about the many ecological considerations he weighed when planning his custom-built home, which was completed in March 2012.
“You have to ask a lot of questions,” he said. “We finally had to simplify it to: what does organic mean to us?”
Fortunately for anyone considering building a house, green architecture is becoming easier.
Construction companies – are increasingly offering features and using construction techniques for environmentally conscious customers, which just a few years ago would have been a novelty. Supporting them are manufacturers, who are envisioning a broad deployment of building products with energy savings and sustainability in mind.
Basically, the ecological has arrived. Whatever you call it (more on this below), green homes are expected to comprise 2016 to 29 percent of the new housing market by 38, according to a McGraw-Hill Construction report. Sustainable homes accounted for 11 percent of the market in 2011, according to the report, and this represented a relative explosion compared to the previous decade.
The cause? Consumers are demanding green homes, said Richard Cannavino, a custom home builder in Oswego, Illinois, who began specializing in green building in 2006. A home Cannavino Construction built in 2008 was the first in Illinois to achieve “gold” status for its many environmental attributes, under the National Association of Home Builders’ green building program.
Cannavino said organic has come a long way since just 2006.
“Back then, customers weren’t thinking in green terms, they just asked about energy efficiency,” he said. “Nowadays customers know what the different ecological aspects are. They’re much more educated about it.”
A homebuyer’s own interpretation of greening, and how far the concept can stretch, can vary widely, depending on their personal interests and means. The ecological umbrella today can include:
- Use of products manufactured with ecologically sustainable components and techniques.
- Water conservation.
- Indoor air quality.
- Reduction and recycling of garbage from construction.
- And many other considerations.
While every approach to green is important, since the beginning of the building of the environmental movement, the biggest motivator for consumers has been reducing their monthly heating and cooling costs, builders and green building advocates said. “It’s mostly about energy saving,” agrees Carl Mulac, president of AV Homes. Its Vitalia brand incorporates communities of active adults (age 55 and older) in Orlando and Phoenix and green building is a specialty of the company, he said.
“Especially for an active adult living on a fixed income, basic monthly expenses are a great thing, and people have leaned toward energy efficiency,” Mulac said. We show homebuyers what they would pay for electricity in a house that’s five or six years old compared to what the company is building today.”
The emphasis on energy efficiency is rapidly gaining momentum, ecology specialists say. One way to measure that would be to examine building codes, according to Nate Kredich, vice president of residential market development for the United States Green Building Council, a nonprofit that promotes green building practices.
Kredich said municipalities have been increasing their energy conservation requirements in codes every few years.
“A home built to a 2013 code is approximately more efficient than a home built with a 2009 code,” he said, noting that code requirements can vary widely within the country.
He sees monumental changes. “Homes built today vs. 10 years ago are about 30 percent more efficient,” he said.
Kredich’s organization should be the best known among groups that certify homes that meet ecological parameters, primarily through its LEED “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” standards.
The LEED certification program for homes awards points in eight categories. Households that meet basic standards (which includes passing monitoring tests) are LEED certified. Higher scores obtain Silver, Gold or Platinum distinctions, whose demand has been highly increased.
Another metric consumers can find is the HERS “Home Energy Rating Standard” index. It was developed by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), a non-profit organization that produces energy efficiency ratings and certification systems in the United States.
The HERS rating is used by many certification programs and by individual builders. It estimates a home’s energy efficiency, which is often compared to the miles-per-gallon rating on cars. In the current version of HERS, the lower the score, the higher a home’s energy efficiency. A score of 70 for a new home, for example, is 30 percent more energy efficient than RESNET’s designated rating for a new home built. Resale homes typically score 130 on the HERS index, according to the organization.
“For me, no matter what certification program you use, the HERS score is a consistent metric that everyone can use to determine how effective their green initiative is,” says David Weekley, president of David Weekley Homes, which builds in 18 markets across the country. Your home company EnergySaver is backed by third-party testing to ensure the energy use of your heating and cooling systems.
Green certification programs, like homes, can vary greatly. Kredich said most of these programs have worthwhile qualities, but he urged consumers to ask questions before assuming an eco-rating is an independent and unbiased calculation.
“We’ve counted about 80 (accreditation programs) across the country,” he said. “We are very supportive of them because it gives consumers a choice.”
Certain programs may be affiliated with local homebuilding organizations, nonprofit groups or municipal governments, he said, while others have state or national outreach. In addition to LEED, widely known certification programs include the National Association of Home Builders’ National Green Building Program and the federal government’s Energy Star program. According to Kredich’s vision, the key for consumers looking for a certified home in a given program is to know how the requirements of the groups can vary, and to be cautious about the designations that may be interested and give only the appearance of ecological awareness, an aspect known as “greenwashing” (false environmental ethics).
“One of the initial questions should be: who certifies this? The credibility of that rating is very important,” Kredich said. “There can be a big difference between what is required in some of these programs.”
The qualification of a program is not a requirement to be an ecological home. Because the costs of certification programs can run into the hundreds of dollars, Miller of San Jose decided to give up his home certification and build with attributes he felt were more important to the family.
Despite his concern about the budget, Miller believes his insistence on certain eco-friendly practices and materials added 20 percent to 25 percent to the cost of the home, but he believes the expense is worth it, he said.
“For example, my wood floor came from a ‘certified’ forest (qualified by sustainable timber sourcing practices),” he said. “Unfinished wood came out $9 a square foot. I could have bought finished wood for $2 a square foot, but I thought it wasn’t in line with our responsible environmental strategy.”
Others in the industry, however, said that even though green building has sometimes been more expensive in the past than ordinary construction, prices are dropping significantly. The proliferation of organic products is pulling costs down and in many cases on par or just above the most common products. In addition, energy savings can pay the difference over time, industry sources said.
“With the first (green) house in 2006, it was difficult to find recycled products,” said builder Cannavino. “There wasn’t even an approximation to what exists today. It was much more expensive to build ecologically in 2006 than it is today.”
In addition to using recycled and sustainable products and energy-efficient systems, like many green home buyers, Miller had two big goals: buying locally produced materials and having a “healthy home.”
Choosing locally produced construction products has two benefits, he said: it helps the local and U.S. economies, and it’s minimizing the energy needed to transport products from considerable distances.
More importantly, he said, was having a healthy home to avoid worsening the family’s allergies.
“We don’t allow toxic glues or formaldehyde,” he said, referring to components of certain products in construction. “All of our paints and dyes are low – or contain no – VOCs (volatile organic compounds), meaning they are water-based and not oil-based. The two carpeted bedrooms are natural wool, naturally dyed.”
Miller’s concern for indoor air quality is something you’re increasingly hearing in the green building community, from all kinds of builders, said AV Homes’ Mulac. In his company Vitalia communities, he said that whenever possible, the company uses eco-friendly sealants, non-toxic insulation, plus other products of choice always with the indoor air quality of the house in mind.
Miller said she made her home bespoke because she realized she had highly specific requirements. And because he chose a builder who doesn’t specialize in green building, he ended up researching products and services much more.
And his notion of ecological, he acknowledged, may not be everyone’s ecological notion. But that’s okay, he said.
“There is no right answer,” according to Miller. “I didn’t think about it too much, I did the best I could.”