Once confined to hinterland debates over spotted owls and dams, the modern green movement has moved well beyond its highly polarized origins and planted itself firmly on the doorstep of mainstream America.
From hybrid cars to household cleaners, an onslaught of environmentally friendly products has flooded the marketplace over the past several years. While the claim of being “green” is catchy, several longtime homebuilders say it’s much more than a fad. “For us, building green is just quality building,” says Grey Lundberg, Bellevue Club member and president of Grey Lundberg, Inc., a regional custom home building and remodeling company. Nowadays, 100 percent of Grey’s projects are certified green projects. Although the idea of green building might call to mind mud huts and solar panels, Club members are proving that sustainable building doesn’t have to be an eyesore.
Longtime Club member Todd Bennett, along with Grey, has been on the forefront of high-quality green building in King County. As chairman of Bennett Homes, Todd has sat on the board of directors of the Master Builders Association (MBA) of King and Snohomish counties for more than a decade and helped the MBA adopt rigid standards for its voluntary Built Green certification program.
Photo courtesy of Grey Lundberg, Inc.
While there is much debate about what makes a product green, builders and homeowners looking for a Built Green certification have to adhere to a no-nonsense checklist of building practices that focus on four areas: site and water, energy efficiency, indoor air quality and material selection. Points are earned for hundreds of different building aspects as varied as using drought-tolerant native plants, recycling a large percentage of jobsite waste, or using low volatile organic compound (VOC) and low toxic paints, caulks and mortars inside the house. There are several tiers of Built Green certifications, ranging from three to five stars. “When we build a three- or four-star, there’s really no price difference, but to get to the five-star level you have to take
it up another notch,” Grey says. But according to Grey, green building is all about energy savings. “You don’t have Built Green unless you have energy efficiency,” he says. “If a home is supposedly green, but it’s not saving energy, it really isn’t green to me.” With a variety of energy-saving measures from hybrid heat pumps to energy-efficient windows, Built Green certified projects could considerably lower monthly energy bills.
Photo courtesy of Grey Lundberg, Inc.
“We expect that our clients are going to have a 25 percent to 60 percent reduction in energy bills over a code-built home,” Grey says. While there are some additional costs associated with green building, Gayl Van Natter, vice president of sales and marketing at Bennett Homes, says energy-saving appliances and building practices are worth it. “Virtually all of our homeowners realize immediate savings on their energy bills,” she says. “Certainly within three years you’re ahead.”
BREATHE DEEPLY When it comes to indoor air quality, the American Lung Association (ALA) demonstration home built by Bennett Homes in the Issaquah Highlands neighborhood is tough to beat. Certified by both the ALA and Built Green, the five-star home was completely finished with allergen-free materials and furnishings designed to provide the cleanest inside air possible. “There are just so many people who have allergies and sensitivities to components and finishes in a home,” says Todd. Besides no-VOC and antimicrobial paint that inhibits mildew, one of the indoor air-quality features is the use of Marmoleum as
the utility-room flooring. A blend of linseed oil, rosins and wood flour on a backing made of jute plant, Marmoleum can prevent household mites from multiplying, which are a major source of allergies. Also, the interior trim and molding in the ALA home are made of 100 percent recycled wood fibers and contain no formaldehyde. The hardwood flooring is composed of prefinished bamboo with a toxin- and allergen-free topcoat. In addition, the master bath vanity is made from a beautiful recycled glass and concrete product with no toxins called IceStone. Gayl says that the availability of eco-friendly products has changed over the past several years. “Every single day, different materials are coming out that make it less expensive,” she says. “As recently as five years ago, any type of green carpeting costs double what normal carpeting would be, but they now have green carpeting that’s the same price or even less expensive than traditional high-end carpeting.” The ALA home is currently open for tours seven days per week. For directions and hours, visit www.bennetthomes.com/ALA/Come-Visit-The-ALA-Home.aspx.
MOUNTAIN FRESH At Suncadia, the resort community near Roslyn, living green refers to more than time on the golf course. In 2005, Grey’s company built one of the first five-star certified Built Green homes in the region. Highly publicized with a slew of sponsors, the demonstration home became a benchmark for high-quality green building. Among its features, Grey’s company disturbed as little of the site as possible during the building process with any trees removed from the site milled and used in the home. Also, Grey saved the topsoil scraped off the foundation site for later use in the landscaping..
Photo courtesy of Bennett Homes
“It’s better to stockpile the fertile topsoil because it’s full of all the minerals that’s already native to the area,” he says. With luxurious radiant floor heating, the house features geothermal ground-source heating that draws heat from the ground rather than using energy to heat the outside air, lowering energy bills and reducing fossil fuel dependence. “There’s a lot of opportunity to save big energy bills if you do it right,” says Grey. Besides energy efficient heating systems, spray foam insulation and insulated concrete forms for the foundation help minimize the need for heating or air-conditioning. Grey recently completed another five-star certified green home in Suncadia with similar Built Green features, including reclaimed finish lumber known as “ecotimber” and reclaimed barn wood paneling. Far from a demonstration home, the new owner is using the beautiful home as a luxury vacation rental. Bennett Homes is putting the finishing touches on an impressive five-star Built Green project of its own in Suncadia. The 3,350-square-foot “425 Ecological Resort Home” utilizes sustainable practices and products from the framing to the finished cabinets. Because an important part of building green includes using responsible building practices and not just eco-friendly materials, Bennett is paying careful attention to erosion control, protection of native vegetation and waste of building materials on its jobsites.
Photo courtesy of Bennett Homes
“We recycle every bit of building material that we don’t use,” says Gayl. The Bennet Homes Suncadia project is scheduled to be finished and available for tours in May.
GREEN IT YOURSELF Not in the market for a remodel? According to builders, there are ways to make your home more environmentally—and budget—friendly without a major overall. If you’re replacing an appliance, look for energy efficient models certified by Energy Star, that meet the strict energy efficiency guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency. “When something fails and you need to get it redone, do your research and replace it with environmentally responsible materials, and something that saves you money in the long-term,” says Gayl. Items such as tankless hot water heaters and high efficiency furnaces are easily retrofitted into an existing home and are a practical way to lessen your home’s energy use. “They are now being used in high-end properties,” Gayl added. Other energy saving measures include using windows that are low-emissive, preventing heat loss from the home during the winter and blocking harmful rays in the summer.
“Windows are the most energy inefficient aspects of a building,” Grey says. In addition, when repainting a room, look for paints with no- or low-VOC content. These products are less harmful to indoor air quality, and allow you to breathe easy even while the walls are still wet. Lastly, be sure to plant native plants with drought-resistant qualities in your yard. Not only will it lessen your water use, but they are typically easier to care for, which means less time doing yard work. “Landscaping is a very important part of maintaining a green home,” Grey says. “You can have beautiful landscapes with native plants and trees that are drought tolerant.” Although eco-friendly products are getting easier to find, making your home easier on the environment is not always a straightforward process. “It’s not quite as simplistic as a lot of people would like it to be,” says Gayl. Grey agrees: “It’s a combination of a number of things rather than just one thing.” In his Built Green homes, first and foremost, Grey looks for materials that are long-lasting.
Photo courtesy of Grey Lundberg, Inc.
“It’s much more efficient to build something that lasts for a long time, rather than something you need to constantly replace. For example, you can take cedar and, without a tremendous amount of effort, you can get it to last forever,” he says. “Green building is not about using funky things,” he adds. “Green building is about being more resource efficient and being stewards of your building.” With more builders and homeowners thinking about their homes’ long-term impact on both the environment and their wallets, green building practices have moved well beyond frontier mud huts into the luxury home market. According to Grey, green building is here to stay: “This is not a trend—our market is completely moving in that direction.”
