Homebuilders Association kicks off eco-friendly construction plan Posted On: Sunday, Jun. 21 2009 06:32 AM By Don Bolding
Killeen Daily Herald

At its monthly membership meeting July 15, the Central Texas Homebuilders Association will kick off a Green Building Program patterned after one currently effective in Houston, a voluntary effort to improve the eco-friendliness of the construction industry to respond to increasing customer demand and just for the sake of eco-friendliness.

CTHBA immediate past president Carol Bass said she was impressed by efforts of the Texas Association of Builders and other local affiliates at meetings in Austin about a year ago and started doing research on her own. About five months ago, she was able to pull together a committee of a half dozen builders and inspectors to start work on a manual builders can use to get their homes certified at any of three levels.

"Efforts in this direction will increase the cost of building a house, but it will be worth it to try, because there are definitely more inquiries about it from customers," she said. "Our members can sign on to the program or not, but the ones who do will be listed as green builders on the association's Web site, and they can advertise it themselves. Also, builders who are not members can join the program at a higher fee. We're hoping it will be an incentive to join the association, as well."

She said she hopes the cities in the CTHBA's area will endorse the program. The area includes the cities in the Fort Hood economic area west of Temple.

The specifics of the manual are not public yet, but they include not only energy-efficiency measures such as insulation and effective lighting but practices used in construction, such as taking pains to save existing trees and mulching them on site when they have to be cut, using wood pegs, and saving scrap lumber to cut small pieces as they're needed rather than pulling out new boards.

Another leader on the committee is Steve Rinehart of Rinehart Real Estate Inspection Service, president of the Bluebonnet Chapter of the International Code Council. The chapter covers an area from Austin to Waco. Rinehart is also a certified inspector for the National Association of Homebuilders' green program.

"The model program for everything is the one designed by the NAHB," he said, "and it's really stringent, really strict. Even the top tier of the one we've come up with, a 'three-star home,' falls below theirs, and the one-star level is pretty easy to achieve. Probably only about 15 to 20 percent of our builders have been paying attention to energy efficiency."

He says he hesitates to call the new program "green building lite" but says, "If we set the bar too high, we'd probably scare away nearly everybody. We need to introduce these ideas by stages."

At that, a checklist will have six or seven pages.

Other members of the committee, Bass said, are Patsy Craig, Dustin DeWalt, Gene Dane, Trent Dalton and another inspector and rating consultant, Rich Marcott of GlobalGreen, Inc. Rinehart said some of the builders who have been practicing energy efficiency are current CTHBA president Terry Neiman of Copperas Cove, Cameo Homes, Omega Home Builders, and B.A. Emmons. He said Omega, of Temple, was about 200 on a list of NAHB-certified homes that numbers only about 260 even now. Neiman and others build walls of concrete insulated by foam, among other practices.

Don Farek of Cameo Homes has said his company builds nothing but Energy Star homes as rated by the federal government.

Rinehart said the multiple listing service will have a "green section." He said, "You have to advertise houses built this way because to the naked eye, they look like any other house. Only a close inspection can tell the difference.

Going into examples, he said, "First we got rid of lead-based paint. Then we introduced low-volatile compounds to reduce fumes. New construction methods minimize water waste. Homes now are like terrariums, holding water in. What may look like a leak is actually condensation, which has the side effect of fostering mold, but now we have sheetrock with no paper. No paper, no mold."

He said that because they cost more, "Houses like this are a long-term investment, and very often they're intended as the last homes of retirees who plan to live in them for decades. Considering dollars and cents alone, that's the market.

"The idea is spreading everywhere, though," he said. "In the countryside, you find more houses that employ rainwater harvest, windmills, solar panels. I just inspected one where the electric meter was going backwards. With the right attention, a house can easily be self-sufficient with utilities."

He said, "You can't be green without energy efficiency, but you can be energy-efficient without green construction. The key is being very conservative with materials and telling employees and subcontractors to work with what they have.

"When you get good at it, you can leave a site with no more than a pickup load of trash instead of tons of it going to landfills that are already choked."

Contact Don Bolding at dbolding@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7557.