Project Intro – Meet the Owners

Posted November 26, 2008 02:27 by Robert

Tags: meet the owners

My wife and I just had our third child and we both work from home. We really need additional space, so we are in the process of securing land to build a new home and we are eager to incorporate many green features into our home—both to reduce our energy consumption and use of fossil fuels and to ensure a healthy environment for our growing family. 

For almost a year, we have spoken with many traditional home builders in the town where we hope to build, but no one seems to have much experience with green building, despite the fact that over 50 new homes were built in 2008. No less than five builders told us that the reason they have never used spray foam insulation in a spec house (which has the highest return of investment of any green building product for a new home) is that they have never been asked to and have a hard time selling something “behind the wall.” To me, this means that consumers are just not educated enough. Many builders seem unwilling to try something new and are unconvinced that consumers value green principles enough to pay a premium for them. Clearly this is a major problem for the green building movement. If we really want to improve our environment, we have to persuade traditional builders to start incorporating green principles into their mainstream product offerings because they represent the largest segment of the market and in many cases control the land. Custom, very high end green homes which grace the covers of popular green magazines represent a super niche portion of the popular which cannot move the meter in a meaningful way.

We would love for our project to demonstrate that traditional and green don’t need to be mutually exclusive. We are hoping to build a traditional New England home with a local builder rather than something more modern in design, which is what’s often associated with “green”.  In this way, we may be able to dispel some myths about green design. And, if we can help change the perspective of the traditional builder and/or the traditional home buyer, we can ultimately help make mainstream building practices more environmentally friendly.

E-mail | Permalink | Comments (0) | Comment RSS