Green building has some great concepts but there is a huge learning curve for some of those applications. For instance there at least a 5 step process for getting the wells installed on your property. All of these are coordinated as individual crews. The end result in savings is huge once the payback on the system is achieved, but expect delays in getting through the process of the install. The crews who do this work are few and extremely busy. The ones who installed our latest Geo thermal home has to crisscross the entire state and the delay can be months even to get on the list. Right now there are only 2 installers who service our state for the well install with the vertical closed system which is the more desireable than the pump and dump system. I can imagine someday that all homes may be required to install such a system.
Other green items are much easier to achieve like building rain gardens or insulating your home with closed cell foam products which have now been on the market for sometime. Those benefits can be seen immediately.
Our parade of homes is fast approaching and we have much to do in advance of theat August 20th start date. The home I was talking about will be the featured home for this year. It is designed for us boomers and beyond with ADA accessability features that allow us to live longer in our home rather than going to "The Home".
The demand for this new construction and housing is huge. Did you know that in our head of house hold population over 45 accounts for more that 60% of all households in our area of Black Hawk County. That is just a staggering number that will desire what is now called "Active Adult Housing" or "Aging in Place".
The neat thing about this housing is that it works for other demographics as well. With our family sizes smaller these homes work for almost anyone and the resale for these home is huge.
We started building these units in the Heritage Hills Estates subdivision off GreenHill road area just east of Main St in Cedar Falls as single family residences with an association to cover the lawn care and snow removal. Last year at our Parade of Homes we had our best Parade ever with basicly 4 home commitments on day one. Stop out and see us at the parade or just drop in and take a look if anyone is at the site. However do not go in unassited to any of these homes for liabilty reasons.
Off to work for today
"Craig the Builder"
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Building Green, New Concept ???
I had brief conversation with a field worker today from our excellent utility company, Cedar Falls Utilities. He had questions about green building, sustainable materials and energy efficiency that is now being incorporated into new homes.
After some thought several past images came to mind that I thought were good examples of what was done in the past and how its done today. Everyone always thinks that building green is a really hip new concept. Sorry for the 70's talk. Well for many customers and some new builders it is a new concept, but I was thinking back to when I was a young guy working with my dad. When we got done with a framing a new home if we hauled a full pickup truck load of wood and scrapes to the landfill that was it. Today we all have or are required to have huge dumpsters, 30 Cubic yards!!!, on site to contain debris and many times they are filled 3 times before a home is done. I am sure we were greener only 25 years ago.
When we ran out of nails we didn't run down to the hardware store and buy more until we had collected bent and lost nails on the site and sat down on the floor and bent all the nails straight and used all those up. When I explained that to this service worker he had to laugh and wonder are we really greener now then we were years ago. Unless as a builder you are taking the time to recycle all of the packaging that shows up on the site, cardboard, pallets, paper, plastic, wrappers and more.
We can go back to those days if we choose to make an effort to look at products in a different way, lumber need not be looked as a disposable product. 30 years ago a builder from Omaha called all the short 2x4 left around the site beer stud. He said for everyone he used he could have a beer. If we looked at those scrapes as $$$ to be saved or recycled for areas of a home where only a short piece is needed imagine the savings in job and home costs that can be passed onto the home owner. Maybe the home owner would like to help in the process to save money or just help do more with less. Imagine the impact!!!! I can build the same house 10 times and will get 10 different uses of quantities on materials if I use 10 different framers. The expense or savings has been as much as $3,000 to $5,000 difference on just an average 1500 square foot home.
Most of the time it is just a matter of saving time or so many think, we never notice that it takes any longer to use material wisely rather than handling the scrap 4 or 5 times and then it still ends up in the landfill. Only recently have some builders in the country considered recycling the used lumber that ends up on site to turn into other uses, like grinding up pallets and other wood products to use as mulch to incorporate into the yard so it needs less water to keep in in good health.
Just a thought!!???
Like our energy prices today we will only consider how we use commodities when the cost is exorbitant!!!!! And as for the picture, thats me at age 3, the only energy used there is ONE BOY POWER, hows that for conservation!!!!!!
Oh by the way my daughter just gave birth to a baby girl Zoe' today, she lives in the Netherlands, more about that later.
Craig the Builder
After some thought several past images came to mind that I thought were good examples of what was done in the past and how its done today. Everyone always thinks that building green is a really hip new concept. Sorry for the 70's talk. Well for many customers and some new builders it is a new concept, but I was thinking back to when I was a young guy working with my dad. When we got done with a framing a new home if we hauled a full pickup truck load of wood and scrapes to the landfill that was it. Today we all have or are required to have huge dumpsters, 30 Cubic yards!!!, on site to contain debris and many times they are filled 3 times before a home is done. I am sure we were greener only 25 years ago.
When we ran out of nails we didn't run down to the hardware store and buy more until we had collected bent and lost nails on the site and sat down on the floor and bent all the nails straight and used all those up. When I explained that to this service worker he had to laugh and wonder are we really greener now then we were years ago. Unless as a builder you are taking the time to recycle all of the packaging that shows up on the site, cardboard, pallets, paper, plastic, wrappers and more.
We can go back to those days if we choose to make an effort to look at products in a different way, lumber need not be looked as a disposable product. 30 years ago a builder from Omaha called all the short 2x4 left around the site beer stud. He said for everyone he used he could have a beer. If we looked at those scrapes as $$$ to be saved or recycled for areas of a home where only a short piece is needed imagine the savings in job and home costs that can be passed onto the home owner. Maybe the home owner would like to help in the process to save money or just help do more with less. Imagine the impact!!!! I can build the same house 10 times and will get 10 different uses of quantities on materials if I use 10 different framers. The expense or savings has been as much as $3,000 to $5,000 difference on just an average 1500 square foot home.
Most of the time it is just a matter of saving time or so many think, we never notice that it takes any longer to use material wisely rather than handling the scrap 4 or 5 times and then it still ends up in the landfill. Only recently have some builders in the country considered recycling the used lumber that ends up on site to turn into other uses, like grinding up pallets and other wood products to use as mulch to incorporate into the yard so it needs less water to keep in in good health.
Just a thought!!???
Like our energy prices today we will only consider how we use commodities when the cost is exorbitant!!!!! And as for the picture, thats me at age 3, the only energy used there is ONE BOY POWER, hows that for conservation!!!!!!
Oh by the way my daughter just gave birth to a baby girl Zoe' today, she lives in the Netherlands, more about that later.
Craig the Builder
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