Marketing Home Products

It’s no secret there is growing consumer desire for the building of green homes. And this isn’t just limited to concerns for on-site construction waste or the preservation of our planet’s natural resources. Today’s homeowners want to keep their wallets at a healthy weight…and that means controlling their energy costs.

Home buyers speak out
According to a recent survey conducted by the national polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies, the number one motive for either purchasing a green home or remodeling a current home to make it greener, is “reduced energy costs.”

Going green without losing the green
While costs savings remains the main influence for green building and remodeling projects, production fees continue to remain a prevailing concern. Not to worry…going green doesn’t necessarily dictate large sums up front in order to experience lifelong savings.

The NAHB Research Center recently teamed up with green advocates to develop the NAHB National Green Building program with the goal of making homes increasingly efficient and affordable so home buyers can concentrate on green features, not green building fees. To be launched mid-February during the 2008 International Builders’ Show, the new green building program will ensure all homes seeking to be certified under the NAHB program have energy-efficient levels at least equal to Energy Star®.

Save on heating and cooling costs
Today’s most savvy manufacturers are creating innovative products that complement the emergent homeowner desire to live a healthy lifestyle in a home that will benefit Mother Nature. MonierLifetile, a K&A client, has been an environmental leader in the green movement since its inception. The preeminent manufacturer of concrete roof tile, MonierLifetile will launch its latest product development, the Energy Efficient Roof™ (EER), in early 2008 during its exhibition at the International Builders’ Show. MonierLifetile’s innovative EER™ system offers a “cool roof” assembly with a new cross-ventilation design that reduces energy consumption and enhances the roof’s durability.

A notable study on “cool roofs,” administered by The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and DOE scientists and funded by the California Energy Commission (CEC), proves that the intrinsic insulating properties of MonierLifetile’s concrete roof tiles and EER™ sub-assembly drastically reduce annual homeowner energy costs. The combination of tile and roof system components allows for a 50 percent reduction in heat penetration into the conditioned space of a home, thereby decreasing the heating cost of a home by 22 percent.

Green isn’t a fad
Whether you’re a builder or remodeler looking for additional products and technology that will increase the appeal of your newly-built green home, or a manufacturer looking for ways to increase your green involvement and product offering, what you must remember is that the desire for green isn’t about to disappear. As more and more homeowners and home buyers look to decrease their energy bills while doing right by the environment, the industry must respond to the aspiration for sustainable living by developing programs and revolutionary products that fulfill the incorporation of ‘green’ into every aspect of today’s homes. 

Stay tuned for next week’s blog about water efficiency in today’s green homes, complementing my thoughts about Chicago’s hosting of GreenBuild 2007.

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The question: “Is it true that consumers aren’t concerned with building ‘green?’” is continually faced by today’s home builders. And the answer is no. Contrary to popular belief, recent studies have revealed that many homebuyers do indeed desire green homes. What’s more, this audience will continue to grow.

Not only does the building of green homes assist in lessening the impact on local landfills, but it also improves indoor comfort level (reducing dust, pollen, and other pollutants), saves money on homeowners’ utility bills, helps conserve precious natural resources, and gives today’s homebuyers elevated satisfaction. Overall, today’s homeowners want a reduction of ozone-depleting gas emissions, an increase in sustainable forests, and less landfill waste. In turn, builders, suppliers, vendors and manufacturers must do their part to make homeowners’ requests an affordable reality.

According to California Green Builder, “during construction, [its green] builders divert at least 50 percent, sometimes as much as 80 percent of their on-site construction waste.” And how do they achieve this? California Green Builders, among many other noted developers, are designing plans with standardized dimensions to diminish job site waste while experimenting with panelized construction and newly-built and remodeled homes that utilize low-maintenance materials that endure a home’s life, such as fiber cement, and cool roofing systems. Today’s most savvy builders are also facilitating the creative reuse of resources obtained on site.

PATH, a public-private partnership for advancing housing technology, also advocates an alternative to traditional demolition. The “deconstruction” process, which involves manually disassembling buildings to capitalize on the salvation of building materials including recovering wood framing and sheathing, bricks and structural timbers. Although deconstruction is labor-intensive and takes longer to clear the site – as it relies less on bulldozers – the trade-offs are not only less landfill burden, but also an increased number of labor hours, opportunity for business development and the generation of useful materials instead of waste. This is a win-win for homebuilders, homebuyers and Mother Earth.

Not only are builders and homebuyers encouraging the prevention of on-site waste, but so too are builders’ vendors and suppliers. There are number of ways to reduce on-site waste, including builders working with suppliers and vendors to take back or buy substandard, or rejected items, requesting that vendors deliver materials in returnable containers, and reviewing and modifying storage-handling practices to reduce material loss from weather and other damage.

The purchasing process is another avenue to avert waste and may include implementing the purchase of high-quality, formerly used building materials (such as cabinets, doors, and fixtures), evaluating estimating procedures to ensure that the correct amount of each material is more accurately delivered to the site and selecting materials delivered with minimal or no packaging.

Whether you are a homebuyer, homebuilder, remodeler, supplier or manufacturer, landfill waste, along with other green building initiatives, will continue to grow in concern as today’s homeowners demonstrate their desire for homes that benefit the environment and its natural resources. There is a wealth of information available regarding this issue, so do your research and make plans to align with other organizations with similar “green” goals.

And don’t forget to check out my next blog regarding the prevalence of energy efficiency throughout the home.

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“New Urbanism” reached popularity in the 80s and has continued to gain momentum. Aspirational homeowners, city planners, architects and developers persist to seek sustainable living that provides solutions for social, health, energy, economic, aesthetic, and environmental issues including global warming and rising oil prices. New compact, diverse communities are now showcasing a revival of traditional street patterns and design, walkable retail, entertainment and even job creation. These communities nurture the most desirable characteristics of human habitation – neighborliness, economic efficiency and prosperity, historic preservation, participation in civic processes and even sensitivity to holistic well being.

“New Pedestrianism,” a movement founded by Michael Arth in the late 90s, presents another approach to these concerns, with an increased focus on reducing the role of automobiles in daily life. This is a movement away from the spread-out, car-centered suburbs and their related pollution that has dominated the American landscape for the past 50 years. With its emphasis on low-impact alternative travel promoting walking and cycling, new pedestrianism encourages human interaction by eliminating the automobile street from the forefront thereby allowing for intimate scale plazas, fountains and pocket parks. Residents find themselves gathering on front porches, in nearby parks and open plazas. They share driveways, walkways and alleys, while enjoying easier access to natural environmental elements such as lakes, streams, and forests that may border or be included in these types of communities.

A prime example of this type of movement is Atlanta’s Street of Dreams. The development showcases neighborhoods that offer enhanced amenities and optimizes community relations by hosting resident lounges, conference facilities, library, fitness cottage and special events pavilion with a lake front fireplace. This unique destination also features a tennis village, pocket parks, walking trails, a baseball field, boat slips, high-speed Internet access and even a 33-acre storage park for boats and RVs. The 2007 project, located in Tributary at New Manchester – a 1,475-acre master-planned community nearby downtown Atlanta – showcases the latest in new urbanism development. Now that this pursuit has officially migrated out of the central core and deep into the suburbs, Atlanta isn’t the only city feasting on this new living movement. The Street of Dreams project will be making its way to Orlando and Sacramento in 2008 as well as to Arizona and Las Vegas in 2009.

Whether you are an advocate or opponent of new urbanism and pedestrianism, there are valid reasons for the increasing popularity of these diverse, condensed communities defined by significant socio and demographic trends. Reminiscent of traditional values and community interaction prior to World War II, these movements provide distinct benefits for today’s homeowners, businesses, builders and municipal concerns. 

What is your view of new urbanism and new pedestrianism? I’m interested to hear your thoughts…post your comments below.

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