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Texas Builder Sees Baby Boomers Turning to Green Building
When it comes to consumer interest in green building, Fort Worth builder Don Ferrier of Ferrier Custom Homes says that a “paradigm shift” is already under way.
Ferrier attributes the new attitudes to the 800-pound gorillas of home building trends: the baby boomers. With retirement looming, this post-World War II generation already is influencing the design and construction of vacation homes and “active-adult” communities, two huge markets for home builders in the first decade of the 21st century. Now, they are turning to green building, Ferrier says.
“These customers are saying, ‘this will be the last house we ever expect to build. Building it to a high performance level is the best investment we can make for our future,’ ” Ferrier said. And they are unafraid to pay a premium for green, because, Ferrier says, “They know it is worth it.”
But green building is also beginning to appeal to buyers who don’t have boomer budgets. Ferrier was putting finishing touches this spring on his 2,000-square-foot Heather’s Home, which was built to be affordable and environmentally friendly and to use next to no energy. With a monthly heating and cooling bill of $15, it will land within the top 1% for efficiency among Energy Star®–rated homes.
With its quirky glass-block design and contemporary styling, Heather’s Home might not fit into most traditional neighborhoods. But with a construction cost per square foot of about $117, the home is considerably less expensive than the average custom home, long the provenance of most green construction.
After being featured in the Greater Fort Worth Spring Tour of New Homes, the house will be occupied by Heather Ferrier, Ferrier’s daughter and the company’s office manager.
In addition to its fresh design, three green features stand out in Heather’s Home, Ferrier said:
- First, orientation and shading, an important — and usually free — energy conservation effort that often goes missing in traditional building. “The No. 1 thing is that it’s properly oriented, with the majority of glass on the south side, and that it’s also properly shaded. You need to be able to control the sun in this climate,” Ferrier said.
- Second, the house is built using structural insulated panels, or SIPS, substituting traditional wood framing techniques for rigid foam insulation sandwiched between two structural skins of oriented strand board, or OSB. “I don’t know of a way to get as much energy-efficient bang for the buck as you can with the SIPS. They have an extremely tight structure and a higher efficiency,” and eliminate the thermal loss of conventional wood studs. It also is more resource-efficient, using 30% less wood than a conventional house, he said.
- Third, the house is using a Japanese-made air-conditioning system that allows the compressor to run up to five separate and independent blowers, making it considerably more energy-efficient at 20 SEER. Although it costs about 25% more, Ferrier expects to see 40% more efficiency than he would at 16 SEER, (the new Energy Star® threshold is 13 SEER), and the system is more efficient than any other kind, with the exception of geothermal.
With its emphasis on affordability and efficiency and old-fashioned passive solar combined with cutting-edge technology, Heather’s Home straddles the narrowing gap between green and traditional building. And it’s not a moment too soon, Ferrier said.
“It’s a whole paradigm shifting thing that we are seeing with the general public,” he said, with potential customers with green building inquiries coming in at 10 times the rate that they did even three years ago. “It’s the huge wave of building that’s coming.
“I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than helping people achieve their dreams of building a home and to do it so it’s green, efficient, healthy and durable. It’s a great investment,” he said.
For more information about NAHB’s green building resources, e-mail Calli Schmidt, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8132.
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