How Green Building Can Save the Housing Industry

Green is gold. Why didn't homebuilders get this idea? They could be building new homes again, employing millions, making inner cities and suburbs habitable and bring down the cost of housing for everyone.

Homebuilding needs to join the 21st century and apply the best, efficient technologies to lower costs and reduce energy and resource consumption. But the vast majority of homes have been built using the very best 19th-century, stick-built/balloon frame methods. That's got to change if we want to revive the bedrock of the American Dream.

As it stands now, while you may have the most up-to-date flat-panel TVs, computers, cellphones and audio equipment inside your home, the basic way that most homes are built hasn't changed much in more than 170 years.

That's right. As microprocessors double in speed every 18 months, cellphones are becoming just as powerful as laptop computers and you can connect to nearly anyone on the planet through the internet, the box you live in is antiquated beyond belief and costs you more every year to heat, cool and maintain.

To change this deplorable situation -- and revive real estate, building and banking -- it will require a change in attitude. Think of your personal living space as ecodynamic. It could adjust to the exterior environment cybernetically, tell you when the cheapest electricity is available and program the entire house to use less energy.

Is this something out of the new Star Trek movie? Hardly. Ecodynamic homes are not only being built, they are being assembled. That's an important distinction.

Rather than building everything on site with framing and two-by-fours, modular units are pre-made to exacting specifications in factories, then loaded on flat-bed trucks and assembled on site. This not only cuts the construction time and cost from one-third to one-half, it eliminates tons of waste that end up in landfills. The end-result is energy-efficient, low-maintenance and will produce energy and conserve water.

An ecodynamic home is always working for you to reduce costs. It saves water in cisterns, prevents heat from leaking out in the winter and keeps a breeze flowing in summer. You use less energy because the house's computer is constantly monitoring conditions and directing resources to where they are needed. Don't need to heat or cool a spare bedroom? The system will know and cut your bills.

Sounds good so far, but aren't these homes really ugly trailers? Throw that image out of your mind. They are loaded and secured onto permanent foundations and can be stunning.

Take a look at architect Michelle Kaufmann's "Smart + Wired Home," a house so innovative it's now on display at Chicago's Museum and Science and Industry. It's an elegant example of a modular, green home that was factory built and constantly monitoring itself with its own eco-computer system. A flat-panel display in the living room can display a graphic that shows the cost of energy that moment, how much of it the house is consuming and the amount of electrons being produced on rooftop solar panels. If it makes more energy than you consume, you sell it back to the power company.

The Smart + Wired Home costs nine times less to heat and three times less to cool than a standard home of the same size. The gorgeous, spacious interior is full of low-voltage lighting, fixtures made of recycled materials and lets in generous amounts of light.

But this is not just a home for museums as Kaufmann hopes to mass produce these homes. If she succeeds (I'm rooting for her), she could become the Henry Ford of homebuilders. Make houses on assembly lines and their costs will come down as economies of scale will be realized. And because they are modular designs, you can easily change the layout or add on extra modules if you need to expand at a cost much lower than stick-built contracting.

What will it take to make green modular homebuilding a major industry? Policymakers will need to implement tax incentives over the next two decades, reward new home-energy technologies with grants and shift tax dollars away from wasteful road building projects into places like the inner city where decent, affordable housing is in short supply.

Some of this is already being seeded through the Obama stimulus plan and budget, although a comprehensive, long-range plan is needed. The upcoming energy/climate change bill would be an ideal place for these ideas. If we get really good at ecodynamic design and manufacturing, we'll be able to export these products to places where durable, inexpensive and green housing is desperately needed: China, India, Africa.

Back in the U.S., homes needn't be so capital intensive and push people into foreclosure and bankruptcy. They can be clean, green and affordable. They can pay us back when they produce energy. To accomplish that, we will need to re-envision the American Dream. Home is where the heart is. Now the political will needs to follow if we're to make homeownership widespread and sustainable.

©2009 John F. Wasik, author of Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream

Comments

[EcoFriend]

This is a great article. Most people don't realize the detrimental impact that building has on energy use and greenhouse gas emission. Buildings account for over 40% of carbon emissions in the United States. That being said, it is crucial that the housing industry receive an eco-friendly facelift. There are companies out there that are making the effort to build more environmentally friendly houses. I came across a company called Free Green (http://www.freegreen.com/?21) that provides house plans accompanied by energy reports detailing how certain designs will perform in certain climates. Each home is designed to perform 30% to 50% better than prescriptive building code energy performance. The Free Green website details many of plans they have already issued, which seem to not only fit the eco-friendly profile, but also offer advanced design capabilities. I also found a great introduction to the components of green building on the California Integrated Waste Management Board website (http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/greenbuilding/Materials/).

If anyone comes across more interesting information on greening the housing industry, please share!

EcoFriend

[pm247]

I hope homebuilders get this message -- Modernize Now.

And enough with the McMansion look. Clean modern-style architecture to go along with green modular construction. That would be nice.

[strawhouses]

While the houses you describe would be an improvement over much of what is currently being built, a much better choice is to use natural building materials. Research strawbale construction, earthbag building, adobe houses and so on. There are many ways to use locally available, natural, non-toxic, low cost materials -- this is how people have been building since the beginning of time, and how most homes are still built around the world. In addition, natural building methods are user friendly (simple enough for anyone to learn), durable, don't offgas toxic fumes (Google 'sick building syndrome') and typically use much less energy than conventional wood-frame buildings. For example, straw bale walls provide about R-30 of insulation, about double most houses.

There are thousands of websites and hundreds of books now available. Here's one good website with 100 sustainable house plans. The same plans can be used for strawbale, earthbag, etc.

Earthbag House Plans: http://earthbagplans.wordpress.com/

[Envirogirl]

A lot of industries are going to have to go green to compete. The world has simply changed and companies that follow old economic models can't keep up. Like the US car industry. They were just left behind in the dust, trying to make money in the short term and ignoring the long term.

The office where I volunteer recently bought a Recycling Printer from this company called RanchCorp. That company's whole philosophy is to create green products, which in the long run will save your business money. There's a little more outlay up front...but the long term savings are worth it.

It's inevitable and the companies that cling to old philosophies are eventually going to go belly up.

[RI]

i used to build eco homes. they cost a bit more than conventionally built ones and I could not get people to pay the premium for them, even though those homes would save much more money over time. For most people, the short-term cost was more of a challenge than the promise of long term gain.

It will take some other kind of incentive, perhaps it will take gas at $5 per gallon or a major carbon tax or some kind of government backed financing to make the difference.

[noneIn2008]

We can help by implementing a few new requirements on any new home built. Limit all houses to 800 sq ft. There really is no need for a stand alone house. Excess house size, over 2,000 sq ft, 10% luxury tax . Limit yard sizes, if needed at all. Require Xeroscaping and tax any water usage. Require at least one tree per 400sq ft of yard.

Limit all families to one house. Add a 10% annual luxury tax to any second homes or vacation homes.