Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Evolved Home Collection

Recently KDH Residential Design was asked to come up with what we are calling "The Evovled Home Collection". The first plan in the series was recently built inside The Plaza during the Fall Ideal Home Show in Charlotte. This was a two bedroom / two bath house that was 920 square feet. It featured many luxury upgrades such as granite countertops and bamboo flooring and because of fore thinking and value engineering we were able to keep the price per square foot below $100. The home was designed to have a very high insulation value based on the way we designed the framing and the windows. We will be launching the rest of the series of homes soon to include plans in many different styles and sizes from 1000sf-2500sf. All of the homes will be designed to receive a green ceritifcation and all will have similar specifications. Over the week-end long show we received a tremendous amount of feedback from potential home buyers on this product line. Keep an eye on our website www.kdhdesign.com and the builders website www.cobaltdbs.com for more details.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Green building - Eat what you need

In past years we would design homes so that the owner could live in the house for up to five years, accumulate some value in the property and sell the home for a profit only to start the cycle again. This cycle has slowed down if not stopped. To me this means we have to change our way of designing a home. Now we are designing a custom home for the long haul. Our clients don't plan on moving again. They want to be comfortable but they don't need 4,000-8,000 square feet anymore. Energy costs are going up fast and the larger inefficient homes aren't going to be desirable anymore. We are seeing a complete market shift forced by lifestyle changes. Will it cycle out? Maybe. But the recent economic downturn has taught us all how to make the dollar stretch a little more.


We also hear this term "Green" everywhere. Whether it's flooring, paints, windows, homes, cleaners, automobiles, newspapers, office buildings, etc. What does it really mean? It probably means something different to everyone. To some of my builder clients it's a scary new place that is untested and different from how they build things now. Scary and new means more expensive to consumers. Granted there is some merit in this because some of the new products on the market are priced a little higher than the lower end items that some builders use in their homes. I equate this to fast food vs. healthy food. Ever wonder why society as a whole is getting fatter and out of shape? It's our economic and lifestyle choices. We need to get home from work and take the kids to soccer practice so we only have time to stop in for a burger and fries. An extra value meal is only five dollars, so why not save time and money. Buying fruits and vegetables is expensive and you may not have time to actually cook a meal before they go bad. We eat quick unhealthy foods because the alternative is time consuming and expensive. This thought process has increased other costs in our lives. Now we need gym memberships or lengthily doctor visits to give us drugs that reduce the effects of our unhealthy lifestyles. It's easy to make bad choices on the fly but now that the dust has settled and the building market is slow, shouldn't we be looking at healthy choices instead of fast food choices. But how we can pay for these expensive healthy items when building a home? Let's try using square footage to our advantage. The initial cost of building a home is dwarfed by the energy costs the home will consume over its life span. Anything we can do to reduce the amount of maintenance and non-renewable consumption in a home is good thing. People will talk to you about pay backs and how some things don’t make sense financially. Most of the time these numbers are skewed because of the unknown cost of future utilities. Non-Renewable resources are named that for a reason. The more we use, the less there is and the less there is, the more it costs.

This gets back to how we design for the long haul. We all want to age gracefully and the design of your home can attribute to that. Using products that require less maintenance, produce less allergens and that are easy to use is a must. As we age our vision gets darker. Things are not as bright and crisp as they once were. We need to bring more natural light into out homes. It becomes harder to get up and down stairs and to bend over as we age. This can be handled by designing most of our daily activities, if not all on one floor. We can also raise things to prevent excessive bending. Properly placed outlets, hose bibbs, and countertops. Air quality is a key in healthy living. Installing materials that reduce the amount of out-gasses in the air and installing and maintaining the proper filters on our air exchangers is high priority. Clutter becomes a problem the older we get, so having plenty of storage is going to help us avoid a cluttered home. Of course, the best thing we can do about clutter is not to have any. Find a way to repurpose or recycle some items that haven’t been touched in years. Keeping a clutter free home as we age also makes it easier for our family members visit and easier to tend to our possessions after we pass. This in turn will reduce the stress on our children and help keep a good relationship while we are still around.

Let's try thinking outside of the box a little. What happened during this economic downturn? Business owners trimmed the fat. We streamlined our companies to be smaller and more cost efficient by consuming less. Less energy, less rent, less payroll, less consumption. We can turn this same model to anything we make, especially houses. Homes can be built with less wood by increasing the stud spacing, stack framing and building with better products. Engineered lumber is a renewable resource and dimensional lumber continues to get weaker and weaker as the number of our old growth trees dwindle. Solar power and wind power both viable renewable resources that are being used today. High performance windows, water efficient fixtures, high insulation ratings, and HVAC system upgrades are important items to building an energy efficient home. The most important item that we always forget about when we are building a green home is the home owner. An uneducated home owner is the worst thing that anyone could ever put in a "Green Home". The home has a state of the art HVAC system, high performance windows, low flow water efficient fixtures and yet we still aren't seeing any savings. How could this be? Well our home owner continues to consume as much energy as possible without thinking of the consequences. The high efficiency HVAC system is running full blast while the high performance windows are open and the kids are all taking thirty minute showers.

Green is a lifestyle change not a gadget we can buy. Putting renewable, sustainable, low consumption items in our homes is only a piece of the puzzle. A great start. Going the extra mile to think about how you are effecting the consumption of non-renewable resources and teaching your children, your neighbor and your friends how to consume less is another piece of the puzzle. Education is the most important part of living green. One person might not make a difference but if we share our experiences with as many people as we can, maybe someday society will realize using less non-renewable resources is a healthy choice. The all you can eat mentality needs to be shifted. Eat what you need and leave some for someone else.