Five Myths about Green Building for Homes

By Kevin Holdridge KDH Residential Designs, LLC

1. Green Building is a Fad.

Green building is a fad an much as high energy costs are a fad. This always gets compared to the 1970’s gas crisis and the emergence of solar panels on homes. The truth is that the ruling bodies in residential building code creation are pushing to have net zero homes by 2030. When organizations like ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers) and USGBC (United States Green Building Council) are setting goals for homes to be net-zero by 2030, I would say that green building is going to become the new standard and trying to sell an old energy pig will be very difficult in the near future. Because of this updating and remodeling older homes to be more energy efficient will continue to be a growing trend.





2. Building Green is Expensive

Green Building is about education. Yes on the surface certain items that go into a green home can be expensive. Some people will even try to sell these features to you by saying that they have a great pay back. These are things that I call gadgets. Getting the latest technology gadgets will always be expensive and that is true with anything. The latest cell phone may cost $500 and a year later, when something better is out, you can buy it for a quarter of the price. The education comes into building as a way to save money in one area in order to be able to spend it in another. This is general accounting. The home can be designed in such a manner as to maximize the materials used. This cuts down on waste and saves in framing costs. An experienced home designer and builder can work together with the trades to make sure that the home is designed and built in the most efficient manner. A little up front planning will go a long way in saving on construction costs, usually enough to keep some gadgets in the budget. Be smart with your gadgets. A solar photovoltaic system that costs $20,000.00 may only save you $70 a month in energy bills so it may be that there are other less expensive ways to save on monthly utility bills like installing a high efficiency pool pump or low flow water fixtures. Generally you can pay for high efficiency items with pre-planning design or by simply making the house smaller. Having your designer work with your builder to create a team around your project is a key. If they refuse to work together, my advice is to find a new team. Also, make sure that you look at the whole house as a system, as your framing costs go down your insulation costs may go up but your HVAC costs should also come down. 





3. A tight house will trap toxic fumes



In order to have an energy efficient home we must be able to control the air exchanges. The biggest argument against building a tight home that I hear is that a house needs to breathe. This is true, but how does it breathe is the question. I equate this to my boat theory. Every boat needs a drain plug. One hole that you can control when it is open and closed. What the theory of “let the house breathe” equates to on my boat is that it’s ok to have a few holes (that you can’t see) that will let in some water because when you lift the boat out of the water it should just leak right back out the same hole. Never mind that because you can’t see the leaks you can’t tell what kind of damage it is doing to your boat. Is the water getting trapped, so when it freezes it will expand making my problem worse next year? Chances are you never know the answer to questions like these until it becomes a larger problem. In humid climates we have to use air conditioners to pull the humidity out of the air. Think of all of that unwanted humidity that is coming into your leaky house every time the air conditioner kicks on. The rule of thumb that needs to be followed here is, “Build Tight, Ventilate Right”. Common sense should take over here. Have your lot tested for things like radon and if you have radon you should simply design a radon mitigation pipe into you home. Make sure that all of your combustion appliances and fireplaces are properly vented and accounted for in your HVAC calculations. Building a tight home makes the HVAC system more efficient by taking out the random variables of leaky construction. It also solves a lot of the maintenance issues that occur from having unwanted air and water intrusion. Remember that wherever air can go so can water.  

4. Green Building techniques can’t be done to custom houses

This is the biggest myth of them all. Large or small, green building techniques can be instituted on every house built. Custom designing your home to your lifestyle needs is the best way to be efficient. The designer can specifically tailor the home to your needs thus reducing wasted unused spaces and rooms. This coupled with using design techniques that use the building materials to their maximum to reduce construction waste should be enough to pay for the design itself twice over. Advanced framing techniques and value engineering alone can save 15%-20% of the overall framing package. The most important part of designing and building a custom home is to have a team of professionals that are well versed in building science and green building techniques.

5. There is too much paperwork for certified homes

Certifications are important to have as proof of building an energy efficient home. There are several different certification programs, each with the same basis premise of energy efficiency. LEED is probably one of the most well know and was originally just for commercial buildings. Now the LEED for Homes is out and this seems to be the most arduous program for paperwork and fees. There are other programs out there that are a little more builder friendly like NAHB Green, EarthCraft, Healthy Built Homes and some locations have their own local green building programs. Generally it is best to have your designer speak with a local third party verifier early in the design process to see which program would best suit your needs. The verifier should do a lot of the documentation and testing but will ultimately define the duties of each of the build team members. Building a team of professionals around your building process is the best way to insure that your home will perform at a high level.

Green Building and Remodeling Starts with Thoughtful Design

Green Building starts with thoughtful design by Kevin Holdridge
    A good home design should take into account the most efficient use of space and be fit to the lifestyle of the end-user as well as having a great proportional aesthetic exterior.  Many of our custom home design clients get hung up on price per square foot numbers when building a house. The theory is that if a house is too expensive then the natural reaction would be to make the home smaller. I can agree with this theory to a point and then I think it's just hooey. I used to say that there are two ways to save money on building a house, square footage and specification levels, but now I have learned a few more ways to save money while building a new home.
    This is where having a good design firm pays off. Designing a custom home should be just that, custom. A potential client should be prepared to tell their designer not only what style home they are looking for but how they plan to use the space. If the residential designer doesn't ask you questions about your family size, whether you like to entertain large gatherings, how many vehicles you have, is this a primary residence, and the most important question how long do you plan to live at this residence, then you will not get a custom home. With these basic questions left unanswered the design process can be disastrous. A good design firm should get to know their client's personality and offer up traffic patterns in the floor plan that match the client's lifestyle. When thinking about designing a home a client should begin by taking pictures or finding items in magazines as to convey their tastes to a designer. I personally never design a home unless I can walk the lot with the client first. I also like to see the home that they are currently living in and how they use the space. This holds key pieces of information as we are creatures of habit. If a client tells me that they saw a picture of a fireplace in a Master Bedroom that they liked but they currently don't have this in their house now. Chances are this feature will never be used so I feel that it is my responsibility to discuss the pros and cons of these type features. I personally do not promote that my clients or even the builders that I work with, ever tell a client to go find an on-line or magazine plan to get started. This is an exercise in futility for a custom home client. This process can consume a tremendous amount of time and leave the client feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. On-line or magazine plan books are designed to appeal to masses of people that want to build a nice house, but not a custom house. As there are many great plans and designers to choose from in this avenue of the home design business, this is not a custom home. These may be used for a client to try to hone their likes and dislikes but don't bring a magazine plan to a custom designer and ask them to fix it to fit your needs. One, that would be copyright infringement to the plan book designer and two, it would be handcuffing your custom home designer's creativeness. An analogy that fits is that a person that would like a custom motorcycle is not going to shop at the local Harley Davidson dealership. Though the Harley Davidson dealership has plenty of great bikes, that person is going to find a custom fabrication shop and is going to tell the bike designer exactly what they want and have the bike fit to thier personality.
   When a home is custom designed to fit a clients needs you will find that there is very little wasted space, maximizing the the use of the square footage is a huge plus. Next the plan must be designed in a way to maximize the building materials to prevent waste. Your designer will have to have a good knowledge of construction practices to achieve the maximum use of the building materials. This is where I differ on the just reduce the square footage thoery. Say the house comes in a little too big and the builder suggests taking 6"-12" out of each room to bring the square footage down. This sounds like a great idea but did it save you any money? That all depends on the floor plan dimensions. More than likely this will just result in more cutting and wasting of building material. Remember the home owner is paying for the material so if  I told you that you could have a room that was sixteen feet wide or fifteen feet wide for the same amount of material, which would you want?
   If you are in the market for a custom built home or if you are living in a home that has rooms that you never use call KDH Residential Designs and we can help you end your frustrations. Maximize your custom home purchase by creating a knowledgable team around your project. Whether you have a builder or need to meet a few builders give us a call. 704-909-2755 to set up a consultation. We are also looking for builders that would like to bring thier building costs down in order to be more competitive in thier markets by working smarter rather than harder.

Green Building in the Charlotte Metro Area

Green Building in the Charlotte Metro Area

A slow moving movement has begun and in the coming months will become a fast paced necessity. Green building has been getting widely accepted by many builders, not only in Charlotte but throughout the country. There are some production builders right now that are going to be displaying a HERS rating score on every house they build to prove the home's efficiency. The new 2012 residential building code is going to up the stakes on energy values throughout the home, and yet I am still seeing opposition from some people in the custom home builders market. The problem stems from trying to take any old house plan that is off the shelf or designed inefficiently and trying to retrofit the home to be energy efficient in the field. This seems like a very frustrating way to do things. I am sure that this would increase costs, have plenty of room for error and slow production. The key thing with green building is that you have to treat each house as a system. The system not only includes the framing, insulation, mechanical systems and the foundation but needs to extend to the designer, home owner, and site conditions. I have spoken to several builders that say that green building is a waste of time or it causes more problems than it solves. To that I say, get better educated or build a better team because you are doing something wrong. Building a tight home does cause other factors of the home to be considered. When building an air tight home, if the builder never accounts for proper ventilation, then the home will fill with moisture and begin to mold. If the HVAC system is not properly sized, then it will not run long enough to dehumidify and will cause a moisture problem. If a sealed crawl space is used without proper positive drainage a water problem will occur. All of these problems can be avoided with proper communication and planning starting with a good home design team. If the HVAC contractor doesn't know that the house is planned for 2x6 studs @ 24" on centers with R-20 spray foam insulation and a conditioned attic then he will not be able to properly size the unit or the duct work. The reverse of that is if the builder specifies these items to the HVAC contractor and for some reason goes back to conventional framing and R-13 batt insulation, then the unit again will not be properly sized. Then we have technical items that will ruin all of the efforts of building green homes like where and how to provide proper drainage planes, flashings and sealants.
    In order to build a truly efficient home, the design and construction documents must be detailed and devised in a way to increase productivity and decrease the amount of resources used in the construction of the home, as well as being an efficient use of space for the way the home owner will live in the home. Assembling a team of professionals that are educated on building science and that will communicate with each other throughout the entire building process is the only way that green building will be cost effective. A proper home design can be made to reduce construction waste by using advanced framing techniques and using proper sheet good dimensions to reduce material cutting. As our industry looks for ways to make green building more affordable, we need to look at changing the ways we do business. It is very inexpensive to have a meeting with the trades to explain what is expected and to educate them on certain aspects of critical installation. It is very expensive and time consuming to ignore this communication which could cause a builder to change out HVAC, plumbing, or lighting equipment if the wrong items were installed or quoted.
      At KDH Residential Designs we have a passion for delivering to our client the best possible system that they can have. A green home doesn't necessarily need expensive gadgets and gizmos. All it needs is to be designed, detailed and built efficiently and tight. Items such as solar panels, geo-thermal heating/cooling systems, spray foam insulation, and recycled building materials obviously factor into building a sustainable home and will continue to become more affordable, but none of these items are needed to build a green home. Call it what you will, a high performance house, a green home, a sustainable home, or whatever catch phase in popular today, the key is to build a team of educated professionals that understand building science. Start with a good home design that is not only tailored to the way the home will be used but tailored to the lot, the climate, the home owner and the overall energy efficiency goals.
     Green is not always something that a consumer can buy. It's a lifestyle change. If you can't afford a 20% water reducing shower head then simply cut four minutes off of your twenty minute shower. If you do buy the water reducing shower head then snow ball the effect by reducing your shower time anyway. If you have solar panels on your house that save you three hundred dollars a year on your energy bill, don't brag to me when buy an Energy Star refrigerator and put the old non rated refrigerator in your garage that costs you four hundred dollars a year to run in a hot unconditioned space. The high performance home is a system and should be properly planned, executed and maintained. The system should include the residential designer, the builder, all of the trades, the mechanical equipment, plumbing fixtures, electrical components, and most of all the home owner. If the home owner doesn't know how to properly maintain or operate the components of the home or if it the system is overly complicated, the system will break down and not be used to it's maximum capacity. It would be like wondering why your car is broken down only to find out that the dealer should have told you that you should change your oil periodically. A true high efficiency home should come with an owner's manual. If you don't have one then you are probably not living in a high efficiency home.
    Feel free to contact KDH Residential Designs and ask for Kevin Holdridge. He will be able to help you unlock your imagination and help you assemble your team to build your next dream home or to remodel your existing home to make it fit your lifestyle and save on energy in the process.

Design to Domicile

We started with a blank canvas. A vacant lot with some slight topography. Working the current slight right to left fall of the property KDH Residential Designs designed this custom home to maximize the allotted space. Kevin Holdridge designed this home with the garage on the low side of the lot to allow for the ability to work out a split level design on the left side of the property. The design allows for the garage to be located between the first floor and the basement. This home has a home office and recreation room over the garage which is a half of a flight of stairs above the standard first floor elevation. The almost finished front elevation, pictured here, ties this design feature in seamlessly. We were able to get a daylight basement to the rear of the property by using this split level design without a tremendous amount of fall from front to back on this particular lot. The elevated front porch gives the house great presence from the street and from the garage level we are a half of a flight of stairs in from the first floor or the basement. The traffic flow of the floor is wonderfully unique in that from the

home office, the owner is on an intermediate level five feet above the first floor and five feet below the second floor. This home office design allows for quiet and privacy during working hours with the flexibility of being near the family in a moments notice.

KDH Residential Designs is always looking for it's next challenge whether it's a new home design or a remodel to an existing home. Let us help you Unlock Your Imagination. www.kdhresidentialdesigns.com

Ask us about how to design green features into your home without breaking the bank.

Ask a Residential Designer

Question Small but Funtional Laundry Room


We have made a move to DOWNSIZE our life. And one of the hardest to do was my laundry room. We are a busy, stinky, dirty family of Five that has tons of laundry n a daily bases. So when we moved in to our new home and the laundry room was pint size I have to make some alterations!
First Thing we did was to take down the useless above laundry cabinets. Then we painted it all nice and pretty. They we added a shelf where we could put baskets to sort each family members small items. We made sure the shelf could also accommodate hangers. So now all laundry that comes out of the dryer is either hung up and sorted on the hanging part of the shelf or it is sorted in the baskets. Each day (in an ideal world) my family gets "their" folded and hung clean cloths and takes them to their room. Also I got a "over the door" shoe organizer that I sort each persons socks! If you have any organizing ideas I would love to hear them.

Answer Response
It sounds like you have already done a lot of the right things. At KDH Residential Designs we have been helping people downsize from a larger home to a smaller more sustainable home recently. When we can design for this from scratch we can design to take advantage of every inch of space. We also get involved with remodeling projects and quite often see your exact situation. Staying organized in a confined space is key. The use of the short hanging and basket storage that you have could possibly be more efficient if you were able to run a wooden shelf and rod a little higher than your existing shelf and left a center section for full taller hanging and built simple open faced cubbies on either side. The shelf can be near the ceiling because we aren't trying to access anything on top of it. The cubbies would be down lower and more accessible than the baskets you have now. I don't know the layout of your home but I know that quite often a laundry closet is near an attic or second floor stair. Locating this small area under a stair is useful for easy storage with minimal remodeling. With front load washers a counter top can be installed above the machines and provide you a much needed workspace or folding space also. Our company tag line when designing custom homes and remodels is "Unlock Your Imagination" and sometimes that relates to how you make your existing space work for you. Good Luck, I hope some of this helps. Kevin Holdridge - KDH Residential Designs.

If you have any similar questions that you need answered about how to better utilize space please feel free to drop us a line and we will try to help in any way we can.

Evolved Home Collection Launch

The launch of our Evolved Home Plan prototype at the Southern Ideal Home Show was a huge success. We won the People's Choice Award and the live model home was toured and admired by thousands of attendees. Furthering the momentum of the Home Show prototype, in October we are launching the second home design in this collection, Evolved Home Plan 2000. Follow this link to veiw all of the homes in the Evolved Home Collection

The Evolved Home Collection brings to life the passion Cobalt DBS has to provide affordable, sustainable housing that never compromises on style. Our designer, Kevin Holdridge at KDH Residential Home Designs
brings a unique vision to the partnership.

KDH Residential Designs and builder Cobalt DBS have team together to create a series of homes that are sustainable, green certified ready and affordable. If you or any of your clients are looking for land or currently own land and are looking to build an energy efficient green home, please check out these sustainable house plans from 1,000 sf to 2,500 sf. These plans are perfect for small infill lots. The feedback that we have received from the Southern Ideal Home Show proved that we reached a large demographic from empty nesters to first time home buyers. These are high performing homes with a tremendous amount of green features designed into the plans and specifications. Designing the home to use less material and have less waste is important but working with a builder to pull everything together is key. Cobalt DBS has teamed up with our firm to come up with a specification level that addresses water efficiency, indoor air quality, high performance windows, high perforamnce HVAC and insulation systems and the use of low maintenance veneers while staying on a very strict budget.
  
As a mainly custom home design firm, we can also offer any of these green design features to our custom clients that have specific needs. Please feel free to contact KDH Residential Designs at 704.909.2755 or Cobalt DBS at 704.365.3038 if you have any specific needs, comments or questions.

Team Building

In these times of slow to no development in the real estate market I have seen many of my Realtor contacts lose their positions or go into other forms of work. As one to Charlotte's premiere design firms we are all about team building and offering specials to like minded individuals. We have been running specials and referral fees with our builder clients that are members of the local HBA to build our business network. The one area that our company would like to focus on now is the Realtor market. Recently, I spoke to a few agents and asked them how I could help them sell lots in their subdivision. What we came up with was to design "phantom spec homes". They would give me their "trouble" lots that seemed to be less attractive to their prospective clients due to questions about how to use the site properly. I would design homes to fit these lots to show the clients what type of home could be build on the lot. Advertising the property with a vision of what could be built on the particular site helped the prospective clients to visulalize what their home could look like or how the current topography could be used. This has also worked for clients that need to fix up their homes or make small additions to make their property more desirable for re-sale. We will also create a quick sketch for a prospective client that is preparing to buy a current home but would like to make slight alterations after the purchase. When our Realtor associate hears that a certain client would buy the home if it had a screened porch or if the master bedroom was a little bigger, we can quickly go to the home and draw up what this addition could look like. From the design sketch the prospective buyer can figure into their budget the cost of said renovation and make an educated offer based on their findings. This is generally done by our associte taking a picture of the home and giving us a couple key dimensions. We offer this as a team building exercise right now at no cost to our Realtor associates. The effort is to build better business relationships and help boost new and old home sales. If you are interested about being part of the team please visit http://www.kdhdesign.com/ for our contact information and portfolio of work. Thank you and I look forward to meeting and building lasting relationships with some of our forward thinking associates. Also, I would love to hear if anyone has any other ideas about how our design firm could help you boost sales.