BUILT GREEN It’s not a new concept

Home builders have known how to “build green” for years, long before it was fashionable.
Back in 1995, the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver (HBA), along with the Governor’s Office of Energy Management, Public Service Company of Colorado (now Xcel Energy) and E-Star Colorado created what
was called the Built Green Colorado program.

This program, according to the HBA, was originally set
up to motivate new-home-building professionals to do
the following:

• Provide greater energy efficiency and reduce pollution
• Provide healthier indoor air
• Reduce water usage
• Preserve natural resources
• Improve durability and reduce maintenance

If a builder claims its house is Built Green, the firm must be registered with the program and has to meet specific requirements. Every construction project is different, so requirements vary from home to home.

What Built Green is

Energy efficiency. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, home builders have employed better construction techniques to help conserve more of this precious resource. Some examples of energy efficiency include better insulation, adding panes to windows, and reducing power consumption in furnaces and air conditioners. The homes need to last for many years, so planning before building is critical. And utility bills take a larger percentage of our budget than they did even 10 years ago.

The Built Green philosophy aims to reduce the brown cloud hovering over Colorado’s Front Range cities. Power plants that burn coal or natural gas to generate electricity contribute to this pollution problem. That’s why today’s new homes need to be as energy-efficient as possible.

With gas prices around $4 per gallon, reducing the dependence on natural resources to heat and cool homes is critical. When the builder uses materials that insulate and seal well, and plans for energy-efficient appliances and lighting along with solar designs, it’s an investment in our energy future.

Resource conservation. Simply, the fewer natural resources used in construction, the better off the environment will be.

If the builder employs engineered lumber products in the home’s construction rather than using natural wood from old-growth forests, quality is better, straightness of the “wood” is more uniform and the forest is left alone.

Construction waste is being more and more diverted to recycling centers rather than landfills. Recycled-content building materials are a hot item today and if remanufactured correctly, no one can tell what you’re using has been used before.

Despite last winter’s plentiful snowfall, water still must be conserved as much as possible. Continued growth in the Denver metro area will bring greater demands to the water supply and during drought years, having enough water on hand helps a lot. Using water-saving appliances and drought-friendly landscaping is a step in the right direction.

Indoor air quality. Remember touring new homes in years past and having your sense of smell get hit with the various odors of new construction? Those odors have been reduced in Built Green homes, as formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been reduced or eliminated from cabinets, floors, furniture, shelving and countertops.

The building materials industry has responded with solvent-free adhesives and paints without VOCs. The HBA reports that “new construction materials such as OSB and Medite that contain no formaldehyde are entering the market.”

This article just scratches the surface on what today’s home builders are doing to enhance the quality of the homes we live in. When shopping for a new home, quiz your builder to find out if the home offered are really “Built Green.” For more information on the Built Green program, see BuiltGreen.org and HBADenver.com.
~ Tim Coy