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Energy Advisor: More builders focus on green to save energy

By Clark Public Utilities
Published: August 25, 2016, 6:01am

Green homes that create more energy than they consume, this is the vision of some local home builders. Working toward that goal is Troy Johns of Northwest Urban Homes and a member of the BIA’s Green Building Council. Today, his company builds many of the area’s homes meeting the National Green Building Code Standard.

Contractors can build to the NGBS standard even without seeking certification from Home Innovation Research Labs, which certifies that houses meet the standard. In Clark County, Kent Mitchell of Swiftsure Energy Services collects data for Home Innovation and advises builders about qualifying. Today 93 homes in the county meet the standard. However, Mitchell says there’s growing interest in gaining certification since the county adopted the voluntary standard in 2010.

“While the county worked toward NGBS, I dug into it and found it very forward looking,” Johns said. NGBS has four pillars, he explained: durability, sustainability, energy conservation and air quality. The result is a home that is well-constructed, comfortable, efficient and healthy.

In April, the American National Standards Institute, the largest standard organization in the nation, also adopted the voluntary standard. To acquire an NGBS bronze, silver or emerald certification, a home must gain a certain number of points in each pillar. For homebuyers, the NGBS.com website explains the standard and its benefits.

Durability requires homes last 50 to 100 years. Sustainability demands homes have a lighter impact on the environment through reduced building waste and lumber, nails and other materials sourced within 500 miles. It also means any building products used take less energy to make, for example, using green, instead of kiln-dried lumber.

“We’ve cut the 8,000 pounds of waste building a new home produces by 80 percent,” Johns said. “And we’re working on ways to lower even that.”

To meet energy conservation needs, builders tighten homes and erect them with details such as staggering nail patterns to limit heat transfer to the outside. The tighter homes hold warm air in and use heat return ventilators (HRVs) that reclaim most of the energy used for heating and cooling. But, a snug home can also hold in toxic chemicals that alter indoor air quality, so it’s important that these principles all work together.

Looking to the future, NW Urban Homes prewires houses for solar at no cost to the buyer. “Even if the buyer doesn’t want solar now, when the house sells again, prewiring makes it easy for the new owner to add solar,” he said.

Last weekend local folks interested in green homes and technologies roamed the ProBuild Green Home Street Fair at Urban Meadows off 152nd Avenue to see the latest in green living innovations. Two homes were finished and a third, the Edgewood, showed bare framing so visitors could see what’s behind the walls.

Inside the Edgewood, interpretive signs on open studs explained the building mysteries hidden within walls. Event visitors examined the sealant around the framing and holes that stop air leakage. They touched the blown-in adhesive blanket insulation that reduces insulation sagging. And they followed the four-inch ducts that spread heat more evenly through the home.

One finished home, the Willamette, featured gray water recycling. Dirty water from the washing machine watered the lawn. Its upstairs toilet had a sink over the tank to gather soapy water from hand washing for flushing, all in an effort to reduce the amount of resources used without limiting comfort or convenience.

Johns said many building materials contain chemicals that home buyers can smell and can cause health problems. Products such as paint, carpets and glues naturally release volatile organic compounds and can affect the air quality of a house. For that reason, the event homes avoided anything emitting VOCs.

“Meeting the voluntary NGBS code is doing the minimum, in our view” Johns said. “These three homes all exceed that standard.”

Learn more about the many innovations in green home building at vancouvergreenbuilding.com.


Energy Adviser is written by Clark Public Utilities. Send questions to ecod@clarkpud.com or to Energy Adviser, c/o Clark Public Utilities, P.O. Box 8900, Vancouver, WA 98668.

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