Second LEED Certified Home!

John Marshall Custom Homes of Davidson, North Carolina is pleased to announce that our home at 631 James Alexander Way in downtown Davidson has been LEED certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. This home becomes the 2nd home in Davidson to be LEED certified, the 1st being the one we built at 233 Catawba in 2010.

LEED is the most recognized green-building program, and we are proud to be a leader in LEED certification. The LEED process ensures independent verification that the homeowner is getting a home that is highly energy and water efficient, has high indoor air quality, and was built in such a way to minimize the impact on the environment.

This blog was started to accompany construction of our 1st LEED home. Please check out prior posts to learn more about the LEED process, and how LEED benefits the homeowner.

For more information about John Marshall Custom Homes, please visit our website at www.johnmarshallcustomhomes.com, or follow us on facebook at facebook.com/greenbuilder.

Davidson Springs Community Garden

Green building isn't just about building an efficient, environmentally friendly home. It's also about an overall healthy lifestyle that includes walking, exercising, and enjoying local foods, among other things.

In our Davidson Springs neighborhood we are providing resources to encourage all of the above. Our new community garden is just one place where homeowners can get outside, sweat a bit, and best of all enjoy some very local food.

A community garden is a great space where neighbors can interact, and it also provides an opportunity for homeowners on smaller lots to act out their inner green thumb. In that spirit we began a community garden in Davidson Springs, our neighborhood of custom homes in the heart of downtown Davidson, North Carolina.

This year the garden features corn, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, watermelon and pumpkins. Sunflowers and a variety of annual and perennial flowers provide a splash of color. A nice fence surrounds the garden since our neighborly cordiality does not extend to our four legged friends!

Come by and see the community garden on James Alexander Way. And, as the sign says, “tend some and take some.” Enjoy.

Preserving Our Natural Resources

They say a picture tells a thousand words. Look at this photo and what do you see? For the most part, I see a tree. Sure, there is an awfully nice home too, but by and large I see the tree.

I see a photo that tells a story of life, of birds singing, leaves providing protection from a hot summer sun, and leaves providing a glorious palette of colors in the fall. The tree also enhances the beauty of the home, framing it and providing a context.

Take away the tree, and the photo tells a vastly different story. Quiet, lifeless. The hot summer sun beating down mercilessly on the home, causing it to wear out and causing utility bills to soar. A stark, lonely home.

Green building programs such as LEED mandate tree protection. The concept is quite simple: keep things away from trees during construction. Keep them watered and fed. Engage an arborist who can prescribe treatments to minimize the stress from construction.

What is the value of a four-foot diameter oak tree? Davidson just put price tags on some of its trees as a way to show the value of the tree. Personally I think the valuations are way too low. How can you value something that cannot be replaced for decades? How much extra would someone pay for a house with no trees around it versus a home with mature shade trees? I think the answer is in the several thousands of dollars.

In spite of their value, there are still contractors who take few if any steps to protect trees. I wish mandates were not necessary, but unfortunately I believe they are. Davidson and other towns need to mandate tree protection programs for construction projects, and customers need to be educated about tree protection so they can insist that their builder follow good practices.

Insist on green building. It’s not just good for the home.

Take A Healthy Walk To The Bank

More than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas. An urban area does not have to be a large city, but can be a location such as downtown Davidson North Carolina that features a concentration of community resources such as shopping, banks, churches, libraries and educational institutions.

The desire to live in an urban area transcends generations. The younger generation recognizes the health benefits of being able to walk places, while older homeowners also wish to be on their feet more.

The trend to urbanization is driven by economic, environmental, health and financial trends.

Economic and environmental trends both come down to reducing dependence on the automobile. Nearly 20% of the budget of the typical American family goes towards transportation. Couple that with the contribution cars make towards greenhouse gases, and its easy to see why many people desire to reduce their dependence on their automobile.

Did you ever work up a sweat driving to the store? Or to church? Probably not. There is an obesity epidemic underway in the United States, and much of it is fueled by our reliance on the automobile. Americans still want to get out and walk, but in many cases they are forced to drive. By moving to urban neighborhoods such as John Marshall Custom Homes’ Davidson Springs community in downtown Davidson North Carolina, homeowners have much more opportunity to use their feet for exercise, not just pushing down on a gas pedal.

A final reason that urban neighborhoods are growing in popularity is that they offer a better return on investment compared to suburbs. Mecklenburg County recently completed a revaluation of properties, and the results were clear: since 2003 areas such as downtown Davidson have increased by over 50% in value, while the suburbs have seen single-digit gains and in many cases a loss in value. It’s simple supply and demand. The area that is within a five minute walk to downtown Davidson is fixed. Couple increasing demand with a limited supply, and you’ve got a recipe for continued appreciation in housing values.

By living in an urban neighborhood, you can literally and figuratively take a walk to the bank.

Cornhole Can Be Green!

When we have an open house at one of our LEED homes, the question I am most frequently asked is “what makes this house green?” I frequently answer that question by first addressing all of the things apart from the home that make a home green.

Green building is not just the structure and mechanics of a home. Green building is also very much concerned with promoting healthy lifestyles. For example, a home that is located in a downtown location close to shopping, schools, libraries and restaurants promotes a healthy lifestyle because it facilitates walking to these ‘community resources’ instead of always getting in the car. A pedestrian friendly location is of course also beneficial to the environment since it reduces emissions.

We built our latest LEED home in downtown Davidson for an active adult. While the home was built on a small, one-tenth acre lot, we created a number of spaces where the homeowner can get outside. In these photos we show a space that we designed for cornhole, a favorite pastime of the homeowner and her grandchildren. We also created other outdoor spaces such as a flower garden, raised beds for gardens, and a patio.

There’s not enough space to play flag football, but if the homeowner wants to do that it’s only a three minute walk to a public space where there is ample room for football. This convenient location is another aspect of green building: locating neighborhoods where there is easy access to public recreational activities such as parks, fields and greenways. These locations facilitate building homes on smaller lots, and thus minimizing the loss of open space. Open space preservation will be a topic of a future green building blog. Stay tuned.

Tighten It Up!

As we're wrapping up construction of 631 James Alexander Way, a number of tests for both ENERGY STAR and LEED certification are conducted. These tests help to verify that the house performs as designed, with the result being not only a more efficient home, but also a comfortable and healthy home as well.

This video shows a blower door test being conducted. The blower door simulates the effects of a 35 mile per hour wind on the home, and measures how much air leaks out of the house under this condition.

For a house this size, the maximum air leakage that is permissible under ENERGY STAR guidelines is about 2,200 CFM (cubic feet per minute). As the video shows, the actual leakage from this house was subsequently less. Although the video shows a rate of about 900 cfm, the official test result was just over 700 cfm (we later discovered that someone had cracked open a window during the video 'shoot'). Thus, the house is about three times as tight as ENERGY STAR requires, and as the technician states, about six times tighter than a "to code," non-ENERGY STAR home.

What does this mean to the homeowner? First, a tight home results in significantly greater energy efficiency and lower utility bills. Those who followed the construction and testing of our LEED certified home at 233 Catawba Avenue in Davidson will recall that utility bills are half of those of similar sized homes. Second, a more comfortable home. Some of the other tests that are conducted verify that the output from the HVAC system is properly distributed, and temperatures and pressures are balanced throughout the house. Thus, the chances of cold or hot spots in the home are greatly reduced.

LEED is your customer's assurance that a home has not only been designed to the highest standards, but also tested to verify compliance with those standards. Do not settle for less.

You Don't Have to Paint Your Pebbles to Be Green

I spent several years of my youth in Tucson, AZ. Tucson averages about 10 inches of rain a year (compare that to 40 for Charlotte), and it is not uncommon to go weeks without rain, especially in the hottest summer months.

Plants adapt to this environment by having large root systems and few leaves, or in the case of cacti they store water in their fleshy pads. Animals adapt by basically staying out of the heat. The desert is alive with animals at night and in the early morning, but come high noon all of the critters have gone underground, literally.

Humans have adapted to this dry, hot climate by getting their rocks colored. Yes, you read that right. They color their rocks.

Now, many people who move to the desert try to bring their hometown with them. They plant lots of grass, irrigate it endlessly, and plant non-native trees that remind them of their home back East. This is why people who move to the desert to escape the allergies find their allergies worse than ever before.

But, there's another group of people who don't try to beat the heat, but rather join it. They plant native species like cacti and mesquite trees, and instead of grass their front yards are landscaped with pebbles. But, to trick you into thinking they have a verdant grass yard, every spring they get the pebbles painted green. It's really hard to tell the difference between a painted pebble and grass until you get within a half-mile.

In North Carolina we don't have the harsh conditions of the desert. Nonetheless, water is a precious resource, and one that must be conserved and managed just like we do with electricity. Not too many years ago we experienced the driest year in recorded history, with water restrictions, brown lawns, and dirty cars. We continue to create more people, but the water supply is relatively fixed. That is not a sustainable equation.

We use some simple yet effective approaches to conserving water on our LEED homes. Landscaping is comprised entirely of native plants that by definition don't require supplemental irrigation. Turf is limited to no more than 40% of the softscape, and we use a drought tolerant turf. To the extent we use irrigation systems, they are designed to be efficient and to only come on when needed (and not to come on in the middle of a downpour). Lots are tilled prior to planting so that rain will soak into the soil instead of running off of compacted clay.

Inside, we use low flow faucets, toilets and shower heads which conserve water but provide the same level of performance as standard fixtures. The design of the plumbing system is important too, with points earned if all of the fixtures are located within a certain distance of the hot water source.

There are more exotic things that can be done to save water, like diverting "gray" water from showers and sinks to be used to flush toilets, or collecting rainwater in a cistern to be used for irrigation. These approaches are not for everyone's budget or taste.

Our approach helps conserve water, which is one of our most precious resources. In turn the homeowner saves on their water bills. Equally important, a LEED home is also a nicely landscaped home. Check back in a month or so and I'll post some photos of the landscaping on the home we're presently building on James Alexander Way in downtown Davidson. I think you'll be impressed.