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HomeGreen Cipherin’ – What’s Slowing the Mainstreaming of Green Building, and What Homeowners Can Do about It
April 10th, 2012MLSs (Multiple Listing Services) across the country are unveiling “green-field addenda” (GFAs) and searchable fields to highlight green features. Twenty-five percent of new-home sales are ENERGY STAR-certified, and utility programs across the country are providing rebates to overhaul existing homes. Early data from places like the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina are showing that yes, in fact, there is a “green premium” – a price bump for sellers with green features.
Sandy Adomatis, appraiser and Vice Chair of the National Education Committee, Appraisal Institute (From Adomatis Appraisal Service).
Green-building advocates feel like a green renaissance within home construction and renovation—an Emerald City – is on the horizon. But appraisers have been the big buzz kill at the party. As an industry, they’ve refused to assign higher valuation to energy-efficient features that save homeowners money on utility bills or create healthful environments.
What’s been missing, appraisers say, are data points to support higher valuations of those features, and lending underwriters able to reconcile higher appraisal values with federal lending guidelines.
GETTING ON THE GREEN-BUILDING BANDWAGON
The Appraisal Institute is hot on the trail, and last fall, it launched its “Residential Green and Energy Efficient Addendum,” a form for appraisers to identify any green and energy-efficient features of a house. Sandy Adomatis, an appraiser and Vice Chair of the National Education Committee for the institute, says that adoption among AI members has been slow. Of 80,000 licensed appraisers in the United States, only 23,000 are Appraisal Institute members, and of those, only 2.9 percent (667) have sought green certification. Yet the appraisers who are trained to get green features, love the addendum.
Adomatis identifies two critical pieces that need to fall into place for green appraisal data to matter – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven’t gotten on board by distinguishing green properties as specialized, and homeowners must assert their rights when they want green features considered.
Elizabeth Million, appraiser and banker at Elevations Credit Union, Boulder, Colo. (From eGreenContractors.WordPress.com)
“What hasn’t changed is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac coming into 2012 and recognizing that these energy-efficiency features have value,” says Boulder banker and appraiser Elizabeth Million. “There’s no specific area for underwriters to go to a site and find out what ‘PV’ is – what’s solar. So the underwriter can choose not to accept the appraised value. That, in my opinion, is why we need these data points.”
HOMEOWNERS’ BILL OF RIGHTS
Laura Stukel, a National Association of REALTORS “Green” REALTOR in Chicago with LW Reedy Real Estate, says that when homeowners are working with their lenders, that’s the time to request a green appraiser. “If you had a horse property, you’d want an appraiser who knew how to value a horse property. You need someone who can value green properties,” she says.
Adomatis says that the AI has green appraisal classes, tests and subsequent certifications – two for residential appraisers and four for commercial appraisers. Homeowners can request a “green-certified” appraiser from their lender. Sometimes, that request isn’t honored, though, because lenders don’t have the knowledge to fulfill it, or the people, she says.
“Unfortunately they’re using either their own ordering department within the bank or they use an appraisal management company. Neither category is looking at green construction as anything other than conventional.”
Laura Stukel, NAR Green REALTOR with L.W. Reedy Real Estate, Chicago. (From Efficiency Vermont)
Adomatis notes that green appraisals are considered “complex” and that “general” or “trainee” appraisers shouldn’t be doing them. And yet banks and appraisal companies sometimes dispatch those less-skilled anyway. Owners can also provide completed MLS GFAs to appraisers for verification.
LINE IN THE SAND
Adomatis says it’s completely legit for property owners to ask, “Are you a trainee, or are you certified? Have you had any classes in green construction?” And when the appraisal’s done, check it then – don’t wait until closing.
“The homeowner should ask for a copy of the appraisal as soon as they can get it,” says Adomatis. “Did they describe the property appropriately? If it’s green, do they describe the green features? If they didn’t describe it right, they probably didn’t appraise it correctly. Then go back to the lender.”
REALTORS and appraisers are working shoulder to shoulder to get green features valued, but there’s not a big push from lenders, says Adomatis. “I’d like to see the lenders do what we’ve encouraged the builders to do – network with all of us, networking and brainstorming together. The AI always invites lenders,” she says.
Ultimately, Stukel says the responsibility for getting green features valued falls squarely on the home or building owner. “You still have to manage the process,” she says. Working with green REALTORS and appraisers can flatten the learning curve.
-Melissa Baldridge, eGreenContractors
For more information …
- Green REALTORS come in two varieties and can help owners through buying, selling and appraising properties with energy-efficiency features – EcoBroker and National Association of REALTORS “Green.”
- Note upcoming class – The Appraisal Institute’s Case Studies in Appraising Green Commercial Buildings,” June 26-7, 2012, Chicago,
- Appraisal Institute solar appraisal class coming in January 2013.
- Homeowners can present MLS “green-field addenda” to appraisers for inspection and review. For help in the Denver/Boulder metro area with a GFA (Metrolist or IRES), contact us today. We have certified energy auditors who can fill the form out accurately. Info@eGreenContractors.com, 1.877.376.8953.
Big Blue Goes Green – How 203Ks May Be the Future of Green Mortgages
March 28th, 2012
Big Blue, painted lovelier shades of brown, in the Corey-Merrill neighborhood of Denver
When Sarah Coleman and Carl Sack first saw “Big Blue,” they knew they were home. The massive house, so named because all the rooms were painted shades of the color, was built in the 1920s on two and a half lots in the Corey-Merrill neighborhood of inner-city Denver.
But their Realtor, PJ Magin, remembers the 4,200-square-foot place was a gut job – the roof was shot, the hardwood floors wrecked, a detached garage needed scraping, and an old “octopus” boiler appeared to have been recently coal-fired by the foreclosed-upon owners because the house had no power.
Realtor PJ Magin and homeowner Sarah Coleman remember the trauma and drama of buying the bank-owned property.
The bank initially listed the place at $789,000, and the couple put in an offer of $245,000 in winter 2011. Their first lender backed out one day before closing, and the bank gave the couple a small window to resuscitate the deal when Magin recommended working with mortgage lender Brett Popish. Because Coleman and Sack had done the heavy lifting for the previous lender, including getting bids, Popish was able to fund and close in two weeks.
The 203K loan product Popish used funded $163,000 of conventional improvements like a new roof, historically right-on windows to replace the 60 single-pane original ones, and rewiring the house. More importantly, the loan also funded “green” upgrades like a high-efficiency furnace and sealed ductwork, tankless, “on-demand” hot water heating and ENERGY STAR appliances. And Popish, who’s a 203K veteran at Universal Lending Corporation, says homeowners are more and more choosing the loan for green upgrades to existing homes in both purchases and refis.
GRANITE COUNTERTOPS = SOLAR PANELS
Mike Wilcox with Academy Mortgage
The beauty of the 203K is that it’s agnostic about what’s green and what’s conventional. Viewed through the 203K lens, granite countertops are weighted the same as high-efficiency furnaces as new carpet as low-VOC paint as structural repairs as solar panels (owned, not leased). The mortgage underwriter can fund up to 110 percent on the “as-completed value” of the purchase price ($245,000 in the case of Coleman and Sacks) plus the improvements ($163,000) up to the conforming loan limit ($408,000 in the City and County of Denver in June 2011).
The 203K is essentially a construction loan and a purchase loan rolled into one, and the FHA, its guarantor, estimates they’re two percent of the entire FHA portfolio. The loan comes in two flavors – a streamlined loan up to $35,000 in non-structural repairs, and a full up to a county’s conforming loan limit. Coleman and Sack opted for the latter, given the massive overhaul that the house required.
The loan also solves a couple of problems that existing “energy-efficiency mortgages” (EEMs) have. EEMs require a HERS rating, a “miles-per-gallon” metric assigned to a home, and those start at $500 and go up depending on square footage. The math behind a HERS rating generates the net present value of future energy savings based on a prescribed scope of work. Vary outside of that complex calculus, and you’re on your own.
Secondly, the 203K is a less-complicated product to use as long as everyone’s on board from the gitgo, says Mike Wilcox, Renovation Sales Manager at Academy Mortagage, which specializes in the loan. He only recommends using 203K-approved contractors, and he has a “come-to-Jesus” meeting before closing to insure buy-in.
REMOVING THE GUESSWORK
Brett Popish with Universal Lending Corporation
“This is not a program to guess at,” he says, noting that its legendary complications usually come when contractors aren’t schooled in the draw process. “The most important thing for everybody to know is who to call – from the contractor to the lender to the FHA consultant.”
The loan product gets a bad rap among real estate professionals because it has the reputation of financing houses that are in shambles. Not so, says Popish.
“With a 203K, you can do something as small as an appliance package, just putting new appliances in a home,” he says. (Energy-efficient, please!) “Or buying a home, scraping it and building a new home on the foundation.” The numbers simply have to pencil out – green or not.
“I don’t know why every loan isn’t a 203K,” Wilcox says. Even simple jobs like repainting and recarpeting can be rolled into the price, adds Popish. The work simply has to be bid beforehand and weighed in the appraisal value.
Popish says 203Ks are also popular with experienced lenders because the properties go into default significantly less than homes financed with other loans. “Anyone fixing up their home to make it a dream home, they’re far less likely to default,” he says. (Which begs the question – Are “green” borrowers better credit risks? Let’s start watching for data to support that.)
GREEN FOR NORMAL PEOPLE
Coleman says she and Sack don’t consider themselves hardcore enviros. She’s an accountant, and he’s a financial analyst so both live decidedly in the realm of the left-brained. “The greenest thing I did was buy this house and not scrape it,” she says.
Still, they chose high-efficiency systems, reused building materials when possible and have put a herculean amount of sweat equity into Big Blue, including a lot of repainting. “We aren’t consciously buying something green, but we make important decisions whenever we can.” The 203K helped them get there.
- Melissa Baldridge
Jumping the Hurdles to a Green MLS
November 9th, 2011Sean Smith was the man in the middle. – a key figure with a foot in both worlds of business and “green.”
A high-end general contractor, he built two LEED-certified homes in the Washington Park neighborhood of Denver in 2009. At an educational session he hosted there, the U.S. Green Building Council approached him to serve on a committee. “If you’re doing big-picture things, I’m all over it,” he told them.
At a subsequent meeting with the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO), Smith realized he was one of the few businesspeople in a room full of well-intended greenies.
“There wasn’t one REALTOR. I was the only builder. There weren’t any bankers or appraisers. They were talking about moving the market at a macro scale,” he said. “The market they were talking about was not there in any way, shape or form.”
Sean Smith, a bridge figure between building industries and the world of "green"
The problem Smith and his colleagues wanted to solve was validating the theory that green homes sell faster and for more money than conventional homes. It’s a real “chicken-or-egg” conundrum as appraisers, mortgage lenders and underwriters, REALTORS, builders and homeowners look to each other for numbers to prove the claim. If a market-based case can be made, it would grease the skids for moving the green-building industry into the mainstream.
An important yet imperfect study emerged in 2009[1] from the Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland and Seattle. The MLS (Multiple Listing Service) had collected sale data from certified green homes that proved the theory there. What implementers at the GEO realized is that grant money could be directed to Colorado’s 18 MLS’s to add “green field addenda” (GFAs) to start data collection here.
IRES, the MLS for Boulder and northern Colorado, was one of the first aboard. Lauren Hansen, IRES’ CEO, said she rolled her eyes when the GEO first knocked on her door about placing GFAs on IRES, but she quickly saw the value of the undertaking. Boulder’s building codes now require all new construction and remodels to be 30 percent more energy-efficient than conventional codes. And that’s just the starting point.
“It’s not just about listing and selling homes, but instead how can we gather the right kind of applicable data, meaningful data, so appraisers can start putting these houses side by side [next to code-built twins].”
Lauren Hansen, CEO at IRES, which serves northeastern Colorado
The GEO approached Hansen in April 2010, and IRES moved with lightning speed, launching its GFA in August. She says she had IT support that a lot of smaller MLSs don’t have in-house. (The GEO MLS grants intended to offset that expense, even if the work has to be sent out-of-house.)
Another reason Hansen moved so fast is because the GEO offered her a data template to facilitate apples-to-apples comparisons. “This is not the area for you to be creative,” the GEO told her. “If you want to change up data collection, go for it. But be sure to have at least the same info that we do.”
The 800-pound gorilla, Metrolist serving metro Denver and almost half the REALTORS in the state, has been slower on the uptake, and its founding president resigned in October after 27 years there. Melissa Olson, Senior Manager for Marketing & Sales, says it hasn’t been a priority for Metrolist because REALTORS haven’t asked for it.
“In our market, there just hasn’t been a real call in the brokerage community for the green fields,” she says. She advises brokers who are interested to tack green data on as “additional information.” Olson does say, however, that a bona fide GFA will be available on the MLS toward the end of this year.
Smith notes another issue with widespread acceptance – no secondary market for energy-efficient mortgages. “Fannie and Freddie and HUD can come up with energy-efficiency mortgages all day long, all they want. Underwriters and lenders will add their own layer of criteria,” he says. “If we get the mortgage industry to really buy into an energy-efficient home with a HERS score of X (a “miles per gallon” comparison) with data from an MLS, appraisers can understand it, and they can get comps from an MLS because it’s all in there.”
He says one sticking point is that appraisers have lacked mechanisms to value green improvements. But this year, the Appraisal Institute passed its own GFA with, Hansen notes, fields similar to IRES’s and other MLS’s. Hansen says it’s a game changer because where appraisers go, lenders and underwriters can follow.
One more obstacle to a green MLS – and perhaps the biggest – is actually getting REALTORS to use it, and that’s a problem of education. Even Hansen in green-tinged Boulder says she doesn’t have the acceptance of the GFAs that she’d like to see.
She says acronyms like VOC paints, SIPs and ICFs (both insulative building foam) can be intimidating. “It’s like looking for a job. If I don’t know what the acronyms are, I probably shouldn’t apply.” Hansen keeps up the drumbeat in all her real estate CLU classes, not just green classes. And Olson says she’s had the same experience in Denver.
As the various components surrounding green-building valuation gel, Hansen says it’s only a matter of time before REALTORS start using them. “Once the brokers understand this could make my seller’s property more valuable and more attractive, it’ll be easy for them to jump on board.”
For more information, the U.S. GBC Colorado published a video on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e49dsQiopb4.
-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot
[1] Ann Griffin, “Certified Home Performance: Assessing the Market Impacts of Third Party Certification on Residential Properties,” Earth Advantage Institute, May 29, 2009.
Creating Shared Value – The Future of Business
October 18th, 2011
“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
-Chinese proverb
Newmont Mining officials signing social responsibility agreements with the Ahafo Host communities in Ghana. (Courtesy of Newmont Mining)
Let’s say you own a waterfront business that invests the time and resources to teach that man or woman to fish. You routinely offer “Fishing 101” classes. Your customer base could expand exponentially, and those newly schooled anglers could become your best customers.
Your investment – in this case, education – is the heart of what’s called “creating shared value” (CSV). And strategists/visionaries Michael Porter and Mark Kramer say it’s the next evolution of business. CSV harnesses what business does so well – create profit – as well as advance the social and economic conditions in the communities in which it operates. Everyone wins.
A number of well-known global brands are embracing CSV’s “profits-plus,” and several Colorado companies are breathing new life into their businesses based on the CSV model.
To comprehend CSV, it may be easier to understand what it’s not – the sacred cow, “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). Kramer and Porter say that corporations developed CSR programs as philanthropic ways to salvage their reputations as bad stewards of the environment, jobs exporters and sweatshop operators. CSR programs, while often laudable, are peripheral expenses (cost centers), fringe programs that add nothing to the bottom line.
COFFEE TALK
"Creating Shared Value" co-author Michael Porter (From En.Wikipedia.org)
One example is fair trade pricing, where well-intentioned companies purchase commodities like coffee and cacao at prices above what the subsistence farmers who grow them would otherwise be able to get. Fair trade is essentially a price support and redistribution rather an expansion of value for those suppliers.
Porter and Kramer point out Nestlé’s Nespresso division with its single-serve espresso machines as fair trade’s next iteration. Nestlé opened the division in 2000, redesigned its coffee procurement processes and has reaped 30 percent annual growth since. Nespresso helped its farmers with new growing techniques, bank loans, better fertilizers and pesticides, all resulting in increased yields. While fair trade can raise farmer incomes as much as 20 percent, Kramer and Porter estimate CSV in coffee growing can raise them as much as 300 percent.
Energy efficiency is a natural fit for CSV because it creates value along the supply chain by cutting energy and waste costs, and General Electric turned energy efficiency into a $21 billion a year business with its Ecomagination division. Whether creating über-efficient jet engines, long-lived batteries and electric car charging stations, the division’s focus on energy efficiency creates value for the company and its customers by reducing energy use and creating less waste.
And the other half of the "Creating Shared Value" team - Mark Kramer (From SDGrantMakers.org)
Closer to home, two Colorado-based companies, both approximately 100-years-old, are reinventing themselves from a CSR mentality to a CSV model – Western Union and Newmont Mining Corporation.
WESTERN UNION
Western Union is a $5.2 billion a year backbone for global money transfers with 470,000 agent locations, marketing in over 100 different languages and operations in 200 countries and territories. “We can see where people send money,” says Talya Bosch, Director of Corporate Responsibility. “People literally line up at Western Union offices around the world if it’s payday in, say, Germany. If the money doesn’t get there safely and reliably, they literally won’t eat.”
Similar to microloan programs on the Asian subcontinent that foster local small business, Western Union’s core business meets peoples’ basic needs all over the planet. “What we do puts food on the table, helps educate children and has a tremendous impact,” says Bosch.
Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek addressing the United Nations (Courtesy of Western Union). Ersek is reinventing the company using the CSV model.
The company started the Western Union Foundation in 2001, which operates under its Corporate Responsibility arm, and last year the foundation donated over $20 million, with 46 percent of Western Union employees contributing to that. “We’ve engaged our employees and agents, creating a culture of giving. That’s good, but there’s more that we can do,” Bosch says, noting that CEO Hikmet Ersek pegs CSV as the company’s new magnetic north.
Bosch describes the foundation giving as “layered,” addressing issues of economic opportunity like financial literacy and job creation. And Western Union goes where few companies have gone – to underserved, poorer parts of the planet, which is precisely what Porter and Kramer say is CSV’s sweet spot. (Remember the newly schooled anglers.) Bosch also says the company intends to develop programs to help the underserved stateside – small business. (We’ll be in touch, Talya.)
As the foundation evolves, Bosch says Western Union’s grants benefit the people the company serves. “We’re not just giving grants but education,” Bosch says. And that education investment can generate new business.
NEWMONT MINING CORPORATION
Based in Englewood, Colo., Newmont Mining Corporation has 31,000 employees worldwide, and is primarily involved in gold mining. Its division in Ghana, Newmont Ghana Gold Limited, is determined to avoid mining gold without properly re-seeding and re-investing in communities there.
“We clearly see we have to be a partner in the host community and in the environment in which we’re working,” says Randy Barnes, the Regional Vice President of Environment and Social Responsibility for NGGL. “We’re trying to really flesh out what that means to them (Ghanaians).”
Newmont Ghana, too, has started with a foundation model that engages Ghanaians directly affected by mining to create local investment and ownership with an endowment that will live beyond the mine’s operations.
Ahafo Program apprentices in training, 2010. (From Newmont Mining Corporation)
To that end, Newmont established the Newmont Ahafo Development Foundation, run by a board with community and corporate representatives. Newmont Ghana tied community investment directly to mine proceeds — $1 for every ounce of gold sold and 1 percent of NGGL profits made. When the company does well, that’s directly channeled to improving health, education and infrastructure projects like new police facilities, upgrading water and sanitation and improving local schools and hospitals.
One key point for Ghanaians in the mine region was that one-third of jobs created go to local folk, even ahead of Ghanaian nationals. This was a stretch because 85 percent of area residents are subsistence farmers, never trained for the technical and higher-skilled jobs required in Newmont’s operations.
So Newmont started its Apprenticeship Program in 2005 and has enrolled 145 students to date, including four women. The apprenticeships teach mechanical, process operation and electrical skills, and a number of grads are now working for Newmont. “One of the advantages of training locals is that you’re creating value for them to stay in the community,” says Barnes.
The mantra for CSR is “Do well by doing good.” For CSV, it could be “Do well by engaging others in ways that create value for them.” Companies that fail to do so will suffer withering market share as CSV companies create new markets by investing in the people they serve.
-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot
The GreenSpot blog is nationally syndicated on www.ColoradoEnergyNews.com and www.EarthTechling.com.
Housing Bale-out – Boulder Architect Streamlines Green Home Building
September 14th, 2011
Brian Fuentes in one of the first straw-bale houses he built in Boulder - a mid-century ranch reno with a straw-bale gear/media room. Photo by Chris Romano.
Straw-bale houses have come a long way since Midwestern homesteaders used to stack sod on the Great Plains and call it home. More recently, 20th century straw-bale builders were either crunchy, granola types hand-crafting their own über-green homes, or affluent greenies seeking to create off-grid trophy houses, budgets be damned. In all cases, though, straw-bale has been the preserve of the one-off – designed and built one at a time. Until now.
One Boulder architect is adapting a European production model that has allowed him to increase his straw-bale business exponentially and factory-produce homes less expensively than other high-efficiency, architect-designed housing. Brian Fuentes stacks framing and bales on conventional slab foundations, runs wiring and plumbing throughout and covers the bales with imported hydraulic French plaster that hardens like concrete. The result – a pre-fab panelized system – is artisanal, high-end yet it still has the warmth of the human hand.
The key to Fuentes’ economies of scale is in the framing process, and where that happens – in a production facility versus on site.
A straw-bale section - assembled in Fuentes' shop and dropped into place by crane at the building site. Photo by Chris Romano.
Fuentes, a 34-year-old architect in Boulder, models the houses in his studio, builds the load-bearing framing there, stuffs the framing cavities with straw bales and applies two coats of plaster. He transports the dried panels to the job site, and PRESTO! — Installers erect the completed walls sealed full of straw. Fuentes compares them to LEGOS, and he says he aims to “take the drama out of straw-bale building” with his process.
Straw-bale houses conjure images of the “three little pigs” – straw houses collapsing under the big, bad wolf’s heavy breathing. Yet the fable belies reality.
The houses are twice as insulated as code-built homes (R-40 wall systems versus R-21), and they withstand fire better than stick-frame construction. In fact, a Fuentes home withstood one of Boulder’s notorious canyon fires this summer. Fuentes attributes the house’s surviving because of its metal roof and lime plastering.
The holy grail for high-efficiency building is carbon neutrality, and that’s where straw-bale outpaces almost everything. Most of the building materials he sources are local – straw from Alamosa, Colo., clay from Golden and lumber reclaimed from Boulder. And “net-zero” housing (where energy use in equals energy generated and saved) is easily within reach with straw-bale building.
One of Fuentes' first projects - a straw-bale addition to a mid-century ranch house in the Newlands neighborhood. Photo by Chris Romano.
Fuentes is a visionary who speaks rapid-fire about his vision for the building industry, peppered with high-efficiency building stats. He grows misty when he talks about the “orders of magnitude” that straw-bale homes can save in energy – 10 times less needed for heating and cooling compared to conventional homes, and 75 percent less total energy, with lighting and appliances.
Boulder is the perfect place for Fuentes, who studied architecture at the University of Oregon, another hotbed for green building. Building straw-bale there was fun, he says. “You had big, thick walls inside, and it feels cozy. It works well in earthquake zones because they’re kind of spongey. The bales bounce around.”
Boulder building codes require all newly built homes to be 25 percent more energy-efficient than conventional homes so straw-bale is one option for homeowners. Before he began pre-fabbing straw panels, he said he worked on four homes a year. Because of his factory system, he’s already been involved with 13 projects this year, including his own home, which he’s building from the ground up.
Another Fuentes project - built from the ground up at 815 North St., Boulder. Photo by Chris Romano.
While Fuentes may be simplifying what’s essentially an artisanal process, he’s hardly in danger of upending the home-building industry. Though young in his career, Fuentes has been involved with only 25 of the homes. Last year, national single-family housing starts numbered 470,900, and that’s 80 percent off the building peak of 1.7 million in 2005, says the National Association of Home Builders. Even in Boulder, Fuentes plays for a small team, and he estimates he’s one of only five straw-bale builders there, one of 25 in Colorado and only one in maybe 100 nationally.
His homes can’t compete with conventional stick-built homes, selling for $80 to $90 per square foot. Fuentes’ costs are double, and his straw-bale homes ring in at around $200 per square foot. But it’s still well below what he says other architects of super-efficient construction charge ($300 per square foot) because of expensive materials like foam-insulated panels.
Even with stratospheric energy efficiency, Fuentes says straw-bale isn’t for everyone, describing many of his clients as willing (and able) to make a “legacy investment” in their home. Straw-bale wall panels can be as thick as 18 inches, and Fuentes says that the self-absorbed who’ve bought into “bigger is better” don’t choose straw bale.
Though he’s tried to make the process drama-free, it’s not always that way, recalling one client whose wife, they discovered, was allergic to straw. Once the walls were sealed, though, he said the problem was solved.
While Fuentes’ production process may not be a home-building game changer, the energy savings that straw bale affords cannot be ignored. “This makes zero-energy affordable,” he says. “And today’s renewable technology at today’s prices possible.”
-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot
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