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Building a Light Green LEED House in Houston, TX
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January 2011

 

First month budget report

It has been almost a month since we closed on the loan, and while not all that much has happened at the house, we are moving forward. (Hurray!)

I have been focusing on the financing, and now everything is in place. One of the new things for me is that during the building phase we have an interest-only loan that is, therefore, of course variable. As the house progresses, our builder draws on the loan, with us and the bank's involvement, and so the loan grows. I tried to guesstimate this as we were making plants, to understand what the costs would be each month. I was told that several large draws would come early – concrete for the foundation, framing, roof and we intend to pre-order windows too. 

I will post our experience in monthly budget reports here. In January we had one small draw to allow our builders to get the material needed to prepare the site and enter into the demolition subcontract. 

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Budget_actuals_blog

Filed under  //  budget  
Posted by Oliver Bogler 
 

Disassembly begins with Historic Houston - LEED points and tax advantage

We are working with Historic Houston to salvage building materials that can be reused or recycled. A key aspect of LEED building is to minimize the impact of the building process itself, separate from considerations of the environmental impact of the final house. One concern is how much of the old house goes to landfill. This is where Historic Houston comes in, as they provide services for salvaging useable building materials, such as floorboards, built ins, windows, siding and other items. 

Historic Houston has a broader mission than salvage – according to their website "Historic Houston is a 501(c)(3) non–profit organization dedicated to conserving and promoting Houston’s historic architectural and cultural resources through scholarly research, education and advocacy of sustainable design."

Visit their website to learn more and to check out their Salvage Warehouse inventory here: http://www.historichouston.org/salvage-warehouse/inventory.html

A few weeks back we did a walk through of the house with Lynn Edmundson, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, Founder and Executive Director of Historic Houston and Tommy Strong, our project manager, to discuss exactly the kind of salvage we want to do. If you have the time you can opt for entire dismantling of the house, which will give you maximal recycling, as it provides the opportunity to recover almost everything in a reusable state. We chose a more limited recoup of the items that are more easily accessible, partly for budget reasons and also to keep on track with our timeline.

As part of this process we are also working with an independent appraiser to help us value the items that Historic Houston removes, so that we can accurately submit this information with our 2011 tax returns next year. So you can reduce your environmental impact and your tax bill at the same time!

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Filed under  //  progress   salvage  
Posted by Oliver Bogler 
 

Moving out

Img00057-20110117-1212

We closed 11 days ago, and yesterday we moved out - now unpacking in a
condo about a mile away. It wasn't a whole lot of fun. The weather this
weekend made a lie out of the saying that if you don't like the weather in
Houston, wait 10 minutes. There was a steady rain all day, which seemed to
intensify at times when we were carrying things to the truck. We had two
runs - one to the condo and one to storage, and just as came out of the
storage unit, the rain ended... Oh well.


On the plus side, we got out just before they dug out our side of the
road, in the ongoing roadwork project in our neighborhood. Here is a
picture I took this morning, of what our drive way looks like today.
Yesterday we were still dragging things down the drive way that is now
decorated with a large pile of road surface fragments.

Timing, as they say, is everything...

Now we wait until the utilities are disconnected, then demo permit and
demolition. Stay tuned.

Filed under  //  progress  
Posted by Oliver Bogler 
 

We closed on a building loan for our LEED house in Houston today with Northern Trust!!

Well – we finally succeeded in getting financing for our LEED house! 

A year ago I wrote here that 2010 was going to be our year for building, but as regular readers know, this was not to be. I don't want to dwell on the difficulties – all well documented here – but let me say that after about a year of failing to connect, we have now found a bank that was interested in green building, provided excellent, personal advice and support and with whom we were able to make a good financial plan: Northern Trust (http://www.northerntrust.com). 

Northern Trust

I won't go into lots of detail, but Northern Trust not only engaged us in a positive process that ultimately led to success, they also offered us an excellent loan product. I had begun to fear that to move ahead we would have to agree to a non-competitive loan, but far from it. We were able to get a building loan that converts to a mortgage with a single closing, but still at a very competitive rate. 

I have to say that what really stood out was the time and effort that the people at Northern Trust took to work with us – we weren't simply fed into the regular loan application pipeline at some of the other institutions we talked to. Nor were we give some of the more hard-to-understand information about loans more than 3 points above the competition and so on. 

So 2011 is our year!

Now we enter the calm before it really gets going – by the end of January we hope to be ready to demolish, with a move and some regulatory and permitting work to get through in the next few weeks. When I next post, I hope to have some progress to show you…
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Filed under  //  budget  
Posted by Oliver Bogler