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Building a Light Green LEED House in Houston, TX
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November 2009

 

Bamboo floor for our house - #greenbuilding in #Houston

Another Saturday, another selection! Today we visited Alpha Flooring to select the material for the wood floors in the house. Our plan is to have wood throughout, except for the bathrooms, which will be tile, and the mudroom and darkroom, which will have a vinyl like floor. Even the kitchen will have wood.

As always, three considerations are in our minds - look, green and budget. In this instance, the three came together beautifully in our choice of bamboo. Our architect had recommended that we take a good look at bamboo, but our initial inclination had been not to consider it. However, once we saw it, and especially the vertical cut, we really liked it. We have chosen Vertical Spice from US Floors - see web-shot below. It has a wide range of colors in it, leaving us many options in terms of matching furniture (and we already have a fairly decent sprinkling of different woods in the house...). We like the color - it will go well with our goals for cabinets. And bamboo is very green - rapidly renewable as harvesting it is more like cutting grass than cutting down a tree, and it is manufactured in a relatively green process. LEED points are available for using bamboo - how many I am not exactly sure, but better to gather some, in our (potential) quest for the Gold.

It really clicked - felt like this was the right choice for our project: a contemporary yet warm feel. Green. And remarkable easy on the budget. We await a formal quote from Alpha Flooring, but we know that this product falls near the lower end of the range we had in mind, probably erasing a little from the budget are working on. Happy day!

Engineered_vertical_spice_usfl

Filed under  //  LEED   selections  
Posted by Oliver Bogler 
 

Projected energy usage and HERS rating for our green house in Houston

Amidst all the selections, pricing estimates and getting final decisions made in many areas, we are also getting some very exciting projections related to the energy efficiency of the house.

As background, our choice to go with regular stick-and-frame construction, as compared to SIPs or even concrete shells, was driven by budget. In Houston, stick-and-frame is remarkably affordable, making it hard to go another route, when you are trying to get to around $150/sq ft. The major concern was that stick-and-frame would limit how much can be achieved in energy efficiency. Current projections suggest that you can still get a pretty good HERS rating, and low energy costs with our approach.

To offset the choice of construction, we opted for a simple rectangular house shape, which gives you a good ration of volume to shell, making it inherently energy efficient. Then we positioned the windows out of the direct sunlight, and shaded them where possible. Add a metal roof, some good insulation, a sealed attic and you can get pretty far. 

The HERS Index rates your house, just like Energy Star rates your appliances. You can read about HERS Index here. In summary, a HERS rating of 100 is the standard new home, in terms of energy consumption. A rating of 0 would be off the grid - a house that consumes no energy, by producing its own. Most existing homes are above a 100. Our '50s bungalow, with $500+/month a/c bills in the heat of the Houston summer is probably well above 100. Right now our estimate is below 60!! 

This is very exciting, and will also result in additional LEED points. When doing LEED scoring, in the energy efficiency category, you can use HERS ratings to get a simple LEED point number. Our original estimates was at HERS 77, giving us 8.5 LEED points. Now we may gain more than twice that. Hmmm... This puts LEED Silver in the bag, and has been an impetus to look to see whether we can go further.

In dollars and cents, this also has an impact. We got a first estimate of the energy costs of our house - see below - and it is below $2,200 for the year. This is electricity only, which is heating and cooling and appliances. (Water heating, cooking and the dryer will all be gas.) This year, to date, we have already paid over $3,000 with one more month to go. And the projections are at 16 cents/KwH while we are paying around 13.5 cents for our renewable energy plan. So, taking that into account we could get as low as $1,850. So, our 3,200 sq ft new house might have 60% of the electricity cost of our 1,900 sq ft '50s scape off. 

(download)

Filed under  //  HERS   LEED  
Posted by Oliver Bogler 
 

Stone and Wood and New Living for our house - #greenbuilding in #Houston

We are full into the selections phase for our house. We had a preliminary budget meeting last week with our builder and architect, and it has stimulated us to work as fast as we can to make choices.

As expected, much of what is now before is, is going to be budget driven. Our original goal was to build a 3,000 sq ft house at $150/sq ft, with a total budget of $450,000. The first estimate puts us significantly over that. Partly responsible is that we are now at a final 3,266 air conditioned space. So that would put us at $490,000 at our original rate. We are currently actually close to $170/sq ft. But that number is still subject to change, for several reasons. One is that some things are not yet included. Others are represented by estimates, pending proposals or selections by us. Then in other instances we have items that we really want to include (metal roof, metal siding) but may need to replace with less expensive items. 

Soooo, the quicker we make the selections the sooner we will get an idea of what can stay, and what has to go. 

So this weekend, we chose a stone, Coral Cream Builder, from a company called Custom Stone Supply, which runs at $270/ton. This item might come in slightly under the current estimate, pending a final quote once Custom Stone Supply has seen the accurate plans. 

We also decided we liked birch with a warmer finish for the floors - this is just style choice at the moment, and we haven't decided on a supplier yet. 


Lastly, we stopped by New Living on Kirby in Rice Village to check out countertops, and other interior items. Met Jeff Kaplan there, who told us about countertops from recycled glass and some new paints based on soy. Well worth a visit - lots of cool ideas for remodels or building.

We liked the Jade Snow from Ice Stone - made from green bottles mainly, and it has real depth and sparkle to it. 

Anyway, as we get our selections made, and as the last few quotes come in, we will be getting closer and closer to the final price - goal is to complete this process by the end of the year, seek financing in January and break ground in February!

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Filed under  //  selections  
Posted by Oliver Bogler