The perfect color for your remodel? Green.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required

A distinctive part of our neighborhood’s charm rests in the architecture and history of our homes. If you’re looking for ways to be more energy efficient while still having the cutest Tudor or bungalow on the block, check out these remodeling tips to keep energy bills down and do your part for the environment:

• Install a radiant barrier. Radiant barriers are installed in the attic to reduce heat gain in the summer and heat loss in the winter. “Attic temperatures can reach 150 degrees, and that works against your air-conditioning,” says builder Alan Hoffman. It is a fairly simple installation that can be placed on rooftops or directly over insulation. There’s even a spray-on version. Also, make sure the attic is well ventilated.

• Insulate your attic with cellulose. Made of recycled paper, cellulose insulation can be laid directly on top of fiberglass insulation. Add between 10 inches to one foot of cellulose in order to yield a high rating of R-38, which measures the thermal resistance of a building.

• Tighten up the house. Seal walls and caulk windows. Without tightening up a house, the effectiveness of other methods will drop dramatically.

• Install Low E glass and Thermal Break windows. Low E glass allows sunlight in and reduces heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer. Thermal Break window frames are also extremely efficient insulators.

• Go with a high efficiency air-conditioning system and variable speed furnace. As opposed to 10 years ago, the air-conditioning units of today can be three to four times more efficient. These options may be more costly, but will give you one of the most drastic changes in utility bills.

Bobby and Kaila Hoke are local musicians in the process of building a green home in Little Forest Hills, where they were lucky to find a lot with a number of mature trees. Their original builder failed to see eye-to-eye with their tree-saving plans, so the couple sought out Lakewood resident and builder Mark Martinek, who previously built a home around the largest catalpa tree in Texas.

“You don’t buy a lot with trees to mow them down and build a house,” Kaila says. “You want it to look like it all belongs together.”

It’s not the only way in which the couple has “gone green” in their building process.

Various energy efficient initiatives have sprung up throughout the country, promoting construction of what is aptly dubbed “green homes.” The Home Builders Association of Greater Dallas launched the “Green Building Initiative” and already boasts more than 50 members, many of whom focus exclusively on our neighborhood. And with an anticipated three to eight percent increase in green construction by 2010, we can expect to see more green homes pop up in our neighborhood.

The Hokes decided to look into a green home after paying electric bills for their 1,600-square foot home that were twice that of what Kaila’s sister was paying for her newer, 3,500-square feet home. Unaware and uneducated about the additional features they could add to assist in making the home as self-sufficient as possible, they enlisted Martinek, who specializes in green homes. He’s added amenities to the Hokes’ home such as an on-demand water heater and higher efficiency air-conditioning units, and used only concrete and hardwood floor surfaces to limit the level of toxic gases released by carpets and linoleum. Most interestingly, he designed the placement of each window to create a passive ventilation system that pulls hot air out and allows cool air in.

“I didn’t know very much about any of it,” Kaila says. “And with my first builder, they didn’t really tell me about anything like that.”

Though many of the features have higher price tags then their basic counterparts, the couple hopes to offset the cost by using recycled brick, lumber and other materials that come at a lower price. But no matter the price, they feel good about their decision to build something more energy efficient in a neighborhood that Kaila feels embraces their modern take on home building.

“Little Forest Hills is full of that kind of people,” she says. “People who recycle and care about nature, the modern day version of hippies, I guess.”

Nearby on Groveland, at the bottom of a sloping lot, Little Forest Hills resident and builder Alan Hoffman consults with construction workers in front of his latest work-in-progress. Even at just a glance, the three-story home appears different from the norm, with a patchwork of white squares forming the outer frame instead of the evenly spaced, siding of a typical home.

Picking up an independent square, Hoffman rotates it in his hands, revealing the material’s makeup: Styrofoam. A byproduct of gasoline refining, two thick non-biodegradable square pieces encapsulate a maze of steel, which is then filled with concrete, leaving a steel-reinforced concrete wall. Since 1995, Hoffman has used these Insulated Concrete Forms, or ICFs, to build his version of “green” homes.

“Concrete was invented by the Romans,” Hoffman says. “Consequently, there are several Roman buildings that have been around for thousands of years. These [ICF homes] are not disposable buildings. They are permanent structures.”

He fervently spouts off memorized facts, citing ICF walls as five to six times more efficient than regular walls, leaving residents with a 50 to 80 percent reduction in energy costs and a far more stable and permanent structure.

“Day one, you will spend $20,000 to $25,000 more to build this way,” Hoffman says. “If you have a 30-year mortgage, that adds up to an additional $80 to $90 a month. But you are saving $80 to $90 on energy bills.”

Hoffman has used ICFs, along with many other green materials, on more than 60 homes. In his own modern ICF home, it is impossible to tell that its construction is completely different from that of a typical home. That is, except for the abrupt end to a cell phone signal upon entrance, which Hoffman says “can be rectified by an outdoor antenna.”

Martinek and Hoffman are just two of the many builders with ideas about what is considered a “green home.” No hard and fast definition exists. The options for materials and design are as numerous as the builders creating green homes.

With no official standards, Phil Krone and Paul Cauduro of the Dallas Green Building Initiative worked with local builders and suppliers to establish minimal requirements for a green home in the metro area. The resulting list of 40 mandatory elements includes water efficient toilets, unattached garages and minimized window exposure on the east and west sides of the house.

Response has been tremendous, Krone and Caudero say, with all of their seminars on building green completely selling out. The two even boast members who build green cheaply, offsetting the widespread rumor that conserving energy comes at a higher cost.

“We have builders who build at all sorts of price points,” Krone says. “Whether it be a million-dollar luxury home or a $130,000 affordable home, all meet or exceed our standards and are priced so you can deliver a green home to a variety of different people.”

In the research done for the Green Building Initiative, Krone and Cauduro also found that potential buyers might qualify for higher priced homes because of the lower cost of utilities and can also get lower rates on home insurance.

Builders Josh Grieswell and Bruce Goode currently are working on their first green home, and have discovered the variety of standards as well as some of the difficulties in selling.

“It costs more to build green,” Grieswell says. “You’ll get your money back over time because the houses are more air tight and energy efficient, but people would much rather have granite countertops than higher-rated insulations. It’s like paying for something you don’t get to see. I don’t think it’s a huge cost, but it is more.”

Their future home, located in Forest Hills, seems to mark a pattern in the location of where green homes are popping up: right here in our neighborhood.

“Most of the houses I know of are around the White Rock Lake area; it probably has to do with trees and preservation,” Grieswell says. “People who have modern homes are very environmentally friendly in most cases.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
To learn about the Dallas-area Green Building Initiative, visit dallasbuilders.com and click on “Green Building Program.”