Contributor: Michael Strong

HOUSTON, TX–Not making money on your money? Saving is the new best investment strategy–so many people are investing their funds in future savings with green remodeling. Recently released data shows that in Seattle, in 2008 (the most recent data available), where nationally certified green homes were sold and compared as follows to non-certified homes sold during the same period:

1. Median sales price was 6% higher!
2. Time on market was 29.4% shorter!
3. Price per Squre Foot was 9.3% higher!

That should come as no surprise because it makes sense that a more energy efficient, durable, lower maintenance, healthier home is better built than the obsolete counterpart built only to meet minimum “code.”

With the 2009 debut of the NAHB Green Remodeling Standard, www.nahbgreen.org, anyone can and should make their home greener during a remodel. This is the first and only national green remodeling standard in the U.S. and it should be a homeowner’s blueprint for any remodeling project. Whether you are remodeling a kitchen or a bathroom, adding space or converting an attic, this Green Remodeling Standard is your guide to a healthier, more energy efficient home that will lower your living costs and enable you to sell your home faster and at a premium.

Homeowners have unprecedented choices when remodeling to create their dream home. Quieter, cleaner, lower maintenance homes with smaller energy bills and the best indoor air quality options in U.S. construction history are more popular than ever. Here are my top five choices for making your existing home greener:

1. Apply a radiant barrier paint to your roof deck. By applying E-Barrier paint from Sherwin Williams http://www.sherwin-williams.com/pro/green/index.jsp to the bottom of your roof deck from inside your attic, you can expect to repel up to 70% of the sun’s radiant heat from ever entering your attic.
2. #mce_temp_url#Be prepared for water usage price hikes by installing new Water Sense certified plumbing fixtures and commode during your next remodeling project. Whether made by Kohler http://www.us.kohler.com/savewater/products/landing.htm or another manufacturer, Water Sense certified fixtures work and will save you water. Install an Energy Star rated digital thermostat. They are easy to installhttp://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=find_a_product.showProductGroup&pgw_code=TH and can save you about $180 a year by properly setting your programmable thermostats and maintaining those settings.
3. Add more insulation to your attic. Blow it in to make sure you cover up all the cracks and leaking holes in your attic. You can do this yourself or hire a professional but make sure you reach R-38 when you are done. Your contractor or equipment rental company will tell you how deep it needs to be to hit that golden mark.Use only Energy Star rated appliances like Miele www.Miele.com in your next kitchen remodel. Regardless of the price range you are considering, these high efficiency, German engineered appliances will save you more energy and water than their non-rated appliances. Plus they are so quiet you can’t hear them and they are the snazziest looking products on the market today!

These wise choices make your home efficiently more cost effective to live in and more desirable at resale. With the current real estate market in flux, many homeowners are opting to add on for more space or just freshen up their current home instead of moving and this is the perfect time to invest in future cost savings.

The www.nahbgreen.org website is a valuable tool—almost as valuable as an experienced Green Builder or Remodeler. Green building is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide with new and improved products being introduced at a rapid pace. Many of the techniques and products that will give you the greatest return on your investment can be recommended by the professionals who work with them on a real time basis and who keep up with the new trends and technology.

Think Green, Live Green, Build Green—it’s the right thing to do.

—30—

To comment on this article, please email Michael Strong

Source: The New Era Times

Today we would like to spotlight one of our favorite subcontractors on our blog. Trilogy Partners has had the pleasure of working with Colorado Custom Wood Floors in many of our homebuilding projects for more than 10 years, and today we would like to share a little bit about this company with you.

Colorado Custom Wood Floors strives to sell the best products in the industry. They offer a great deal of experience and utilize the latest technology and innovations in the hard wood floor industry to each job. Additionally, all of their techs are experienced professionals and employees of Colorado Custom Wood Floors who provide excellent craftsmanship and service on each job.

Colorado Custom Wood Floors provides installation services, as well as dustless sanding and refinishing, repair, and restoration services. They also offer hardwood stair installation services and custom carpentry in hardwood floors.

Trilogy Partners is proud to have Colorado Custom Wood Floors as a partner on so many of our projects. You can learn more about our valued partners by visiting the Colorado Custom Wood Floors website.

As previously posted, I often work with clients to develop a “fictional story” that will aid in the design of a home. This story is the lynchpin for a thematic approach for design. In the case of the house on lot 231, AKA Caleb’s Journey, we wanted a home that looked like it simply belonged in Colorado. The Highlands in Breckenridge development is filled with homes that fit the mold of mountain contemporary. We wanted something mountain authentic. So we invented Caleb, the man who built the house. His story goes like this: Caleb was a man who had spent years building homes for other people. Whenever he finished a home he took the left over scraps with him and they became, over the years, a very large pile in the backyard behind his cabin. One day Caleb estimated he had enough material to begin the construction of his own home. And over the next couple of years, he built the home of his dreams from castaway materials.The result was a rustic, well worn dwelling completely at home in the Colorado Mountains. This home features a timber frame made from 20″ logs and hewn douglas fir dimensional beams, reclaimed siding and ceiling cladding, and gorgeous oak floors recycled from a granary. Perhaps Caleb was only a figment of our imagination. But he came to life within the walls of Caleb’s Journey.

If you were going to design a home, where would your ideas come from?

Timber Frame Reclaimed From Railroad Trestle

I’m very pleased to announce that we at Trilogy will be collaborating with noted architectural photographer, Roger Wade on a design book tentatively titled “Old Into New – The Use of Reclaimed and Recycled Materials in Modern Architecture.” I have had the pleasure of designing quite a few homes now where we used reclaimed and recycled materials, such as barn beams and posts from old bridges, granary flooring from Chicago, and siding made from everything from redwood to cedar to douglas fir. These weathered, aged, and far from perfect reclaimed materials bring a richness, authenticity, and beauty to new homes that is not possible with “new” materials. I thought it was time we documented some of these truly magnificent homes in print, and on the internet. So stay tuned as we publish, on this blog, chapters one at a time featuring some of the nations most extraordinary homes and their use of reclaimed and recycled materials. Roger, stylist Debbie Grahl, and I worked together on the Architectural Digest article about the Steamboat House.

Were you to build a dream home, would you consider using old, rather than new, as a design element?

We’ve mentioned plenty of times on the Trilogy Partners blog how useful and wonderful reclaimed building materials are. Reclaimed building materials provide unique and interesting alternatives to the traditional building materials that are available today. Take a look at a few of the benefits reclaimed building materials can offer you:

Reclaimed building materials are a perfect choice for any home.

• Financial Benefits – While reclaimed materials could be more expensive than a new item initially, take into consideration that the value of your purchase is likely to increase over time, which means buying reclaimed materials are a better investiment in most cases.
• Aesthetic Benefits – Your home is a place where you can express your individuality, and one-of-a-kind pieces are often a great way to incorporate a little character and history into your home. Properly refurbished and installed fixtures can last for many years and shine just as brightly as a new product.
• Environmental Benefits – Reclaimed building materials are an excellent choice for the environmentally conscious. Producing new materials requires a lot of energy, and puts a lot of unnecessary stress on our environment. Using items that already exist might require a little more effort to remove and re-install on our part, but the impact on the environment is significantly less than that which comes from producing new materials.

Reclaimed materials offer a multitude of benefits to homeowners. If you’re planning a new home, consider how you can incorporate reclaimed materials into your plans!

Information adapted from Service Magic.

Photo credit: Planetgreen.discovery.com.

Your new home is designed and now it’s time to hire a builder. Before you do, the architect gives you some guidance and tells you that there are two types of contracts that govern construction. One type is called the Fixed Price Contract. The other, the Cost Plus contract.

Fixed Price Contract

The Fixed Price Contract is just what the name implies: the builder agrees to build the house for a fixed price. In order for a Fixed Price Contract to make sense, the builder and the owner must have an clear and similar vision of what the project entails. For example, the level of finishes must be understood as standards will be cost sensitive. The builder will base his price on a very detailed budget and other assumptions then will add a profit margin unknown to the owner. The danger of the Fixed Price Contract is that what the builder assumes may not match what the client is envisioning. This may not become apparent until well after construction has begun. For example, a builder might specify a certain type of shower fixtures throughout the house. When the contract is signed, the owner assumes the amount budgeted (or allowed) for fixtures will be adequate but later, when actually choosing the specific fixtures, determines that the allowed amount is not satisfactory. Many design elements are priced as allowances. In other words, the builder gives an allowance for a specific item knowing that the owner does not, at the time of the contract signing, know exactly which brand and style might be selected. As illustrated, many assumptions, allowances and expectations must mesh perfectly for both the builder and the client to be well satisfied. A Fixed Price Contract can work well if the project is sufficiently simple so that all involved have a clear picture of what the finished project will be. But in the case of higher-end custom homes, a clear idea of the finished project is quite difficult. The design aspects of the house can be exceedingly complicated. If a fixed price contract is governing this type of project, the owner, architect, and builder can come into conflict over expectations and ultimately, money. And the builder may use “change orders” to exceed the amount of the fixed price if the owner’s desires and expectations exceed the builder’s allowances and assumptions.

Cost Plus Contract

The Cost Plus Contract is a contract based on a estimated cost that is not fixed. The builder proposes an approximate budget, and agrees to take profit based on a percentage of the total cost of labor and materials. With the cost plus contract, the owner is given the actual cost of each expenditure and is aware at all times exactly what the builder has spent for labor and materials.During construction, the owner must approve all expenditures. As a result, the owner is very involved in the economics of the project and in fact, is called upon to supervise how and where money is spent. This type of contract allows for project flexibility. For example, if the amount budgeted for excavation is lower than expected, that amount can be, if the owner wishes, transferred to the amount budgeted for, as an example, plumbing fixtures. Though the Cost Plus project depends on an accurate estimate of costs just as does the Fixed Price project, the Cost Plus contract and process allows for greater transparency than the Fixed Price Contract. Of course, the Cost Plus Contract requires that the owner be willing to spend time participating in the supervision of the budget. Costs can escalate if the owner does not make efforts to control spending. The Cost Plus Contract is ideally suited to more complex projects where there is a great emphasis on design, standards, and finishes and quality is of utmost concern.

The Bottom Line

The home owner must make take very seriously the contract phase of the home building project. In the past, the Fixed Price Contract was often the instrument of choice. As custom homes become increasingly more complicated and thus difficult to budget with exact precision, the Cost Plus Contract provides flexibility and transparency that the Fixed Price Contract cannot. The Cost Plus Contract has become the contract of choice for complex custom home projects.

Trilogy Partners is on Facebook and we would love for you to join us there! Our Facebook page is a great place to connect with us, keep up with our projects and the latest in sustainable building practices, design tips and trends, and much more. We always post links to our blog posts on our Facebook page so you’ll never miss out on what’s going on. There you can find other useful information, such as our contact information and photos of our work.

If you haven’t joined Trilogy Partners on Facebook yet, head on over to facebook.com/TrilogyPartners and click the like button at the top of our page to add us to your profile. While you’re there, do us a favor and suggest our page to all of your friends. Also, be sure to like The Haitian Orphan Rescue Program, which is a charity co-founded by Trilogy Partner Michael Rath that builds permanent shelter for orphaned and abandoned Haitian children.

We hope to connect with you on Facebook soon!

Connect with Trilogy Partners on Facebook!

So much of what we build today is junk. And by junk I mean, it’s not going to be around in 100 years. In a short 100 years that new house you see going up in the new ticky-tack subdivision across the road is going to be bulldozed flat to make room for more junk. Because they just don’t build things the way they used to… with an eye to the future and concerns for the longevity of the structure. And pretty much every piece and parcel of today’s brand new subdivision home is going to end up in a landfill. Because hardly any of it is recyclable.

The Dimensional Lumber Trap

I know it was supposed to be a big deal when dimensional lumber became the primary structural ingredient of smaller buildings. It was supposed to revolutionize the construction of single family and smaller multi-family dwellings. The 2x4s and their ilk make up most of the structural components of todays subdivision clones. Oh, there are some heavier structural components, but a home is only as strong structurally as its weakest link, and most of these homes are shoddily framed with small dimensional lumber. That’s the cheapest way to do it and as much as we claim to be concerned about sustainability, we’re all about affordable housing now. And think of this: what if a home did last for 20 generations instead of 5? If that were the case, then we would need a lot fewer homes each year because fewer homes would need to be replaced. And that’s not a good thing for all those people who work in the second largest industry in the U.S. Farming is the first. Construction is the second. Junk food and junk houses.

Building Things That Last For Centuries

So there you have it. Construction has many thousands of years of history and we are now building cheap, non-recyclable or reclaimable housing instead of housing that could indeed, last centuries. 1000 years ago in Asia and Europe they were building buildings that are still around today. They are made of stone and timbers carefully chosen for longevity, insect resistance, for their ability to perform through the centuries, to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, and man’s occupancy. Certainly we have the resources to build like that today. And in some cases we are. Timber Frame structures and buildings constructed of larger manufactured structural members are built to last. They are the aberration, not the norm. Look around you. How many of the newer structures you see will still be standing in more than 100 years much less 1000? We don’t build it to last. We build it so it will be relatively easy to demolish. If the Roman Coliseum were built today it certainly wouldn’t last more than about 40 years. Don’t you think? Despite all we’ve learned about building since the time of the Egyptians and the Mayans and the Romans and all the great forefathers of modern construction, we don’t build any better. Rather, we build worse. We don’t build for tomorrow. We build for now. And now is a very temporary thing.

That’s why I say, all the world’s best builders are dead.

OSB SIPs

Structural Insulating Panels (SIPs) are a composite building material consisting of a panel of insulating material, usually foam, sandwiched between two wooden layers. The wood can be oriented strand board (OSB) or plywood. Sometimes more exotic materials, such as sheet metal or concrete board, are substituted for the wooden layers. SIPs replace several components found in conventionally framed buildings including studs, joists and insulation. SIPs are most commonly used to construct exterior walls and roofs but may have other applications, such as insulated ceilings beneath conventionally framed roof truss systems.

Structural Insulating Panels have a history dating back to the 1940s when structural wall panels were first invented. Over the years the technologies and materials incorporated in SIPs have improved. In addition, computerized CNC cutting machines allow SIP panels to be factory manufactured and then cut to the exact size needed for construction, providing a certain level of prefabrication not seen in conventional construction.

Panels for Walls and Roofs

Homes using SIP panel construction tend to have a very tight envelope. Air infiltration, or draftiness, is eliminated and the walls themselves have a very high insulating quality. SIPs may cost more than conventional framing, but because they bring extreme energy efficiency to buildings, they lower operating costs. SIP panels are often combined with post and beam construction where the panels drape the frame creating an extremely durable and energy efficient structure. Trilogy Partners utilizes SIP panels in all of its Timber Frame and Post and Beam homes.

1. Proves that you’re a leader and a roll model
2. Demonstrates that beauty is more than skin deep
3. Gives you something to talk and/or brag about at cocktail parties
4. Shows your good taste, common sense, and innate intelligence
5. Helps promote a new, sustainable economy
6. Protects the kritters large and small
7. Proves you’re cool for keeping the planet cool
8. Shows the Kiddies that you care
9. Just plain good Karma
10. Makes you feel good all over