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'Green' building pays off

Energy-efficient home construction benefits Earth — and your wallet
By STACY SMITH SEGOVIA
The Leaf-Chronicle - Clarksville,TN
February 14, 2008

Building "green" requires thinking beyond today and tomorrow. People who have a vision of the future — theirs as well as the planet's — are embracing the green building concept in droves.

"Green living is one of the biggest home trends in the country," says Danny Lipford, host of the "Today's Homeowner" television show, www.dannylipford.com.

Locally, Darilyn and Henry Allen III are ahead of the curve. Darilyn began researching green — energy efficient and earth friendly — building techniques about five years ago. When the time came to build, she had two problems — finding contractors knowledgeable about green building and convincing the bank to give her a construction loan based on more than square footage. Mike and Kyle

"There was not an environmental contractor in this town," Darilyn Allen says.

Pays for itself quickly

In most cases, energy-efficient choices in building materials and methods cost a little more on the front end, but will pay for themselves in energy savings in a few months or years.

"It's way more economical, this way of building a home," says Mike Sheck, of Frisch Wood Interiors who is building the Allens' home in Woodlawn. "People think if you're building green, it's too expensive, but it's not true. I like the economy of it. It makes more sense. Things last longer."

Kyle Brown, left, and Mike Sheck show off the concrete forms that create the exterior structure and insulation for Henry and Darilyn Allen's home. PolySteel, the company that provided the Allens' ICFs, estimates an ICF home costs 2 to 4 percent more than a stick-built home, but reduces air leaks by 75 percent and energy costs by at least 33 percent over "stick-built" wood homes.

'Stick built' vs. ICFs

The biggest difference between the Allens' nearly completed home and most homes is its exterior structure. Instead of being "stick built" with a wood frame, the house is constructed using Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs). The forms have two thick Styrofoam walls with a space in the middle, reinforced with rebar.

Once all the forms are stacked in place like blocks to form exterior walls, more rebar secures them to each other, then the space between is filled with concrete.

"It's tornado proof up to 250 miles per hour, and termite proof," Allen says.

ICFs also offer a much quieter interior, a maintenance-free exterior when clad in bricks, and tremendous energy savings for heating and cooling. PolySteel, the company that provided the Allens' ICFs, estimates an ICF home costs 2 to 4 percent more than a stick built home, but reduces air leaks by 75 percent and energy costs by at least 33 percent over stick-built homes.

"ICF has only a two-year payoff," Allen says, indicating the extra up-front cost will be made up in energy savings within the first two years.

Mike showing skylight

Other features

Although the ICF difference is huge, Allen didn't stop there. She hired her brother, Dirk Dypold of Advanced Geothermal Plumbing in Chicago and local excavator Charles Murphy to install a geothermal heat pump. Buried underground, geothermal lines use the earth's natural temperature to heat and cool a home.

Allen chose bamboo — renewable in 4-6 years without replanting — for her flooring. She chose reclaimed wood from old barns for an inlaid ceiling design that will be hand-fashioned and planed by Frisch Wood.

Mike Sheck, of Frisch Wood, checks out a skylight at the Woodlawn home of Darilyn and Henry Allen III. The skylight was installed in the attic to provide natural light for the well-insulated storage area.

To reduce air contaminants, Frisch Wood hand planes wood to a glass smooth finish, rather than sanding it, which releases wood particles or chemical finishes into the air.

All the wood will be finished with tung oil, a wood protector that has none of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in varnishes, paints and glues.

The Allens' home also has low-e windows, water saving Toto Ultimate toilets, a highly efficient Hearthstone wood stove, a gray water reclamation system, and all-natural, VOC-free R-50 insulation in the attic.

Although she faced challenges in the beginning, Allen is thrilled she decided to move forward with the project as her own contractor.

"There was not an environmental contractor in this town," Allen says. "I have met the most honest, hardworking subcontractors on this project."

Sheck says Allen's vision of an energy-efficient, earth-friendly home is part of a larger trend.

"What Darilyn is doing is really becoming very popular," Sheck says.

That's the same message Allen heard from her PolySteel contractor, who has good reason to think business will be booming in the coming years.

"He said 10 years from now," Allen says, "it will be hard to unload a house that doesn't have energy efficiency built in."