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Do Some Shopping Around Before You Build

Richmond Times Dispatch
By Deborah Rider Allen, Special Correspondent

Before you sit down with a real estate agent or builder to talk about having a new home built, the experts recommend that you do a little investigative work.

(photo courtesy of Joe Mahoney)

From visiting homes and exploring neighborhoods, to looking at and pricing various products, being well-informed will help the process go much more smoothly.

Mark Waring of Bain Waring Builders says a good place to start is by looking at houses and subdivisions to see what you like and where you might like to live.

You can tour homes and neighborhoods by visiting model homes or going to Parade of Homes and Dream House tours that are held annually. The information you gather will help you to decide on location, home style and even decorating.

"If they have that narrowed down, then that is one more thing out of the equation," said Waring.

Virginia Building America Program

by DEBORAH RIDER ALLEN, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH

In order to get home builders to change the way they build, the buying public has to demand the changes. In an effort to educate the buying public to ask the right questions, two local Richmond builders, Bain-Waring Builders and R. E. Collier, Inc., Builder are constructing demonstration homes under the newly developing Virginia Building America Program. Based on the national Building America program started by the U.S. Department of Energy seven years ago, it strives to educate and train builders to build affordable homes that will use less energy, reduce construction time, decrease indoor air pollution and cut construction waste by almost half. The two Richmond demonstration houses are part of eight houses being built across the state to serve as educational tools for builders and buyers.

"I think it is a good way to build and one of the benefits is to make homeowners aware that this technology is available so they know to ask for it," said Mark Waring of Bain-Waring Builders that is building a demonstration house in the Rolling Hills subdivision in Henrico County. The 2600 square foot rancher has a price tag of $243,750. The house will include such features as Optimum Value Engineering to use less wood in the building process; sheathing and cabinets built with products free of urethra formaldehyde, high-density cellulose insulation, sealing the house tight, low-E Argon windows, an insulated sealed crawl space and a high performance HVAC (heating ventilation air conditioning) system with mechanical ventilation.

Home & Garden Show Goes Green in Richmond

By ZACHARY REID

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

The Richmond Home & Garden Show took on an environmentally friendly look this year.

For the first time in the show's 32 years, it featured an entire area dedicated to green building. The pavilion included everything from sunrooms to windows to waste-disposal experts to builders, all geared toward getting the most from a home with the least impact on the environment.

"You don't build a house the same way in Florida as you would in Maine," said Mark A. Waring, the vice president of Bain-Waring Builders. "What really is important is efficiency."

The houses he builds under the name Earth Craft House are 50 percent more efficient than a traditional home, he said.

"The greatest conservation is energy," said Waring, who has specialized in energy-efficient homes the past 12 years of his 25-year building career.

EPA Software helps sell consumers on Energy Efficiency

Richmond Times-Dispatch

By Deborah Rider Allen

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a new, easy-to-use tool that helps real estate agents and builders sell consumers on the idea of investing more money in new-home energy efficiency.

Energy Star Home Calc is a four-disk software program for the Windows environment, designed for the EPA by ICF Inc. in Fairfax.

Users install the program; load such numbers as the cost of the house, the buyer's salary and the debt ratio; and, with a click of the mouse, obtain instantaneous graphics on the screen.

One shows how a higher monthly mortgage payment, which includes Energy Star home efficiency upgrades, is offset by a decrease in monthly utility costs. Another shows how to use the "extra" monthly cash flow to finance a larger home or add more amenities. Other screens include calculations on home affordability, mortgages and financing.

"We are on a mission to get consumers off of first cost as far as making a product decision," said Sam Rashkin, Energy Star homes manager for the EPA, who headed the development of Home Calc.

The Energy Star program develops voluntary partnerships between the EPA and builders who agree to construct homes that are 30 percent more energy efficient than standard code requires. The efficiency level is equivalent to the National Home Energy Rating Organization's five-star home.

Going for Zero

Locals try to build Virginia’s most energy efficient home

By Katherine Houstoun CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Builder Mark Waring (from left), Diane Lewis and her husband, Randy Thomas, broke ground on what they hope will become the state’s first zero-energy home last week. Page Dowdy/Chesterfield Observer Some people embrace sustainable living by making small changes like switching to energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs. Others, like Diane Lewis and Randy Thomas, are a bit more ambitious. The couple is attempting to build a zero-energy home – a feat that has yet to be achieved in Virginia – in Chesterfield’s Stone Harbor neighborhood.

“A zero-energy home would mean that all of the energy that is used in the home in a year’s time is offset by the energy produced by the home,” explains Lewis, a real estate agent with Long & Foster. Home energy ratings are determined using the Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Index, established by the Residential Energy Services Network. The index runs from zero to 100, with a net-zero energy home having a score of 0.

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