Boosting Your Home’s Bottom Line:
Big Ideas for Making a Good First Impression

This means Houston area homeowners will have unprecedented choices when remodeling their dream homes.  Quieter, cleaner, lower maintenance homes with smaller energy bills and the best indoor air quality options in U.S. construction history will be more popular than ever.  In order to get the most value for your remodeling investment however, researching your “green” builder will be more important than ever so be sure to find a remodeler with a proven track record of performance in this growing segment of home building.

During a recent interview, Peter Peifer, AIA, spoke how “Green Building” has finally been accepted as a legitimate branch of residential construction.  He went on to say his thoughts are actually turning more to High Performance Homes, homes that by virtue of their Green design, materials and construction methods out perform their conventionally built counterparts. 

Homes that consume less energy are less costly to operate.  High efficiency windows and HVAC systems are just two easy ways to ensure you have a high performance remodeled home.  Homes properly fitted with these features require less energy (and less money) to keep them comfortable regardless of the season.  Homes with proper attic ventilation, radiant barrier roof decking and sufficient insulation are higher performers as they too cost much less to maintain and operate.  Tank-less water heaters, dual flush toilets and faucets and showerheads with aerators all reduce water consumption thereby increasing the operating efficiency of these new high performance homes.  Using less water results in less wear and tear on the systems within your home that must store, heat, cool and transfer that water around your house.

Yet buying “green”, buying “high performance” has to be about more than R.O.I. and reduced operating expenses.  When was the last time you purchased a green upgrade simply because it would pay for itself in 5, 10 or 15 years?  Does anybody actually wait around until the payback period on their ridge vents has transpired and then celebrate with a bottle of champagne?  No, of course not.

Who then really cares about the payback? Since we can assume with the exception of a very few people that nobody is marking such time on their calendars then have your remodeled with “a shade of green” has to be about something else.  It must in fact be about the look, the feel, the quality-of-life improvements that come with a professionally remodeled green home. 

After all, don’t you want your home to have improved indoor quality?  Pretty easy to achieve at minimal additional cost if you use no v.o.c. or low v.o.c. paints.  Adding ventilation fans to laundry rooms and attached garages or simply by properly sizing bathroom ventilation fans will make a big difference in removing unwanted odors, contaminants and moisture from the home.   Putting those fans on timers ensures they will not run unnecessarily.   Make sure on your remodeling projects that the vent fans (and vent hoods!) exhaust properly outdoors and are not dumping more humidity into the attic.

Home is where the heart is and all of us at the end of the day we should all be able to look forward to returning to a peaceful quiet home.  Did you know that that even an average quality vinyl frame insulated glass window reduces neighborhood and traffic noises while keeping the cool dry air inside and the humidity and dust outside where it belongs?  Many appliances today come with timers to operate automatically during off hours.  This way nobody has to try and have a conversation about how much they love their remodeler over the noise of their washing machine operating in the background. 

So our mandate in the year ahead, as I humbly see it, is to forget about green homes built from straw or used tires.  Let’s turn “green remodeling” into a redundant term.  It’s time we all started seeing and buying the benefits of high performance homes.  Yes, homes which are cleaner, safer and quieter.  Homes that cost less to operate and maintain.  Homes that we would like our children and grandchildren to one day live in.