Green building goes mainstream
Local builders earn high marks for alternative methods

Steve Martin, superintendent for Tom Gorton Construction Inc., poses in front of the home that earned the company the “Green Built Home of the Year” award from Buiit Green Colorado. The 2,800-square-foot spec home, in Edgemont Higlands, incorporates many aspects of green building such as energy-saving appliances, engineered lumber and cement additives./Photo by Todd Newcomer.

by Amy Maestas

Forget the dismal weather reports; Durango is getting greener. At least on the housing front, that is.

Recently, two Durango homebuilding firms won important awards for their newly built homes that are both environmentally sensitive and energy efficient. They are part of a small and quiet revolution going on locally, which is in lockstep with the national trend of taking green building mainstream.

Simply stated, green building is taking environmental considerations into account during the home-building process. Homebuilders are eschewing traditional stick-built houses that use scores of timber, and instead they are turning their eye toward things like engineered lumber and other materials made from recycled products otherwise destined for bulging landfills. It’s working because there is a growing

inventory of tested technologies – new and old. And there is a growing demand from consumers, says Steve Martin, superintendent for Tom Gorton Construction Inc.

Built Green Colorado, a statewide organization that encourages homebuilders to use technologies and materials that are energy efficient, healthy and preserve natural resources, recently honored Gorton’s company with the Built Green Home of the Year award, targeting the over-$500,000 category. The award is for the Villa Ladera, a 2,800-square-foot spec home in Edgemont Highlands.

Martin says that when the company decided to build the house, it wanted to make the best use of the land that it could. It also wanted to incorporate some of Built Green’s principles. It worked, he explains, because the company saw a need for green housing. Villa Ladera is the third green-built house Gorton has constructed.

“Recently in Durango, people have been responding. I think it’s really going to take off locally, and we will see a lot more of it,” says Martin.

Villa Ladera incorporates many aspects of green building: energy-saving appliances, engineered lumber and cement additives. Engineered lumber is essentially made of glue and wood chips, pressed together. Its use helps preserve the number of trees used to create conventional wood pieces. It is often lighter, stronger and truer, which doesn’t cause shrinkage and squeaky floors.

Four Corners Construction Management used some of the same technologies in its award-winning Copperhead Camp development. The planned 45-home subdivision is also located in Edgemont Highlands. Built Green honored Four Corners Construction as Green Builder of the Year.

Beyond buying green materials, Four Corners looked to the land itself, explains Steve Kawell, the project’s superintendent. Builders used the cleared Ponderosa Pine trees for rafters on the houses’ porches, as well as other parts of the structures. They chipped the leftover branches into mulch. They also excavated sandstone rubble and used it for retaining walls.

“It’s about resource conservation,” says Dan Baker, president of Four Corners Construction. “And one way we thought we could achieve that was to make more of an impact by building 45 homes. I’ve built several custom solar homes, and it almost seems like an oxymoron to build such a big home that is based on green principles.”

Copperhead Camp is Baker’s largest-scale residential green project. He says the move toward production-type housing makes such houses more widely available and visible.

“The biggest obstacle in green building is changing peoples’ minds about it and getting them to try something different. And not only is it different, it is better,” says Hunter Swanson, a local homebuilder.

Sean Borris, Four Corners Construction Management engineer for Copper Head Camp,  stands in front of a model home for the development, which earned the company “Green Builder of  the Year” from Built Green Colorado./Photo by Todd Newcomer.

Swanson and his brother, Cook, are in the process of building a house in Bayfield using an alternative to concrete. Instead of conventional concrete blocks, the Swansons are building with a material called E-crete. The blocks are made of autoclaved aerated concrete, which mixes concrete with raw materials including aluminum. The mix is then poured into a mold. The reaction between the concrete and aluminum creates tiny hydrogen bubbles, causing the concrete to expand five times what it normally would. The end product is, among other things, light, durable, burn-proof, and exceptionally insulative.

Most importantly, Swanson says, the blocks are completely recyclable. By building the bulk of the home – inside and out – with these blocks, they are using less wood and other rapidly depleting resources.

“We can’t continue to use wood the way we have,” says Swanson. “Stick-built homes served their usefulness when wood was cheap. Now there has to be an evolution of products.”

They are also building a healthier home, because the blocks don’t emit gasses and are breathable, unlike synthetic products. Though it’s the first house the Swansons hve built with such material, Hunter says this concrete isn’t a new-fangled product.

Europeans have been using autoclaved aerated concrete, or AAC, blocks for all types of building for more than 75 years, he explains. He can attribute the lack of popularity of it in the United States to only one thing.

“Change is the hardest thing a homo sapien does. And he doesn’t do it well,” he says.

Michelle Reott, principle owner of Earthly Ideas, a Durango-based sustainable design and construction consulting firm, agrees that the key to taking green building to the next step is educated consumers. She says that the national trend shows it is the residential sector that leads the green-building market. The commercial sector usually follows suit.

Part of the education involves showing homebuyers the numerous advantages of green homes. It’s hard to do, says Reott, in a society that clings tightly to cost.

“We live in a dollar-and-cents world,” she says. “But people need to recognize the value of green building and not short-change the upfront cost for the value of savings over the long run.”

Martin says it’s true that green-built houses often cost more to build. Using green materials, Gorton spent an extra $8,000 to $9,000. Swanson says his house-in-progress will end up costing only about 3 percent more by using AAC blocks.

But these builders and Built Green Colorado have identified that homeowners will save that much money – and more – over the near future, in energy costs. Four Corners’ Baker reports that his green-built homes save an average of $1,000 per year. At some point soon, the building costs will begin to drop and the energy savings over the life of a home will be enough to outweigh the upfront cost differential.

It even translates to health savings. Green builders say such houses are more comfortable, brighter and have cleaner air. Homeowners don’t have to deal with mold, noncirculated air or sickening toxins.

Because many Durango residents put a premium on their quality of life and the environment, Reott foresees local green building rising steadily. It’s the same across the country, that people pay attention to what makes economical sense as well as what’s in line with their ecological visions.

“People also may be influenced by others who have moved here from other places, where they have had experience with how well green building works,” she says. “Durango now has seen that the increased awareness of the builder and the homebuyer has coalesced.”

Now that Durango is experiencing green building on a larger scale, rather than scattered one-home projects built by just the homeowner, the concept is edging into the mainstream, especially now that the community boasts award-winning builders. Kawell, of Four Corners Construction, explains that there is so much rationale behind green building because houses last longer, making the definition of sustainable that much more far-reaching.

“It’s just sensible building,” he says. •