Saw this article in the New River Valley Current this weekend regarding Progress Street Builders' new NAHB Gold Standard program. As the owner of a home built by Progress Street Builders, I can speak firsthand to their attention to detail - in this case, they're paying attention to things that have a greater purpose. And as you'll see in the article, Don is putting his money where his mouth is - Kudos to Don and the team at Progress Street
Builders ...
(Dear Roanoke Times - would you please publish these articles online so they don't have to be written out in their entirety?)
"EarthCraft, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) ... all are promoting sustainable building techniques, energy-efficient usage of space and materials, and long term, cost-effective approaches to design.
Progress Street Builders, whcih, since it started the eight-year old Village at Tom's Creek project, has been known for a sustainable building approach. It has incorporated aspects of energy efficiency into its homes for nearly a decade. Now its Roanoke development, Colonial Green, and a new spec house in the Village at Tom's Creek, will incorporate the NAHB Green Building standards, according to Don Hughes, operations manager.
The spec house, a four-square will not stand out architecturally from the rest of the houses in the Village, said Hughes. And neither will it be significantly more expensive. In pursuing the NAHB standard - it has chosen the Gold Standard, the ones Hughes said best fits their focus of sustainability.
'Green building is not a term I'm terribly fond of,' he said. 'It's so ambiguous, so we use the term sustainability, which indicates where you build and how you build. The majority of our construction work, in The Village at Tom's Creek and in Roanoke, has been green since the inception of The Village. It has a lot inherent characteristics, with the ability not just to look at the house but also the community. NAHB looks at the community at large, and we felt it was a really importatn component.'
Hughes explained that his company's green building approach uses smaller lots and larger continuous green spaces.
'One of the reasons we took on the Gold program was that we've been doing this throughout our company's history, and we wanted to utilize it to the greatest extent,' said Hughes.
According to NAHB, its building standard 'will maintain the flexibility of green building practices while providing a common national benchmak for builders, remodelers, and developers ... It is based on the three-year-old NAHB Model Green Home Building Guidelines, but enhanced to include residential remodeling, multifamily building, and lot and site development - also the first of their kinds in the country. It also reflects advancements in requirements in the International Residential Code and other changes that serve as indications of the dynamic nature of green building.'
Hughes said the program is more flexible and meets their needs as well as the characteristics of the New River Valley. For instance, he said, prior EarthCraft certifications (although they may have changed recently, he added) would not allow a program that used septic systems. While it is a very good program, said Hughes, in some areas of the New River Valley septic systems are necessary.
'This house [in The Village] will be certified under both programs,' he said.
The NAHB program requires a third-party, independent verification that involves both a blower-door test and a duct-blaster test to check air leaks.
'We go through a complex analysis of each house. The program gives you a broad range of meeting certain performance criteria, and we can address those objectives in a multitude of ways,' said Hughes.
Although Progress Street Builders chose the Gold Standard, when building subsequent homes it will offer homeowners a choice as to which level of home they want. The seven key green areas that the standard addresses are site, resource efficiency, energy efficiency, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, homeowner education and global impact.
Hughes said Progress Street Builders' houses didn't have to go trhough any major changes, because the company's standard specifications already were in line with both EarthCraft and NAHB certifications and goals.
His company has concentrated on creativerly building air barriers, bringing HVAC systems inside the conditioned envelope, yet still turning out a house that is both energy efficient and cost effective.
'As long as you build carefully, not using exotic materials, you don't have to build a house that is compromised in livability or in its aesthetics. You'll drive by this particular home and it will not look out of place. It's going to be in complete architectural harmony with the community,' said Hughes.
Progress Street Builders is so confident of the NAHB Gold standard that Hughes is offering homeowners who live in NAHB Gold Standard houses an energy-usage program that guarantees a certain energy usage for two years - in units rather than in dollars - that will reimburse the homeowner for overages.
'When we build and test and have third-party verifications, we feel very comfortable in guaranteeing energy usage. it's something we have monitored in model homes and in our personal homes,' said Hughes.
For more information on Hughes and Progress Street Builders, check out their website. This article is just in time for the Roanoke Energy Expo.
Don't forget that November 7 and 8 is the Green Living & Energy Expo in Roanoke ... loads of exhibitors, presentations and more on topics like new ways to heat and cool your home, limiting your use of fossil fuels, and more.
It's a big deal to have an event like this in Roanoke - shows us that the two valleys (Roanoke and New River Valley) are continuing to get more serious about making sure we're good stewards of the tremendous resources we have here. And it's gaining attention elsewhere - check out some of these other great alternative energy links, courtesy of Carnival of the Green and Jim Duncan.
Need a ride to the polls this election day, or want to continue the theme of Sustainability Week and encourage the use of public transportation while exercising your right to vote?
Blacksburg Transit is providing "Election Day transportation service to voting locations within the Town of Blacksburg. Service will operate from 7:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday November 4, 2008 to the following voting locations:
For detailed information regarding your district and voting location please visit the Montgomery County Registrar's Office at www.montva.com or call (540) 382-5741.
For up to date detailed information regarding Election Day Service visit the Blacksburg Transit Website at www.btransit.org or call (540) 961-1185 for service questions."
They also have an Election Day route schedule:
It's Sustainability Week in Blacksburg, which means we should be focusing a little bit more on minimizing our impact in the communities we live in.
One of the ways to do that is to bike around Town. Have you ever tried it? Blacksburg is a pretty bike-friendly town, at least more than most, and it's pretty easy to get around from place to place via pedal power. It's great exercise, the main corridors of Blacksburg (Main Street and Prices Fork Road) have bike lanes, there are bike racks around Town (although not enough, in my opinion) to lock your bike to, and if you decide you've had enough pedaling and need a ride, most Blacksburg Transit buses have bike racks. The current Huckleberry Trail takes you out to the Christiansburg mall, and will eventually go even further than that expanding the number of retail, grocery and entertainment options you can reach by bike (if you decide you don't want to visit the new First & Main).
What about riding your bike to work? Sure, it's getting colder and most of us aren't going to head out into the cold for a commute to work - it's hard to signal, ride and drink coffee all at the same time (and until they get seat heaters for my bike seat like they have for my car, I'm tempted to stick with my routine thank you very much)! One of the unintended benefits of higher gas prices this summer though, was an increase in the number of people using their bikes to commute to work. I know I did, and my wife did as well. And when the winter weather breaks a bit and we have that balmy winter day, I'll get the bike out and do it again. It's a great way to get around, and just in my industry there are more and more real estate agents - like Dru Bloomfield, Jim Duncan and Tony Arko - who are using their bikes more and more.
So ... what's your commute look like? Here's mine:
<p>&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapmyride.com/route/united-states/va/blacksburg/876025923575&quot;&amp;amp;gt;Ride to Work&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br/&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapmyride.com/find-route/united-states/va/blacksburg&quot;&amp;amp;gt;Find more Commutes in Blacksburg, Virginia&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;</p>
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Less wear and tear on roads, less vehicle emissions, less fuel usage, more caloric burn ... We talk about the high quality of life we have here in the New River Valley, isn't the opportunity to do something that's good not only for our bodies but the community we live in just another way we can support the mission of Sustainability Week, and make it, as Jim calls it, a lifestyle shift.
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Rackspace, and it's webmail division of Mailtrust - which, coincidentally is Blacksburg-grown - IPO'd in August 2008, yet very little was written about it in the local paper. Stuart's contention is that success stories like Mailtrust, and so many others located throughout our region, need the support and publicity that all of us can provide.
Thanks to Handshake 2.0 for sharing the video.
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