Bin Wilcenski, the chief operations officer at the Columbia Homebuilders Association, says they have gotten a lot of calls about green building within the past two months and said the term has pretty much become a buzzword in South Carolina’s homebuilding circles.

Even at this late date there are still those who argue that the impact of humankind on Planet Earth is negligible. They dismiss global warming as a fraud, part of a radical conspiracy to deprive Rush Limbaugh of the right to kill turtles on the beach that runs in front of his Florida compound. Regardless of where you come down on this political debate, there are a few points on which people of good will can surely agree.

In our role as stewards of the world in which we live, it just makes sense to use the available resources wisely; it doesn’t really matter if some dismiss conservation as a mere personal virtue. That’s why the movement towards green building is gaining momentum every day. A green house is a home that uses sustainable building materials and energy efficient design. The concept of sustainability involves renewable energy and conservation of resources. It’s not just a trend – it’s a fact of life.

Bin Wilcenski, the chief operations officer at the Columbia Homebuilders Association, says they have gotten a lot of calls about green building within the past two months and said the term has pretty much become a buzzword in South Carolina’s homebuilding circles. To Wilcenski, the term “green” is pretty loose and he said a lot of the homes being built today are more energy efficient than they were in the past.

On the other side of the state, John Carroll, a licensed general contractor working out of Greenville County says his professional path has led him to a certain conclusion about the subject.

“Green building, as you may know, has been around for some time,” he says. “I would argue that it was the first type of building and that the industrial housing complex has caused the consumer to forget how to do it. As a result of the mass building of inefficient and wasteful structures, we are in a situation where our houses generate more greenhouse gases than our cars when you look at the output of the power plants necessary to power our houses.” On a practical level, the impetus for green building is perhaps not as great in the South Carolina as other parts of the country. The reasons for this are fairly obvious. As Carroll points out, parts of South Carolina have relatively low energy costs when compared to most other parts of the county and also has relatively mild weather. Also, he says, “We have relatively cheap labor. Green building is most successful in areas of the country where energy costs are high and weather is severe. Also, since some green building technologies, like structural insulated panels, have a greater material cost and reduced labor costs for installation, they are more commonly found in areas where labor costs are relatively high or where the supply of labor is low.”

The idea of sustainable resources also plays a major role in green building. Across the state line when John Watters built his new home outside Asheville, N.C. he applied green building techniques on a variety of fronts, not least of which was the maximum use of recycled materials.

“Barnwood ceiling, barn beam collar ties, and barn-wood flooring - wide plank yellow pine, wormy chestnut, oak for thresholds,” he lists among the recycled items he recovered by tearing down an old barn. This process left Watters covered with grime – and with a large stock of material. “Plus old pine tobacco pole for our stair rail, a kitchen sink, master bath sink, and clawfoot tub; heart pine flooring as paneling in guest bedroom, hand-hewn corner post in the turn of a stairwell, and vintage wood as interior door and window trim.” For Watters, sustainability meant employing recycled materials to avoid using new resources when already-existing material can be utilized. But it went deeper than that.

“It is also about smart management of renewable resources, such as the production of dimensional building lumber,” says Watters. “While we were able to recycle old barn wood for finish flooring and an exposed ceiling, we still had to buy a lumber package for all the structural framing of the roughly 1600-square-foot house. We chose to pay a little more for an FSC-certified lumber package out of Virginia. FSC stands for Forest Stewardship Council, a qualification stating that the lumber was harvested from ecologically managed forests maintained by selective cutting and proper replanting. No old growth trees and no clear-cutting, a major cause of devastating erosion, especially in hilly and mountainous terrain.”

The conservation impact of a builder such as Watters might seem like environmental tokenism, considering that Ty Pennington and the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” team could personally burn through enough material in a week to more than offset the impact of this green building effort in parts of the Palmetto State. But the most immediate benefit of green construction techniques does not come from a bevy of good feeling accrued by the homeowner. As John Carroll tells potential clients, “Benefits from green construction are broad - economic, health, psychological, and political benefits can be achieved through different aspects of green building. The economic benefits are most evident in the monthly operating expenses of the home. By operating expenses I mean primarily electricity and gas, but a truly green house should also have lower maintenance costs as well.”

He’ll also point out that such progressive measures are not pie-in-the-sky promises of the distant future, but a reality on the ground here today. “The health benefits from green building would be easiest to see in aspects of programs like Earthcraft House,” he says. Earthcraft House is a recently instituted green building program in South Carolina that was developed by the Greater Atlanta Home Builder’s Association and the South Face Energy Institute in Atlanta. The program has been used in Georgia since 1999. The technical guidelines that comprise the Earthcraft House system look not only at the energy efficiency of the home, but at the interior air quality. This means encouraging the use of low VOC (volatile organic compound) paints, adhesives, and other materials, which translates to a cleaner, healthier indoor environment.

Carroll makes the rather obvious point that unchecked energy use is a luxury that American society is realizing has significant social costs. “On the political side, green building in conjunction with other energy saving initiatives will help this nation to less dependent on foreign energy sources,” he observes, adding that conservation does not have to mean sacrificing your family’s personal comfort. “When I was a kid, being energy conscious meant being generally uncomfortable - too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter,” recalls Carroll. “The beauty of green building is that energy consciousness is coupled with comfort, convenience, and healthy living. The idea is to build a house that tends to stay at a comfortable temperature without conditioning. That’s why design and siting are so important.”

This is where Carroll’s varied background has become a real asset. He has studied architecture, worked on building projects around the country as a carpenter and construction manager and trained at the Structural Insulated Panel School in Shepardstown, West Virginia. “Building is something that I have been involved in for most of my life is some capacity or another. When I decided to strike out on my own it was a tremendously liberating moment. I had one simple goal - to build the best,” says Carroll. “I recognized in studying green building that there I had no choice. Quite simply, green building is the highest quality, most intelligent and responsible form of building. As a recovering philosophy major and would-be architect, I knew this was it.”

The life journey in progress brought Carroll to the Upstate at a time when environment-enhancing building techniques have assumed increasing importance. “In my view there are three aspects to green building. In order of descending importance they are: Design – if a house is not properly designed, it will take more energy to make it comfortable; Building quality – all joints must be tight, windows and doors properly sealed, ducts properly installed and sealed. Insulation of walls and roof must appropriate to the climate with special attention paid to critical areas: corners, intersections, eaves, doors, and windows; and Technology – only after the above items are addressed should we rely on the benefits of high efficiency heating, cooling and water heating options.”

John Watters was able to take each of these maxims into account when he built the structure that was not only a building project but would also become his home. The applied technology he selected included a significant investment in solar power.

“Long-term savings certainly played a part in our choice to incorporate passive solar gain. It’s like heating your house for free,” he said. “All a house needs is to face in the right direction and have the right ratio of south-facing windows for solar gain, and thermal mass in the way of masonry (for solar collection). We also paid a little more for icenyne foam insulation, and radiant in-floor heating, but that combination of efficient heating and a high R-factor make for a very comfortable and efficient method of heating that will more than pay for itself in the long run.”

This trade-off of somewhat higher initial construction costs to achieve real future savings might seem like a no-brainer, but builders more worried about short-term profit than long-term efficiency puts the burden on consumers to seek out features that are important to them – and that they’re willing to pay for.

John Carroll confronts this reality every day with his construction business, Green Build. “I realized going into it that there would be challenges,” he says. “It is difficult to compete in a marketplace that focuses on initial cost per square foot rather than the total cost ownership - principle, interest, taxes, insurance and operating costs.”

Carroll says any balance sheet that doesn’t take operating costs into account presents a false picture of the economic reality of the structure in question. He realizes there are also other factors that must be considered.

“The equation is complicated by the transient nature of the American workforce,” he says. “Many of us do not know how long our current employer or assignment will keep us in one place. Consequently, when we look at adding costs that have a payback period of more than a couple of years, people may not have the confidence that they will be in their houses long enough to see the payback. While I can fully understand that position, I believe that the marketplace will evolve. As consumers become more conscious of these issues, an energy efficient home will eventually be recognized as more valuable than a home of standard construction.”

On the other hand, John Watters makes the case that virtue can be its own reward. “I think other draws to go green are based on personal philosophies, or a living esthetic. It’s people with an obligation to future generations, listening to the collective conscience in pursuit of a sustainable way of living that will endure. People believe in green because it speaks to something true and right in the world. It’s using the human genius to do right by the world and each other.”

This inclination is not limited to a property owner looking to erect a green domicile. A merchant operating out of a rented retail space can also make a commitment to going green. A case in point is The Tack Shop on South Pleasantburg in Greenville. When owner Glyn Sandzen Roche moved her decades-old equestrian supply firm into this location, she made sure to install features that would save energy costs and be environmentally friendly at the same time. Sun tubes pierce the roof, looking something like ventilator at the top. They project sunlight directly into the store’s interior, providing a steady flow of intense daylight with the warm, soothing quality it provides. If you look closely, you observe thick insulating foam on the ceiling which so thoroughly blocks the heat from inside the store that the recent snow stayed on the roof for days longer than their neighbors. The floors are made from recycled wood chips in a pattern that looks like it belongs in a barn, a nice touch for a business concerned with horses. Other improvements are more subtle, such as efficient water heaters that eschew tanks, and exterior walls made from recycled materials formed into structural panels advocated by John Carroll.

“In my pursuit of the highest quality building I have developed an affinity for the use of Structural Insulated Panels in green construction,” he says. “I believe that they are the most cost effective way to get the tightest, strongest, most energy efficient structure possible. I have trained at the and learned from some of the best panel installers in the country. The most amazing thing about this technology is that although people think of it as new, it’s been around since the 1930s. Frank Lloyd Wright employed the use of Structural Insulated Panels in some of his Usonian houses.”

John Watters also believes in the economic vitality of green building. His company Crow Dog Construction is a dealer for Sloan’s Mill German-engineered timber frame homes that feature structural insulated panels on the walls and roof. Other green considerations inform the entire building process.

“No old growth timber is used,” he says. “We harvest second, third and fourth generation indigenous white pine with lower transport costs and less environmental impact due to its local & regional availability. Every ounce of wood is used, there is no waste. The sawdust we create is used to fire the kilns that cure the wood.”

In the end, it will be the consumers who drive demand for green housing. The efforts of John Carroll, John Watters, Glyn Roche and hundreds like them are showing the way. The benefits of going green will be shared by the larger society – as soon we recognize that the advantages are great and the cost of doing nothing may ultimately be more than we can bear. People get ready, there’s a change a coming.

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