Working with unimpressed contractor

[Jadeswan]

My husband and I are in the planning stage of having a home built. My cousin is a contractor and we asked him to build our house because he has lots of experience and we trust him to do a good job at a reasonable price. He is very conscious of quality and energy efficiency but unfortunately he is not very environmentally conscious. I want to have as environmentally conscious a house as we can afford and I've been doing research to try to make this happen. The difficulty is I have no prior building knowledge or experience so I don't know where to start. He has shot down a lot of my ideas and I don't know if it is really because they wouldn't work or are too expensive or if it is really because they just aren't conventional. I don't want to be a difficult customer but I'm starting to feel frustrated. It is also hard to know which things would make the most difference and would be worth spending the money for. If anyone has information on cost effective, environmentally conscious design ideas and building materials that could be effectively presented to a skeptical builder, I would be very appreciative. We live in central Oklahoma and the property is rural. Thanks in advance.

[Chris Stewart]

Hello Jadeswan,
Every builder I work with is skeptical of energy efficient product claims and I think they have good reason to be. The people selling these products tend to exaggerate the benefits and under estimate the costs. Of coarse builders also like to stick with materials and methods which they have experience with.

Most of the things it takes to make a house energy efficient are not high tech and should pay for themselves pretty fast. Environmentally friendly or "green" products are harder to determine.

Exploring this subject is not only part of my responsibility as a home designer but also a hobby of mine so I would be happy to help with your project.

What sorts of things are you considering?

[Eric Hughes]

Jadeswan,

Could you give us some more information like, location of the project, the size of the home, site location north south east or west, budget ect.

[kmapro]

Hi Jade, might I offer some advice for enviromentally friendly and cost efficiency?

Chris is well aware that I am a major believer in ICF construction. ICF stands for Insulated Concrete Forms and is a very energy efficient system to build with in the long run and the costs up front are not great enough to keep you from going this route.

I used a product manufactured by Polysteel http://www.polysteel.com and they are manufactured in an enviromentally way and they do not pollute the air in any form.

They are very energy conscious in that they have the availability of saving the homeowner 50%-80% on the heating and cooling cost of the home. They are very strong - properly reonforced, they can withstand a 350 mph+ wind gust (can you say tornado/hurricane proof?). The forms by polysteel are treated with borate, which is a termite repellant (in case you live in an area where that is a problem) and they are very sound friendly from outside elements.

Based on their safety ratings (wind and a 4 hour fire rating) they also qualify for insurance rate reductions because they lack the typical risks associated with a standard stick built home.

As far as cost, you can expect to spend about 5% more over a traditional framed home. So, if you expect to spend $100k on your construction, you can expect an ICF home to run you around $105k. The last ICF home I built was pretty even in cost. i think the only difference was the cost of the concrete in the walls.

As you build the ICF home, you will think you are going to be living in a styrofoam cooler because of the way the forms look. Yes, the forms are made of styrofoam (for lack of a better word), but they have a 6" concrete core. You stack the exterior blocks from the footing/slab to the upper most ceiling and then fill the blocks with concrete.

Now, i know you are thinking..a concrete home?!?! Don't worry, you can add almost any exterior facade that you wish..brick, stone, hardi and even vinyl.

If you would like to know more, check out the above link to Polysteel's website. There is a ton of information out there for ICF homes as well.