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Going Green! Going We used to hear a lot Going about homebuilders who were “Going Green”. What Gone? happened to that? Is it over?
Photos: Willamette Landing, Corvallis - built by Legend Homes
We asked Mike Goodrich:
Nope, but what the term “green building” means has evolved a lot over the last decade and overwhelmingly for the better. Unfortunately some builders thought that “green” was nothing more than a branding gimmick, a couple of CFL lightbulbs in the home or a bamboo floor and, poof, suddenly they are building green homes. Such obvious marketing tactics lacking substantive changes to building practices have justifiably earned the title “green washing”. Through a combination of educated buyers and industry and regulatory pressure this phenomenon has largely disappeared from the marketplace. Legend Homes uses a science and best practices based approach toward building more sustainable (green) homes. All materials and procedures are reviewed by our internal best practices team for impacts on energy efficiency, longevity of the structure and health and safety before being 26
implemented into our homes. We not only use high-performance energy saving techniques, like increased insulation throughout the home, properly sealed ductwork, design that keeps that ductwork inside the conditioned space of the home, and advanced air sealing techniques, but we also employ third-party verifiers. These third parties inspect multiple times during the construction of each home to insure that those features are properly installed and functioning as intended. In addition, we don’t think it’s enough to just implement these practices; we also plan them, inspect them, test them and then document them. And, since we want our buyers to be sure they are working as well, we provide that documentation and test results to each of our new owners. Planning for a home to function properly is a great benefit, and knowing
Willamette Living Magazine
BY Mike Goodrich Vice President Legend Homes that it will function properly grants us the ability to guarantee it as well. The Energy Trust of Oregon uses our design values and testing results to assign each of our homes an Energy Performance Score (EPS). The EPS allows buyers to compare expected energy use and carbon footprint against other homes built in Oregon and to the same home if it was just built to code. Legend takes the estimated energy cost from the EPS and guarantees that our new buyer’s gas and electric bills won’t exceed that rate for 3 years. “Green building” is still around but it’s all grown up. For more information and details on these and other features of Legend Homes please visit the Earth Smart section of the website at
www.LegendHomes.com
April / May 2015