The CleanTechGreenTech Blog

Green Building Comes Home At The International Builders Show

This year at the International Builders Show in Orlando, Florida, the National Association of Home Builders kicked off its Green Building Program, a competitor of sorts to the US Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards on the residential front.  While LEED is mostly focused on public and commercial buildings, they do have a residential standard, though obviously not one backed by the NAHB.  Still, their focus has largely been, well, large-scale and commercial over residential.

So the NAHB decided to do their own thing, and cornerstone to the show and their own announcement was the first certiifed home under the Green Building Program, right in Orlando and open to attendees of the show.

  The home combines "smart home" high-tech gadgetry, such as programmable lighting with built-in presets and backlit control panels for easy access, and low-tech design elements such as a solar chimney, cleverly designed as a soaring cupola, that draws up hot air in the house and helps ease the burden on the Florida home's cooling system.  Of course, at over 6000 square feet the home is far larger than practical for most people, and greater savings could certainly be achieved in a smaller footprint.

But the home is most critical as a demonstration model.  Coined the New American Home, just about every conceivable feature is jammed into this futuristic home with the traditional look as a way of making a point about the Green Building Program, and that is that builders and designers need not sacrifice aesthetic or modern features for a green ethic.  Much of it is in fact impractical, as the Orlando Sentinel reporter points out.  The tub is conceivably too large to use regularly, for instance.
The value comes through in its visibility and utility as a test bed.  As the first home certified under the NAHB's new program, it's going to stand as a kind of flagship for the program, and to do that it needs to be highly visible and heavy on the wow factor.  It couldn't have been the tenth or fifth or even the first home in an average development in a random suburb; the home had to make a statement.

And this new home certainly did.  Is it the New American Home for real?  Only time will tell, but it's to be hoped that it will at least influence new home construction in the coming years.