Living Green

You build it green

ATLANTA — On a quiet Atlanta street sits a charming, unfinished, three-bedroom gray and white ranch home with detached garage. Persistent hammering and drilling can be heard in the distance as workers erect what will soon be one family's dream home.

Neighbors casually stroll past the construction site, walking their dogs and never guessing for a moment this home will be environmentally friendly. And why would they? The home and surrounding construction area looks like any other new building project in the neighborhood, an organized mess.

Jennifer Lee Preyss/Cox News Service (ENLARGE)

Ubuildit Corp. is a nationwide franchise of residential construction consultants for homebuyers interested in building or renovating a home themselves.

So, what does it take to uniquely design and build a custom home with eco-friendly upgrades? One phone call to Ubuildit should do it.

Ubuildit Corp. is a nationwide franchise of residential construction consultants for homebuyers interested in building or renovating a home themselves.

"It's one of the best ways you can build, get the home that you really want, have all the custom features you want, and go as green as you want to go," says Lonnie Castillo, owner and president of the Ubuildit Mall of Georgia franchise in suburban Atlanta.

A Texas native, Castillo has been around the building trade his entire life and has worked as a builder for 15 years, the past four with Ubuildit. In the late 90s Castillo was introduced to environmentally friendly building techniques and became a certified green builder with EarthCraft Co. in 1999.

Referencing a points system of environmental performance, home completions must meet a minimum of 150 environmental points to be EarthCraft certified.

For the gray and white house, Castillo's consultants teamed up with EarthCraft to assist the homebuyer, or owner-builder in Ubuildit terms, to design a home with green alternatives. Upon completion, the home will have well exceeded the minimum points.

With a custom environmental design, the Atlanta home boasts energy-saving features such as radiant barrier roofing, engineered wood materials, tankless water heaters and low-flow plumbing fixtures.

"We went with a radiant barrier on the roof, so the sheathing is not your standard sheathing, which reduces your attic temperature by about 30 degrees, and it will save you big-time on your cooling bills," Castillo said. "Plumbing fixtures are low-flow, which reduces the amount of water that spits out. It's got the cellulose-recycled insulation, canopy heating and air conditioning. The appliances are Energy Star, energy rated."

Many of the wood products are made from recycled materials, such as the engineered microbial density fiberboards lining the windows. Castillo is fond of the engineered wood products that are popular in green building.

"They can be used for both interior and exterior building purposes and are no more costly than regular lumber," he said. "They also require less upkeep because the materials don't rot."

Because many of Ubuildit's homes are custom designed, home plans can be drawn with exacting measurements, saving lumber and eliminating unnecessary materials.

"I don't see anyone doing this, but we've taken all the excess materials and boards, ground them up and used them for mulching around the exterior of the home to eliminate waste," Castillo said. "It helps to stabilize and cut down on erosion, and it's better than using bails of hay or straw."

Castillo's staff of knowledgeable consultants inform homeowners prior to and during the building process where eco-upgrades can be substituted, usually for only a few hundred dollars more. Projected savings through the years in utilities and maintenance costs usually convinces clients to spend a few extra dollars.

"We can do solar panels, geo-thermal HVAC – but you don't have to do that. It's all about dollars and cents, what somebody has available for their budget, how long they're going to be in the house," Castillo said. "We do green options on everything we build, everything we touch, you can be as green as you want to be."

More and more homeowners are becoming educated in green options for new and existing homes, realizing they too can build or renovate the way they've always wanted without anyone presuming the finished result was environmentally designed.

For homebuyers who want to build a home, it could not be a more exciting time to take advantage of a plummeting residential housing market.

New residential construction starts and completions for single-family homes have declined more than 24 percent since December 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And with economists and real estate analysts predicting another year of residential development lethargy, it will remain a buyers market.

Ubuildit owner-builders are in a unique category because they act as the purchaser and the builder, cutting costs in all directions. On average, Ubuildit clients take possession of their home with 20 percent equity.

Castillo's current project, the little gray and white ranch home with detached garage, will soon be finished and the keys handed to the new residents. He'll walk them across the street and let them get a good first look at their environmentally smart, maintenance-free, dream home.

"There is nothing better for me at the end of a project than to stand across the street with a client, looking over and saying, 'you know what, you did that, you built your own home. Congratulations,'" he said.