Green Home-Building Practices
Minimize Your Environmental Impact.
Build Green With K&V.
Responsibly build and live in your new home when you partner with K&V. A Certified Green Professional since 2009, earth-friendly processes are implemented in each project from the initial homeowner meeting to the building process and beyond. Not only can you construct your home using green practices, but K&V works with every homeowner with reminders of how to keep their new home green.
The Benefits of a Green Home
Lower Operating Costs
Increased Comfort
Improved Environmental Quality
Enhanced Durability and Less Maintenance
Guiding Principles for Eco-Friendly,
Green Home Building
- Lot Design, Preparation, & Development
- Resource Efficiency
- Energy Efficiency
- Water Efficiency
- Indoor Environmental Quality
- Operation, Maintenance, & Homeowner Education
- Global Impact
Resource–efficient site design and development practices help reduce the environmental impact and improve the energy performance of new housing. For instance, site design principles such as saving trees and orienting houses to maximize passive solar heating and cooling are basic processes used in the design and construction of green homes.
Although K&V Homes is not involved in the design of a new development, Colin and Dean work closely with the homeowner when a treed lot has been selected to construct a new home. The lot is walked to discuss the ideal placement of the house while still maintaining the natural trees and vegetation. The same interest is generated for the placement of a house on an open lot to analyze the advantages/disadvantages of a certain side of the street as opposed to the other while still keeping the homeowner’s overall vision of the home in mind.
Material Selection
Truly green homes start with environmental consideration at the design phase, when material selection occurs. Creating resource-efficient designs and using resource-efficient materials can maximize function while optimizing the use of natural resources.
For instance, K&V Homes utilizes a program designed by Weyerhaeuser that is called iLevel. This program provides several of the engineered wood products found in your home. By using engineered wood products instead of conventional dimension lumber, less waste is generated. Weyerhaeuser was selected by Gilcrest Jewett, the company providing all of the lumber for K&V Homes, based upon their concern for the environment. Some of their attributes are as follows:
- 100% of Weyerhaeuser’s forests in the United States and Canada are independently certified to sustainable forestry standards.
- Weyerhaeuser plants over 100 million seedlings a year to ensure forests for future generations.
- On average, 99% of each log is used to produce iLevel and Weyerhaeuser wood products, additional wood products and energy.
Waste Reduction
Resource efficiency is also about reducing job-site waste. Inevitably, there are leftover materials from the construction process. K&V Homes has partnered with Aspen Waste Systems for the transport of debris to the local landfill which is owned and operated by Waste Management.
Homes consume energy every year, accruing more environmental impact over time. Therefore, energy efficiency is weighted heavily in a green building program. As the cost to heat and cool a home becomes more unpredictable, it is advantageous for every homeowner to be “insulated” from inevitable utility bill increases. As with all aspects of these guidelines, the greatest improvements result from a “whole systems” approach.
K&V Homes prides itself in the prioritization of energy efficiency in the construction of your new home. Incorporating such products as Tyvec house wrap, Pella windows and exterior doors, Cocoon spray cellulose insulation as well as a detailed insulation process, RUUD heating and cooling systems, Broan recessed can light/exhaust fan combinations, and the ever-popular upgrade to a Hydron geothermal system, assists homeowners in the management and reduction of their utility bills and environmental impact.
The average per capita indoor daily water use in today’s homes is slightly over 64 gallons. Implementing water conservation measures can reduce usage to fewer than 45 gallons. Products such as PEX manifold systems along with water-saving toilets help in the reduction of a household’s water usage and can be found in all new homes constructed by K&V Homes.
After energy efficiency, the quality of a home’s indoor air is often cited as the most important feature of green homes. Even though there is no authoritative definition of healthy indoor air, there are measures that can mitigate the effects of potential contaminants including controlling the source, diluting the source, and capturing the source through filtration.
Each homeowner is encouraged to meet with Don Dorrian of Dorrian Heating and Cooling to discuss the various options available to them such as electronic air filters and UV lights.
Additional indoor air quality products can be found being installed during the construction of your new home through the use of Cocoon spray cellulose insulation and US Gypsum XP board sheetrock.
Improper or inadequate maintenance can defeat the designer’s and builder’s best efforts to create a resource-efficient home. For example, homeowners often fail to change air filters regularly or neglect to operate bath and kitchen exhaust fans to remove moist air. Upon completion of your new home, K&V Homes provides you with a New Home Manual that addresses both interior and exterior home care items.
The impact of low-VOC paints has become a very important issue to new Homeowners. By partnering with Sherwin Williams, K&V Homes is able to meet the environmental standards with products that are in compliance with national green building standards.