case studies
The home is located in The Villages at Crest Mountain in Asheville, a neighborhood with small lot sizes and community gardens where most homes are certified through Green Built Homes. JENNIFER BANKS PHOTOS
No Need to Move Mountains Small Details Deliver Dynamite Score on Custom Home BY JENNIFER BANKS s builders, we occasionally have to explain the benefits of constructing a Green Built Home to our clients. But when Peter and Diane Burkard approached us about building their new house, they already knew
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they wanted to build green. “I didn’t have to sell them on it,” said Zach Banks, owner of Corner Rock Building Co. “They were already on board. It just fit with who they are.” Peter and Diane weren’t particularly focused on the scorecard.
They wanted their new house to reflect their environmental values, and Peter was hoping they would earn a gold-level certification from the Green Built Homes program. Happily, their home did indeed earn gold-level certification. When they learned they had also attained a net-zero certification, they were delighted. But when they learned their home ranked in the top 10 highest scoring projects for Green Built Homes in 2020, all they could say was one word: “Wow!” The Burkards’ home is located in The Villages at Crest Mountain in Asheville. Neighborhood features such as small lot sizes and community gardens counted towards Peter and Diane’s high sus-
tainability rating. Most of the homes built in their community are certified through Green Built Homes, and many have earned fantastic scores. Even so, it was something special for this project to attain Green Built Homes’ Gold Net Zero level of certification. The item that earned them the most points on the Green Built Homes checklist was their rooftop solar photovoltaic system. But solar alone didn’t set this house apart. Interestingly, it wasn’t any single component of the house that pushed their score so high. Rather, it was expertise and lots of little details that made the difference. The Burkards wanted to find a builder with experience in ecofriendly building. “We let Zach know what our desires were, and he just took the ball and ran with it,” Peter said. Advanced framing techniques such as “California corners,” “sandwiched headers,” and 2x6 exterior walls were used to allow for better insulation and decrease the amount of energy a home consumes. “As a default, we use several eco-friendly construction techniques on most of our houses, regardless of their participation in the program,” Banks said. “Green building just makes sense from a practical perspective. There are a lot of little things you can do early in the construction process to make a home very energy efficient.” Attics are notorious for energy leaks, so open-cell foam insulation was used in the roof deck and gable ends to create a tight seal. The rest of the house got the same attention to detail when it comes to energy efficiency. “To get the house tighter, we do several things,” Banks said. “We caulk the bottom plate of the ex-
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