CURRENT CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

#47 Arthur Gary House sponsored by the Portland Board of Realtors

#48 Build It Green I

#49 Build It Green II sponsored by Northern New England Concrete Promotions Association

#50 Interfaith House sponsored by Hancock Lumber

#51 Bank of America/Sustainable Forestry Initiative House

#52 Freeport Project

Most all Habiat house projects are built with new construction materials donated by local businesses such as Hancock Lumber, or national corporations through Habitat for Humanity International, such as Dow Corning, Hunter Douglas, and Whirlpool. It is the rare exception to renovate an existing house or use older building materials for a Habitat build, but we do it when necessary. Generally speaking, we have seen property values  in a neighborhood increase as a result of a Habitat house constructed there.

We are currently focused on our first sub-division of four (4) houses and an access road on the Demerest Street Extension (off of Washington Avenue in Portland.) All of the homes are affordable,"green" builds (by Maine State Housing Authority standards) and are expected to  reduce the home's carbon footprint and save the homeowner on energy costs. Two of these houses called Build It Green I and Build It Green II will be LEED -H certified. Our 50th house, an Interfaith build sponsored by Hancock Lumber, will have many religious communities coming to construct together. A fourth house is being sponosred by Bank of America and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Most of the construction operations on these sites will beging in the Spring, 2008. We do have one renovation project moving an older home in Freeport to a new lot with a new foundation, while improving its features and reducing its carbon footprint with newer systems and materials.

Improving Our Building Practices: Going Green

In 2007, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Portland started developing a ‘green building’ program. The ReStore had been an immediate success, and we theorized that ‘going green’ would be good for our construction side as well. We chose a lot at our Demerest Street subdivision to be our first green build, and set out to recruit a volunteer steering committee to teach us and lead the effort. We named the project ‘Build It Green.’

 We were extremely excited by the interest shown by the local professional community. We quickly built a committee that includes builders, architects, interior designers, engineers, energy efficiency experts, product and company representatives, and interested citizens. We were also gratified to receive the endorsements of the Maine State Housing Authority, the Maine Indoor Air Quality Council, the Maine Chapter of the United States Green Building Council, Portland Trails, Efficiency Maine, Hancock Lumber, and GrowSmart Maine. No one expressed any doubt that we could build an affordable green home, but we had to determine some guidelines. One issue we had with the term ‘green’ is that it is very broad in its application and, has a reputation for being expensive. We were challenged to fit our mission to provide simple, decent, affordable housing. The actual construction improvements are in many ways less challenging than making sure we stay true to Habitat’s mission. We had to make tradeoffs and compromises in order to make the simple, common-sense changes that we can accommodate on the jobsite. We had to disprove the notion that green is necessarily more expensive: in fact, simply updating our framing techniques will reduce the amount of wood in our stick-built homes and actually save us money. We can’t do anything cutting-edge as it is not appropriate to experiment on our homeowners. Most important of all, everything we propose to do must be replicable from house to house. We decided to enroll in the LEED-H (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Homes) pilot program sponsored by the United States Green Building Council to guide and ultimately to certify our efforts. And we developed the following standard: green building is an integrated approach to locating, designing, and constructing houses that meet the needs of our homeowners while simultaneously focusing on improving energy efficiency, durability, indoor air quality, selection of materials, and sustainable site design, all passed through the filter of Habitat’s mission to provide simple, decent, and affordable housing.  We itend to make significant changes in the area of energy efficiency by simultaneously upgrading our insulation materials and our installation methods to improve overall performance:

• Indoor air quality - We will improve the tightness of our structures to control air movement and upgrade point source ventilation (stove hood, bath vent) to insure fresh air supply.Materials - We will reuse quality materials from the ReStore and source more local products.
• Site design - Initially, we will improve with such innovations as permeable concrete driveways. As possible, we will reduce the impact of our projects by siting in already developed areas and along major bus routes.

By building houses no bigger than they need to be our houses are already using materials and energy more efficiently than many others. These are commonsense improvements based on better building science and looking at how the house performs as a whole instead of a piecemeal approach. In recent years, building science has improved our understanding of the way moisture travels through wall systems, and given us solutions to prevent common problems like mold. A performance based approach encourages us to think of a home as an inter-related system and to build above code. Codes are a bottom line measure of the least you can do; we can do better. If our constant goal is to build the best possible houses for our homeowners, than we must adapt as our learning improves. Energy efficiency measures will reduce the homeowner’s utility bills. Durability measures will ensure low cost of maintenance over the long run. Indoor air quality measures make the home healthier. But additionally, we are finding both that going green is opening doors for us and that it provides unique educational opportunities to engage more and more people with our organization. And if we can demonstrate that green and affordable are reinforcing rather than opposing goals, our projects can serve as models for other projects, thus multiplying our efforts to supply housing. 

I have deliberately steered clear of the word ‘environment’ so far, in spite of the fact that improving our stewardship of the earth is a strong reason to make these changes. But the bottom line is that, done properly and with consideration, improving our construction standards simultaneously promotes environmental goals. If we focus on occupant health or local materials, we naturally reduce our environmental impact. Higher-performance houses can be healthier for the homeowners to live in, reduce their expenses over time, and be kind to the planet.

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All Habitat homes are built to conform all local, state, and federal building codes. Our sites are safe and meet all OSHA standards. We highly value your help and our top concern is safety above all else.