Houston as a model city: Facing the challenges of an environmental crisis
Building better for the future
by Vicki Wolf, October 2006

Building a home the conventional way creates an amazing amount of waste and a toxic environment for the people who live there. Most homes in Houston are built with no regard for ecological habitat, water and energy consumption, or preservation of open spaces. Building better for the future requires consciousness that goes beyond resale value and color schemes. It involves considering the resources and materials it takes to make a healthy, pleasant living space that is in harmony with nature.

“If Houston is to become one of the great cities of the world, we can’t continue to gobble up land,” says Brian Yeoman, senior research scientist with Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC). “We need to think vertically and live in three dimensions instead of on a little lot in suburbia or high meadow ranch,” Yeoman continues. When people move out away from city centers they find they still need jobs as well as doctors, dentists, exercise clubs, entertainment and other amenities that are not located near their homes. “The cost is a lot of traffic, miles of freeways and CO² emissions to live out the suburban dream,” Yeoman adds.

Also at risk is the wonderful ecosystem of the Houston area. If urban sprawl continues at the current rate over the next 25 years, Yeoman says there will be almost no green space left, no longleaf pine, no Katy Prairie. The long-term result will be the destruction of thousands of species of plants and animals.

One answer to urban sprawl and traffic congestion is to begin living in more dense, well-planned city centers where homes are within walking or bicycling distance of businesses, entertainment, services, shopping and schools. “We need to become familiar with densification or face habitat extinction,” Yeoman says. “We are just one species.”

In addition to curbing urban sprawl, Yeoman says the waste created in home building must be reduced. “There’s not a more wasteful process in all of human history – using materials brought in from all over the world and then wasting a lot of it,” says Yeoman. “An 8,000 square-foot home produces 88,500 pounds of construction and debris that gets hauled to the Harris County landfill. That’s 44 tons of bricks, mortar, sheetrock, wood and cardboard that will be there for a very long time,” Yeoman adds.

In contrast to conventional home building, “green building” – the environmentally friendly way to build houses – is beginning to take root. Laverne Williams, Houston architect and building ecologist, says in green building, location is the most important consideration. Two priorities are at the top of Williams’ location list: 1) living in walking distance of frequent activities and mass transit; and 2) having space to grow food, even in the city. “It takes seven calories of fossil fuel to deliver one calorie to our table,” Williams says. “As energy costs rise, we will find we need to rely on locally produced food, which will mean grow your own and participate in community gardens and farmers’ markets.”

Making garden space a priority affects the placement of the home. “If you are on a street that runs east to west, you will want to have your garden up front,” Williams says. “You’ll need to make sure restrictions allow for vegetable gardens in front of the house.”

When building a house in the country, Williams suggests looking at the entire property and using permaculture principles to maximize the use of the land. “Don’t place the house where the best growing is, capture rainwater where ever you can, and preserve native trees as much as possible,” he says.

Green home design utilizes the sun, with solar panels for electricity, and windows placed to allow daylight in and breezes to flow through the house. The idea is to use passive, ventilative cooling and heating to extend the amount of time you can do without energy consuming heating and cooling. “We need to think of our homes as being connected to the outdoors,” Williams says.

A house should be no more than 30 feet deep so that light can come in two ways in every room, according to Williams. The roof needs to have enough overhang to act like an umbrella, shading windows from the sun and keeping sun and moisture off the exterior of the house. The east side of the house is the best place for porches to catch breezes in summer with protection from cold north wind in winter.

Williams recommends smaller homes that utilize space efficiently. His company, Environment Associates, is known for pioneering green home and healthy home concepts. He says for decades they have recommended against ventilating attics and “making it part of the air-sealed envelope of the house.” The attic becomes part of the storage area. Insulation is installed at the roofline. “It doesn’t increase the cost and it improves the performance of the house,” Williams says.

To be more sustainable, Williams advocates using natural materials from a supplier within 500 miles of the building location. His company tries to avoid wood -framed walls and uses materials like autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) – a precast building stone made of all natural raw materials – and insulated concrete forms (ICF) for the wall structure. They also attempt to avoid the use of plywood, particle board and laminated beams that are manufactured with toxins like formaldehyde. Williams says builders should avoid sheetrock that has toxins in the paper and plastic finishes that give off toxic fumes when exposed to the sun.

For flooring, Williams recommends hard surfaces like tile that has been fired, recycled glass tiles and some woods that are less toxic than other flooring materials. Carpeting collects and absorbs dust, mold and toxins, and is not recommended.

For healthy air indoors, Williams says the outside air supply should be part of the air-conditioning system, which should include dehumidifying during the hot humid season. Products used for cleaning and caring for a green home should be free of toxic chemicals.

When it comes to selecting a green builder, Williams cautions that there are green building shams that look like legitimate organizations. He says some companies are seeing “green” as “gold” and are pushing green to make money. “Lots of things are being overpriced,” he says.

One way to know if a builder is building homes that are sustainable, safe and healthy is to find out if they are certified with LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) Green Building Rating SystemTM or Austin’s Green Building Program® . Williams says these are the only legitimate green building certification programs in Texas. “True green builders are trying to create transformation in building,” Williams says. “We can’t continue killing ourselves and killing the planet.”

The demand for green building is growing rapidly, according to Williams. “People are forcing builders to do some things whether they want to or not,” Williams says. But Houston still has a long way to go. Williams says green building is still only 5 percent or less of the market. One problem is that there are not enough educated builders to provide a choice.

Yeoman says education about green building is also a problem for people who want to buy a home. “A house is the single largest expenditure in a lifetime and we have no training at any juncture in education about what a reasonable home is,” Yeoman says. “And it is difficult to find information on what a quality residence is.”

Home buyers are sold homes based on price per square foot instead of value, according to Yeoman. Realtors’ and builders’ hype about resale value convinces buyers that they need to have certain amenities like fireplaces. “This is an automatic deduction from the energy efficiency of the home,” Yeoman says. “Houston residents average less than one fire per year in their homes.”

Yeoman is less than hopeful that the building industry in Houston will change much in the near future. “I believe this is last place any substantial change will take place,” Yeoman says. “There’s too much power and money involved in financing and building the typical way.”

Building for a better future requires vision and the desire to have places and materials for our grandchildren to build homes, according to Yeoman. “We Americans think we have the right to destroy what ever we want to get a house,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be the case that this always leads to some kind of destruction. We need to ask: How can we build housing that is responsive, respectful of place and restorative?”

For information on CLEAN's own energy efficient, affordable housing project click here.