Building a Quality Custom Home

Building homes isn’t just about creating something new and innovative; it’s about helping our customers realize their dreams while protecting the environment and enhancing the community in which they live and work. That’s why energy efficiency remains a cornerstone of Choice Builder’s business philosophy. Our houses are healthier, more comfortable, and energy efficient. At Choice Builders, we practice sustainable principles to create healthy, energy efficient homes and buildings that provide a life and livelihood for our customers while saving money each month on utility costs. 

Choice Builders is proud to offer new homes that have earned the ENERGY STAR® label. The ENERGY STAR label means that your new home has been designed and built to standards well above other homes in the market today. It means better quality, better comfort, and better durability. It also means that your new home is a better value for today, and a better investment for tomorrow. The ENERGY STAR label gives you the peace of mind that your home has undergone a better process for inspections, testing, and verification to ensure that it meets strict requirements set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ENERGY STAR certified homes are better because they are designed and built to provide homeowners:

As soon as Kermit the Frog sang “It’s Not Easy Being Green” on national T.V., this phrase entered our pop culture and has been used and overused ever since. But, it does fit with today’s topic of Green Building and Green Washing. Green Building is synonymous to sustainable or environmental building. Whereas Green Washing is merely jumping on the bandwagon and using key words & tricky phrases so marketers can make something appear to be environmentally friendly when it’s actually not.

One of the great things about Southern Utah is the wonderful outdoors. There are so many things to do and see…they literally beckon to you to head out. Those first few steps in that clean, crisp air we have feels so remarkably good. And then we return to our home and the difference in the air is notable….but should it be? Wouldn’t it be great if our houses had that same high quality fresh air we were just walking in? Well, it can. Indoor air can even be higher quality that outdoors by having less particulates and less pollen. This first step can be accomplished by using high quality pleated air filters and changing them often. But that is only part of the battle to have high quality air inside your home. A major contributor to poor air quality is the off gassing of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) from materials used to build your new home. Have you ever walked into a home a smelled that fresh, “new carpet” scent? Well, that is the chemical adhesives in the carpet coming out of the carpet as a vapor and into the air you’re breathing.

As I sat down to write a few words, I read through a few of my saved articles for inspiration and this article from Oprah’s website written by Winfred Gallagher really struck me. One quote in particular:

“We worry a lot about how our homes look, but how they make us feel, emotionally and physically, is far more important. That costly renovation or those silky sheets matter less than whether our living spaces nourish who we are, buffer us from stress, and provide opportunities both for privacy and for socializing with family and friends.”

Most people think of sustainable homes in one of two ways: The first, it’s an elaborate process of using unusual alternative building principles to make your home “off the grid”. And that sustainability is only for hard core environmentalists do who suffer inconveniences for the sake of the environment. That you use things like dirt and straw bales and other unconventional building methods.

The second way that many people think of sustainable building is that it’s for the wealthy. That it takes lots of money to buy the latest and greatest in energy efficiency and complicated technology to make a home “High Performance.”

Choice Builders sees a sustainable home differently: one built with common sense.

HERS is short of Home Energy Rating System and is a process of evaluating the energy efficiency of a home. Without it, it’s just a guess on whether of not a home will perform well or cost you money. To earn a HERS Index score, there are many mandatory standards the home needs to comply with, such as window sealing, insulation, and wall sealants.