The Green Built Parade of Homes that wasn’t green

When I read in the Dallas paper about the Green Built Parade of Homes up in nearby Denton, I was excited. I had already visited the first Zero Energy home built in Frisco, which had a long list of impressive environmentally friendly features.

I was looking forward to what I’d learn about advances in green building since that house had been built several years ago, and was hoping to learn something new that I could apply to my own green building renovation where I work.

It was almost an hour drive north of Dallas to get to the parade of homes, which means that you’d have a hellish commute if you worked in Dallas, but an easy 10 minute commute if you worked in the city of Denton.

So what was the tour like?

Here’s a description from the press release about the “green home” that won the Gold Winner award in the parade of homes. How green does this sound to you?

This 3,500-square-foot home includes four bedrooms, four-and-a-half bathrooms, gourmet kitchen with Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances, dining room with a connecting refrigerated wine room, office with knotty-alder wood ceiling beams, and a master suite that features a bay window, walk-in closet, and natural stone floor, vessel sinks, and Jacuzzi in the bathroom. Knotty-alder wood trim, doors, and cabinetry, limestone floors with inlaid wood detailing, interior and exterior stone columns, and wood windows throughout are a few of the home’s natural product amenities. The main house is also connected to a 700-square-foot guest house by a breezeway that includes outdoor living area with fireplace and cabana.

The entire home tour was pretty much exactly like that. Some of the homes did have a few green building features, like SIP construction in one home, dual flush toilets in one house and a tankless water heater in another. But most of them were just regular giant builder homes that someone had decided to call “green” so that they could get the home tour in the paper and on the news. I don’t see how you could call 14 foot ceilings “green” when you have to air condition to keep a house cool in Texas.

The most annoying part to me was that they had all of these signs stuck in the ground all over the tour with “Green Facts.” I can only guess that the home builders didn’t have anything to do with the signs, because most of the things they mentioned weren’t actually part of any of the homes in the tour.

This sign talks about water saving showerheads. Yet at least one of the homes that I went in had a shower with FOUR showerheads in it. How exactly is that green, water efficient or energy efficient?

The sign talks about how with native or drought tolerant landscaping you can provide all of your water for landscaping by rainwater harvesting. Yet none of these homes had rainwater harvesting systems.

This sign talks about compact fluorescent lights, the low hanging fruit of home energy conservation. Something that is literally as easy as screwing in a light bulb. But did any of these homes have compact fluorescent bulbs, or LED lighting? All I saw was plain old incandescent bulbs everywhere, except for in closets where they did have fluorescent lighting. And I believe that is required by code, if I remember my own recent construction project correctly.

I have nothing against luxury housing. If someone wants spend their money on a giant luxury home, then I think they should have the freedom to do so. But let’s not try and pretend something is green when it really isn’t. This was a luxury home tour, and not a green home tour at all.

What a disappointment.

Update:
A commenter corrected me and pointed out that there were actually a large number of green features that I missed, including some rainwater harvesting systems.

Here is a link to the Green Built construction specs. They explain a lot of the features and techniques that I failed to notice or mention in my post, and they are indeed green features, which should be encouraged and not disparaged.

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