GREEN OR WRONG

November 15th, 2008

By Carl Seville
Build it green or build it wrong.

Yep, I said it. Green is right. If you don’t build green, you are doing at least some of your work wrong. Not all of it, but certainly some of it. If you are building everything the right way, then you are probably building green, or very close. I am totally over the nay-sayers who don’t believe that you can seal a crawlspace or build a house very tight.

I gave a presentation on Green Building last year in Michigan and there were two old-school builders who consistently argued with me, insisting that they could never do the things I was suggesting — all of which were fairly standard high performance building techniques. During this exchange, another builder stood up and asked the group if their business was slow. Almost the entire room raised their hands, agreeing that business was off. The builder said that he built green, did most of the things I was talking about, and he had a one year backlog of work. After hearing that, the two old codgers left the room and let me get back to my presentation. Unfortunately for them, they could not deal with the idea of so much change and had to move to the denial stage.

My sincere hope is that they are the minority in the industry. Practicing building professionals need to make the transition to green building sooner rather than later. If they don’t, they need consider getting out of the business. Maybe look at selling used cars.

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