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Home As Green As Its Location

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 13, 2007

DADE CITY - On a tree-filled lot north of town Friday morning, a large crane helped Benita and Carl Hayes fulfill a dream.

Workers building the Hayeses' new home used the crane to hoist large concrete panels into the air and lower them into place along the perimeter of the home's concrete slab. One by one, the panels - each one with holes for windows or doors - were secured to the slab and to each other.

After three hours, the crew of a half dozen had enclosed the ground floor of the Hayes' two-story home off Powerline Road. In the time it would take to begin work on a conventional concrete-block house, the Hayes' home was ready for interior work.

In the coming weeks, Brandon-based McElroy Construction will flesh out the ground floor before setting another round of concrete walls for the second floor.

When it's finished in the next month or two, the 2,900-square-foot house will have low-energy lighting and toilets that can vary their water use for flushing. The concrete in the floor and walls contains coal ash recycled from power plants. The walls' foam insulationis recycled Styrofoam waste.

For McElroy spokesman Phil Dunn, the project shows his 5-year-old company's commitment to building houses that can weather hurricanes and rising energy bills.

'We wanted to build the most energy efficient, green house we could,' said Dunn, McElroy's vice president for marketing.

For the Hayes family, the new house is a chance to give shape to its support for the environment.

'With global warming and everything we have to contend with on Earth, I think God has given us the knowledge to do something about it,' Benita Hayes said. She now lives with her husband and son, 14, in Riverview.

The family aims to get away from east Hillsborough County's suburban neighborhoods in favor of a quiet lot in the country. The Hayeses spent two years weighing their options for their new home before settling on McElroy's approach.

'What we're hoping is that it will catch on,' Benita Hayes said of green home building.

The Hayeses' house is part of a nationwide trend toward erecting buildings made with recycled materials that used fewer resources from water to electricity.

The Hayeses' home echoes in many ways the Pasco County School District's construction of Gulf Trace Elementary School in Holiday. That school is the county's first certified green school, having earned the approval of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a group that sets standards for environmentally sensitive commercial and public buildings.

District officials have said Gulf Trace Elementary will be the model for all future schools. The district's second green school, Veterans Elementary, is under construction on County Road 54 in Wesley Chapel.

The Hayeses' home is being built following standards set by the Florida Green Building Coalition, which lets builders chose from a menu of green methods to win certification of their homes.

The coalition has won over a variety of builders statewide and is likely to add more in the coming years, said Charles Kibert, a coalition member and a construction professor at the University of Florida.

'They think, rightly so, that things are shifting in this direction,' Kibert said of builders.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com.

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