A 20-home project in Tucson hopes to create a model for healthy homebuilding nation wide.
SENERGY360
Luxury home builders are seizing on the new demand for healthy living and longevity. And, it isn’t just the builders, it’s the building products as well. The opportunity is big and the investment is pouring into healthy homes.
While a good design is a starting point for the systems approach to healthier homes, the market also needs validation for the investors and their investment is a necessary part of driving products to scale and fostering new innovative concepts.
Brian Johnson is a long-time real estate investor and understands just that. He has been tracking trends and noticed the momentum behind the healthy home building wave and wanted to make sure he was helping build a better living experience for all housing in general. He’s creating multiple pathways to do that.
Johnson founded SENERGY360, a healthy home design and build firm, after spending decades as a general contractor and project manager. He holds three certifications from the Building Biology Institute that he applies to a 12-pronged healthy living approach to designing homes. As he has gained expertise in the space, he also has found some products to be critical to every home design.
A year ago, he also dedicated energy to educating the industry by launching the Healthy Building Alliance, a member-based organization with the mission to transform the residential construction industry into one that consistently delivers healthy, resilient, and beautifully built homes while supporting the people who design, build, and live in them.
Now Johnson is focused on another big ambition, a community-scale pilot to develop 20 homes as a blueprint for the industry to adopt. A project that risk-averse investors aren’t yet interested in, but he’s hoping to change that.
Elements Healthy Home Project
The 20-home Element project sits on 38 acres in Tucson and will offer 5 floor plans ranging from 1,800 to 5,000 square feet. The homes are being designed with non-toxic building materials, passive solar architecture, mass wall construction that acts as a thermal battery and that acclimatizes to the environment, air sealing strategies, and an airtight envelope.
The homes will filter and use inverter systems for clean power that will reduce electromagnetic field exposure in the home. A whole house plumbing system and a full house water filtration will bring in clean water to every point to avoid any chemicals that the body would absorb from water.
The homes will have proper insulation so there are no condensation issues that lead to moisture and mold damage. Plus, there is a vapor permeative strategy because any vapor that gets in, still needs to get out, so the homes won’t be the trapping dangerous moisture inside.
Element also will offer a furnishing and wellness design package to ensure that the health benefits extend beyond the structure of the house. The package includes mineral and lime-based products with no plasticizers or petroleum flame retardants.
Products Take The Healthy Home Spotlight
Faswall, an organic, non-toxic, energy efficient insulating wall block, is being set for a school project.
Faswall, J.T. Heater Architect
Johnson credits Faswall concrete construction technology as foundational to the homes’ health benefits.
“The teachers of the building biology institute have been using Faswall for decades for mold sensitivities, chemicals and EMF sensitivities,” said Joseph Becker who is a partner. “It’s a super material halfway between wood and masonry. It’s also very wildfire proof. When it’s hard to get fire insurance, builders come to Faswall which is more fireproof than concrete. It protects the concrete inside the core.”
Faswall is a composite made from petrified wood fiber and clay cement that is between mass wall and insulation. The wood fiber, chipped up and bound together with minerals has a lot of air pockets, allowing it to have insulation inserts. A portion of the cavity gets insulation and a portion gets the concrete grid, making it both strong and ductile.
The Faswall system can manage the relative humidity or moisture of a room because it is vapor permeable and free draining, getting rid of moisture and mold problems. It’s high thermal mass and high R-value reduce the amount of energy needed to heat and cool a home.
“That’s one of the reasons that people love these walls,” Becker said. “It feels more like a natural environment. The walls release vapor and store vapor, charging ionic particles in the air. Negative ions then clean the air, dropping VOCs to the ground, and those negative ionic charged particles clean the air for you.”
Faswall installation is similar to cinder block, which takes a little longer than stick frame, but adds in continuous insulation equating to an equal price with that consideration.
The benefits go beyond strength and reduced humidity. In Johnson’s Element project, Faswall will be installed with Havelock wool insulation to reduce sound transmission for a quiet wellness environment. Creating a peaceful home environment also means the right HVAC system that can minimize the noise from air movement and reduce dirty electricity and electromagnetic interference.
“When we design and have proper engineering, we design the proper return,” Johnson said. “With supply and return proper sizing, you don’t hear the air movement. It’s also proven to have an impact on the nervous system, so you shouldn’t hear air moving.”
These invisible benefits help residents sleep better and perform better throughout the day.
Lighting Up The Healthy Home
Colorbeam Lighting offers wellness to a healthy home by matching circadian rhythms and eliminating flicker and EMFs.
Anthony Barcelo
An aspect of the design of a healthy home that is incredibly visible yet not very appreciated is the lighting. To contribute to health and wellness, lighting should be designed to align with natural circadian rhythms, reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields and not flicker.
Mike Teolis was working in high end audio and when LED became mainstream, he started adding lighting to his audio shows because it no longer required high voltage and therefore no longer required an electrician.
“It’s class 2, low voltage and could be sold and installed by anyone, even us who were doing audio,” he said. “We decided to found Colorbeam Lighting to bring it to every AV guy, and to get into the lighting category.”
Now, Teolis is the co-founder and president of Colorbeam Lighting, and after meeting Johnson at a tradeshow, is bringing his low voltage lighting to the healthy home market. To match circadian rhythms, his lights change color throughout the day reflecting sunlight. The wavelengths emitted from the fixtures then can trigger and suppress melatonin for better sleep, which is integral to better health.
Colorbeam operates on a low voltage wire so it can eliminate electromagnetic interference. And, the low voltage wire can help the lights dim flawlessly so they have no flicker, which has been shown to contribute to migraines, seizures, and distraction.
The product is sold at a premium but not only helps reduce health issues, but also improves the homeowner’s experience and performance. While it may cost more up front, there is a lot of room for those premiums. A COGNITION Smart Data report shares that 51% of homebuyers are willing to pay $5,000 or more above standard pricing for health-optimized features.
Bringing All Healthy Homes Into The Future
Johnson has put the whole health package together to build the Element community that he wants to create and show as a model for the rest of the industry to learn about healthy building. The community will break ground soon for cash buyers and deliver homes in a variety of models and prices.
While the investors are still on the fence, the buyers will be lining up. The COGNITION Smart Data consumer survey reported that consumers felt like their needs still were not met in the areas of non-toxic building materials, access to natural daylight, better water quality systems, indoor air quality monitoring, improved ventilation, and better acoustics.
These findings mean there is a lot of room to grow for builders that can learn from Johnson’s healthy home project–not to mention a lot of builders can profit from this in demand market.