As one of the top 25 volume builders in the country, Beazer Homes is delivering nearly 5,000 homes per year. The company has engaged in a concept home project to deliver on its goal of improving the health and the performance of each home, and directly changing the lives of 5,000 families across the country.
Beazer promised that by the end of 2025, every single family home it builds will meet the requirements of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Zero Energy Ready Home program. Plus, it is achieving ENERGY STAR® certified, along with Indoor AirPlus® by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The builder brought all these pieces together in a seamless way with collaboration from product suppliers and Green Builder Media for its latest concept project outside of Las Vegas called the VISION House.
“The first step was to make the home as energy efficient as can be,” said Kyle Tibbetts, Beazer’s division president, proud of the company’s journey over the last few years. “Savings on a home that is zero energy with solar is in the thousands of dollars. We can isolate each of the components, but all of it is with the goal of getting energy consumption as low as possible and then offset with solar.”
With these targeted goals, Beazer started asking questions, trying new approaches, and learning lessons along the way.
“One of the lessons is making the envelope very tight,” he said. “We worked with trades to understand the common leakage points, then started isolating leaks and understanding where to spend the time to fix them.”
Elicia Trujillo, director of planning and design at Beazer, said that the engineering team also had a big learning curve as they incorporated all the third-party verifications to achieve the multiple certifications.
Nothing was left uncovered, and it paid off. Four years ago, Beazer’s Home Energy Rating Score (HERS) was in the high 40s, but with the concept home inputs, it is now in the mid 30s.
“With the VISION House package, we can offset 100% of the energy needs,” Tibbetts said.
Suppliers Deliver To Concept Home
Through the process, Beazer called on supplier partners to help plan, design, and help deliver to the company’s goals.
Mohawk Flooring’s PureTech PVC-free flooring line was installed in the home to replace traditional vinyl due to its higher performance and sustainability. The flooring is made from 70% recycled content and the organic core is 80% renewable, plant-based material, so it doesn’t have chemicals, and it’s made with recycled and renewable materials.
“We used this product as a real-world example of how sustainable products can look good and also function,” said Denise Silbert, the vice president of marketing, soft surface, and builder and multifamily at Mohawk.
Much of the flooring industry is grappling with how to get rid of dangerous chemicals, but Mohawk has been a leader in producing products that can be affordable and sustainable on multiple levels. PureTech has achieved the Living Building Challenge Declare certification for carpet lines, showing its sustainability through every aspect of sourcing, manufacturing and during use.
“Through the VISION House, we learned that you can have a completely new concept and bring partners together to deliver to a vision,” Silbert said. “When we have a partner like Beazer who is completely committed to it, it’s inspiring, and it will resonate more with homeowners, and I think we’ll see more builders going in that direction.”
The selection of products for the home had to be considered holistically to deliver on the zero energy goals. From the flashing to the kitchen appliances, from the water filtration to the air filtration, every touch point mattered–even repositioning the heating and cooling system.
“Typically in the Vegas area, the heating and cooling system is above the thermal envelope,” said Justin Anderson, director of operations at Beazer. “So, as temperatures rise outside, the heating and cooling and all the ducting have to work harder to cool itself and the lines. We insulated against the roof deck and brought it all down into conditioned space to maximize what the equipment can do size wise.”
This design change helped create a tighter envelope, which opened up a very collaborative research and development discovery process between Beazer and its suppliers.
“When we introduce something to vendors, they immediately say it will take too much money,” Anderson said. “But then we spend time in the field with them to understand the extra cost, which sometimes is minimal. We needed an open mindset to discuss and look for opportunities. In this case, the juice was worth the squeeze.”
Beazer spent time selecting the perfect insulation to create the tight envelope and a comfortable environment and called on cellulose insulation company Greenfiber, which not only is sustainable, but a feature of the insulation is reducing noise to deliver comfort through sound reduction, on top of the advanced air temperature control.
“Cellulose has been around forever and is a very eco-friendly product,” said Tom VanAlstine, president and CEO at Greenfiber. “When it is properly installed, it provides a quality air seal for the builder.”
To create the tightest envelope, Beazer widened the wall cavities more than 50% to 2 x 6 for more insulation. By doing that, temperatures can be maintained evenly room by room, no room feels a few degrees off.
Insulation is another building product category that is not known for its sustainability features; however, Greenfiber engaged Sustainable Minds to conduct a life cycle assessment and received certification from raw material sourcing to manufacturing in to end of use. Greenfiber’s cellulose insulation also is a biogenic carbon storing product.
Concept Home Cost Savings
Beazer selected another smart product, the electric panel offered by SPAN, to drive down costs. The panel takes the place of the traditional electrical panel, and can reduce the home and community set up requirements.
“A 400 amp requirement can provide enough for when everything is on all at once, but the probability of that is very low,” said Arch Rao, the founder and CEO at SPAN. “We have empirical data that shows that in an entire year loads stack up like that for less than 10 minutes.”
The smart panel that SPAN offers can manage energy savings and costs by looking at the needs of the whole home and redistribute energy depending on needs and without changing the homeowner’s experience. For example, the panel can slow down the use from the EV charger while the oven is preheating, and while also considering other appliances in the home.
Plus, the homeowner can use the SPAN app to change charging schedule to off peak hours to save some cash. The app also shows how much each appliance is using by converting kilowatts to dollars. Rao believes this ia a powerful tool to empower homeowners.
“It is unprecedented to see data all the way down to everything that is in the circuit,” he said.
Because there are new standards for housing to move to more electric, many homes are upping their capacity. What was 200 amps now requires 400 amps of wires coming into the home, which adds to the cost of copper, additional labor, and for the developer and the community, because it needs twice the amount of connectivity.
“It costs a homeowner $5,000 to $6,000 more per home,” Rao said. “With SPAN, you can do the baseline 200 amps and get the value of 400 amps.”
Beazer worked with SPAN to calculate the loads of the EV charging, HVAC and water heating, which are the largest loads in the home. Plus, the builder took the extra design considerations to lower the heating and cooling load.
Mohawk has research and development working specifically for the new home construction market, which relates mostly on innovation to lower costs, Silbert said.
Part of being able to lower costs for the builder was focused on making the installation process more efficient. Mohawk developed a patented clip locking system for fast, easy installation.
Another cost savings took shape through the introduction of a new approach to foundations in the Vegas market.
“We wanted to use slab insulation, which no one does in Vegas,” Tibbetts said. “We were the first to do it on a production basis, so the costs came in high. We asked to pay the high cost for the first couple homes, then after a few the cost dropped more than 50% because the work wasn’t as difficult as anticipated, and we trusted each other to work together.”
Just as I heard the Beazer team share their passion for the project, they saw the same from their partners who at first didn’t believe like in the case of the foundations, but became fans.
“One of the cool things is seeing our vendors out at the VISION House and they can look back and reflect and are proud of the energy independence that the homeowner will have because of the little things that we did during the journey that is now at scale,” Anderson said.
The quality of the research, the design and the development all add up. Beazer reduces the home maintenance costs by focusing on quality and protection, such as the whole house wrap to keep water and other elements from damaging the home.
Homes at Aria Crossing where the VISION House is located start at $510,000, 5% more than Vegas’s median home sale price in February according to Las Vegas Realtors group’s calculations. However, as a brand new home and with its multiple certifications for energy savings, Beazer’s homes significantly decrease annual energy costs.
The home’s third-party Home Energy Rating Score (HERS) calculates an annual savings of $3,887, which would be realized in about 6 years considering these averages.
Tibbetts recognizes that with product selection and design, Beazer not only can reduce home maintenance costs, but also reduce warranty callbacks for comfort, which are down for the homes that are pre-energy ready.
The manufacturers have delivered long term value to contribute to the reduced callbacks. The life of the Greenfiber insulation is the life of the home, lasting 70 years. SPAN can operate as the primary panel for 20 to 30 years. Mohawk also is reducing replacement costs for its flooring with longer lasting products that don’t need to be replaced as often.
“From an operating cost standpoint, specifically related to the comfort of the home, a properly insulated, well-sealed home, is the most financially impactful way to have a positive influence on the operations of the home,” said VanAlstine. “It’s cheaper to cool and to heat.”
Can A Concept Home Scale?
Beazer is building across the country now, bringing with it best practices from this project and other research and development efforts.
As it expands these best practices, there are headwinds to consider. One of the biggest challenges is labor, which also is a collaboration with suppliers. Mohawk had set its research and development on this, and so did SPAN.
“We designed SPAN to be identical, so that install complexity is eliminated,” Rao said. “Installation is identical to traditional install for a dumb panel. The only thing different is the digital commissioning. The installer would digitally commission, so naming for the circuits would be named on the app and shared with the homeowner.”
With supplier support, Beazer can get to scale. Tibbetts pointed out that the company already is getting sought out for its healthy homes, which has obvious long term value for buyers, but that it’s also tying into other benefits, like home insurance.
“We started Charity Insurance, which is a Beazer affiliated company because we can start pricing in the value of the homes that we are delivering,” he said.
This is where I see the next concept home and the future of housing in general. We can deliver places to live that positively contribute to our health and the health of the environment, so our insurance should take that into consideration.
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