Earth-friendly building
From the outside, the home that Kelly Moore is building looks like many other new homes in Moscow’s Frontier Addition, with two stories, three-car garage, and lots of windows. But this house, like others Moore has built in Moscow, is different in a key way: It’s “green” from the R50 insulation in the roof down to the hydronic heat system in the floors.
For his earth-friendly building philosophy and practices, Kelly Moore Construction has received for the second consecutive year the Sustainable Building Award from the city of Moscow, whose Green Building Program is the first in Idaho. Moore built the state’s first certified green-built house last year, and this year he has the home, at 1933 Fletcher Drive, nearly completed and a duplex under way.
Even before “green” was the buzzword in building, Moore was committed to it, and he views the increasing number of new green homes with optimism.
“More and more contractors are starting to build green, and this moves green building into the mainstream. Also, many manufacturers are starting to provide sustainable materials, and these products are becoming the norm,” he said. “The industry is finally catching on that people want homes that are healthy for themselves and the environment.”
City of Moscow Building Department official Jim Johnson, who directs the Green Building Program, has worked with Moore for several years.
“Among the 30-plus builders in the Moscow-Pullman area, Kelly has been the most upfront regarding his intention to build green and only green,” Johnson said. “He helped start our program and has been a great resource on green building techniques.”
Moore received Gold Certification on his projects, Johnson said, which is the highest standard offered by the National Association of Homebuilders, an organization of more than 800,000 builders whose model the city’s program follows.
“Moscow is a recipient of the Grow Smart Award from Idaho Smart Growth (a nonprofit organization based in Boise), and I think green building is a significant part of that recognition,” said Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney. “Kelly is a role model for our Sustainable Building program, and people like him are pioneers who are making it happen.”
Moore, 49, is a native of Moscow who started Kelly’s Handyman Service in 1975 and later managed properties while taking engineering classes at the University of Idaho.
Moore joined Hume Brothers Construction in 1991 and then a year later went out on his own.
“From the get-go we were trying to build the most energy-efficient houses we could build; the first house I built had higher insulation and hydronic heat, and nobody was doing that at the time because it was too easy to do gas forced-air,” he said. “Back then, green building was tough. There was no support from the government or the National Homebuilders Association. There were the ‘hippie builders’ but no affordable products to support them, so only a client who was eclectic or rich could choose to build that way.”
Today, green products are affordable and easy to find, but Moore cautions consumers to be aware of the hype surrounding green building.
“Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon, and people should know there are multiple shades of green out there,” he said. “There are large corporations promoting their products as green when in fact the products perform poorly.”
Having seen truly ancient homes in Europe that people still live in, Moore bases his approach on a philosophy of building things to last.
“I’m not necessarily driven by money, so my work is not about building a house cheaper so my profit margin grows; it’s about working with a likeminded crew and building a house to last at least 100 years, with the least environmental harm done in the construction of it. For example, we don’t hire excavators whose equipment leaks oil on the site. We don’t let runoff from our building sites impact the neighborhood storm-water systems. We even sort out the subcontractors’ pop cans from the garbage and recycle them. Everything counts.”