AFFORDABILITY

Energy Bill Plus the Mortgage

Energy will never be cheap again and homeowners today and in the future must add their energy bill to their mortgage to get a true cost of their home. Clearly, affordability includes long term cost considerations and smart choices made today will keep homeowners smiling for decades to come.

Control Costs

With our designs focused on energy efficiency, Fokus Builders directs the biggest expenses of its homes toward achieving a super-tight, highly-insulated building envelope-where the greatest energy efficiency gains can be made for every dollar spent. Then we devote much attention to saving money in other areas of the design and building process to keep our high-performance homes within a competitive price range.

Our "high-performance-first" approach differs significantly from the usual approach to green homebuilding, in which the builder starts with the low, non-rigorous building code standard as the base price and begins to add "green" costs, asking "how green do you want to be?" as the price goes up. From this perspective, "green" can be a hard pill to swallow. That's why we, at Fokus Builders, start with the assumption of high-performance "green", and spend our time and effort finding cost-controlling measures to keep the price of "green" affordable. We want "green" to be within reach of the majority of homebuyers, for the sake of the planet and for the benefit of our customers.

Don't get caught in the "green is expensive" trap. With better design you can spend money where it counts, save money where it makes sense, and GO GREEN.

Our cost-controlling measures include those described below.

Simple Shapes

Once an architect starts designing a miniature castle with a lot of complexity in the structure, the price goes way up. The foundation gets expensive. The framing gets expensive. The siding gets expensive. The roofing gets expensive. You get the idea.

Keep it simple. Fokus Builders designs its building envelopes with simple rectangular shapes and saves money on labor and materials from the foundation to the roof. With these savings, you can afford the best windows, the best insulation package, and a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system-prudent expenses that quickly pay for themselves. And with the right exterior finishes, simple shapes look great.

Selective Dimension

As much as possible, our design layouts are based on standard dimensions of building materials (such as 4' x 8' sheet goods) to save money and minimize waste. For example, working on a four foot grid, say 24' x 32' instead of 25' 7" x 31' 6", uses less labor cutting and fitting materials to non-standard dimensions and prevents a whole bunch of cut-offs from ending up in the dumpster.