Earth Advantage Institute Announces Local Winner of First Annual Green Home Builder Awards

Bend’s local custom home builder, SolAire Homebuilders, was awarded the most prestigious of the annual awards, Hall of Fame Builder, at the ceremony held in Portland this September.

Earth Advantage Institute (EAI), is a nonprofit sustainable building organization; the Portland and southwest Washington region is a national leader in green building standards and high performance homebuilding, with EAI certifying over 12,000 homes in the region using its Earth Advantage New Homes program. The Green Homebuilder Awards allow Earth Advantage to highlight the regions’ new construction builders who have made that possible.

Builders who certify to Earth Advantage and LEED standards through EAI submitted applications in August for consideration for this year’s awards. A panel of experts in the green homebuilding arena was assembled to consider the applications and deliver the results. This year’s judges were Nate Bond, vice president of sales for ProBuild; Teresa St. Martin, eco-broker, LEED green associate with Windermere Cronin & Caplin Realty Group; and Alisa Kane, the City of Portland’s development manager in the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

SolAire was chosen based on their long standing commitment to sustainable building practices, historic commitment to third party certification, leadership contributions to LEED for Home projects and Net Zero Homes, combined with the architectural aesthetic. Teresa St.Martin, eco broker stated, “The competition for the Hall of Fame Builder was very tough, but SolAire’s homes stood out as the most beautiful examples of green-built sustainable homes.”

This year’s awards were generously supported by Energy Trust of Oregon, which developed EPS™, a home energy performance score that provides a clear and quantitative way to compare the energy use of similarly sized homes in Oregon.

Learn more at http://www.energytrust.org/eps.