Built America Magazine | South
He calls his early homes "hybrids," precursors to the Net Zero movement.
As early as 2002, in the frigid Midwest, Robert was building homes that defied the elements and convention alike. One home, tested before drywall, stunned Energy Star auditors. "They thought they were at the wrong address," he laughs. “They said testing was done at completion—not mid-construction, and certainly not before drywall. But I knew that if we wanted true performance, we had to challenge the standard. It was unconventional—but I insisted. And we shattered their expectations.” That moment, he says, sparked something deeper. "We had D.R. Horton’s top brass on our job site a week later. They wanted to know what we had done." Proof in Performance What he had done was everything differently. He used closed-cell foam, dissected every potential air leak, and interrogated each material with precision. The results? Homes ranging in size from just over 4,000 up to 10,000 square feet—each capable of maintaining a steady 70 degrees indoors, even during 30-degree winters —with energy bills under $100. "Hot air doesn’t just rise," Robert explains, "it seeks cold, wherever it resides. We designed our structures to leverage that. It wasn’t theory; it was proof."
61
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator