Schulz Homes Comes Full Circle with Southern Living Plans

We are very pleased to announce we have been selected as the sole Southern Living Home Plan builder for Northern Virginia.  As you may know, we were the Southern Living  Home Plan builder for many years.  It is great to be back with Southern Living who have some of the best designs done by some of the most respected architects and designers in America over the past 25-years.

We have built more Southern Living designs in Northern Virginia, in such locations as Middleburg,  Aldie, Waterford, Leesburg, Purcellville, and Round Hill, than all other Northern Virginia custom builders combined.  We built several Southern Living designs in the Lake Manassas community in Prince William County.   Lake Manassas was a hot bed for Southern Living designs in the 1990’s.

We believe that Southern Living Home Plans are going to be a great resource for our clients.   Give us a call and we can point you to a particular plan that would work for you.

Driving a Prius is wrong and other inconvenient truths…

I recently read a book, “The Conundrum:  How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse” by David Owens.   The Conundrum is full of dilemmas.  Air Conditioners are more efficient and cheap; hence, more homes are now air-conditioned.  The more affordable light bulbs get, the more they are left on.  Airplanes are more energy-efficient and faster than at any point in history, and therefore cheaper to fly longer distances.

Owen’s book brings deflating news: most supposedly sustainable products and eco-living strategies are, he writes, “irrelevant or make the real
problem worse” (see my earlier blog about biofuels).  Owen’s logic is backed up by an economic principle known as the “rebound effect”.  
Advances in energy efficiency lower the cost of a given activity, which causes people to engage in that activity more, canceling out not only savings
but also environmental benefits.

Over the past quarter century of building homes in Northern Virginia I have found what Owens is saying to be absolutely correct.  The homes we are building in Loudoun and
Fauquier Counties have more efficient HVAC systems, better insulation, and Energy Star appliances but result in higher energy bills as they are double,
and in some cases triple, the size of the homes we were building  25-years ago. I encourage my clients to build custom homes with only rooms they will use
on daily basis.    Leave the McMansions to the production builders.

Consumer demand for alternative energy is soaring.  The residential market for solar is still nascent, with less than 0.1% of U.S. Homes outfitted with panels.  That number could climb to 2.4% by 2020, estimates Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Demand for clean power is driven by government incentives.  In 2009 the Treasury Department instituted a
30 percent tax credit for construction projects using renewable energy.  The tax credit can be used over a 2-year period.  I really believe that 2012 is the year you will see solar panels take off in our area.  We’ve reached the tipping point.

We are currently completing a custom Craftsman-style home in a large conservancy lot in the Red Cedar subdivision off of Evergreen Mills Road in Leesburg.  The home features a cedar shingle exterior with state-of-the-art insulationa and HVAC systems!