Image by Dero Sanford

Keith Wingfield takes a common-sense apporacth to green homebuilding that's an affordable option for homebuyers.

There’s nothing glamorous about a green home — at least there doesn’t have to be. As trendy as bamboo floors are, Keith Wingfield would rather use common sense and employ Arkansas’ plentiful hardwoods instead. “Why spend more for foreign ‘green’ flooring that’s going to consume obscene gallons of fuel to get here?” asks Wingfield, owner of Little Rock’s River Rock Builders. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

From simple do-it-yourself solutions like air sealing to reduce leaky window drafts to outsourced chores like installing double-paned low-emissivity windows, he is a firm believer in simply “sealing the building envelope.” He believes so strongly in his practical energy-savers that he recently committed to using only Energy Star-rated products in the homes he builds as an Energy Star partner, something only a handful of Arkansas builders have pledged.

And Wingfield is just as conscious about how he builds as he is about what he builds with. “I’ve always focused on preservation of the natural environment during construction,” he says. “It’s time everyone starts to.”

This campaign is reinforced by his installment as the 2010 president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Little Rock. During his term, Wingfield wants to expand his role to become an eco-educator. To this end he’s teamed up with Richard Harp Homes to construct a Gold-rated model home under the Green Built Arkansas/National Green Building Standard that will be the epitome of sustainability for the Woodlands Edge development in west Little Rock.

“Most people don’t know what the really green features are — most are covered up during construction,” he says. But this time they’ll leave the subsurface green features exposed and host guided tours explaining how each component conserves energy and resources.

The first step in the construction of this model home was to inventory the lot to assess topography and vege­tation. Putting his eco-expertise to good use, they preserved the natural landscaping and even salvaged unusable trees for mulch to protect remaining trees. But that’s just the beginning. When it’s complete, walkthroughs will reveal the many sus­tainable secrets involved in erecting the highest level of green house — proving why it’s the gold standard of green model homes.

If you can’t go gold, you can still go green, Wingfield says. “Just go as green as you can afford. What gets the public’s attention are some of the high-tech green things, but it’s amazing to see the wonders that a little caulk and sealing tape can do.”