How I Built a Green Home Empire -- Before 'Green' Was Cool
By Don Ferrier, President of Ferrier Custom Homes/Ferrier Builders, Fort Worth, Texas.
Don Ferrier's firm began building green homes back in 1982, even though he and his employees didn't then know the word "green" would ever apply to what they were doing. Others doubted Ferrier's would ever have a successful business building energy-efficient homes. Were they ever wrong.
My grandfather and his brother immigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1881 to work on the Texas state capitol building, and they started a general contractor/stone masonry firm called Ferrier Brothers. My father and his brothers continued it as Ferrier Brothers Bridge Company. I grew up working for the company every summer and holiday, and after college and one PR job I decided I wanted to stay at it.
The underground roots of green building
By then we were a structural concrete company-that was about 90 percent of our business. In 1980 we did some work for a couple who were building an underground home. These homes are built right into the earth with a lot of passive-solar glass on the south side, and they use only 30 percent of the energy of a conventional home. This was after the first oil embargo, when the U.S. got a wake-up call that cheap energy may not be eternal. 
We were just supposed to supply the concrete from our Redi-Mix plant. But then the contractor had troubles and we helped bail him out, so we wound up more involved with the job than we expected. And it was fascinating to me: You could take concrete that was so raw and...unappealing, in a way-it's fine for a bridge but who wants to live under it, you know?-and you could make it into a really nice home and achieve someone's dream.
In 1982 the sister and brother-in-law of the owner who built that first underground home wanted one too, and we built the shell. After that we were asked to build another, then another, (initially doing the excavation, concrete, waterproofing, underground insulation and backfill), then we partially finished out a home, and then we started building them turnkey as a general contractor/builder.
Learning from clients and building momentum
I didn't know much about building energy-efficient homes, but I learned a lot from my clients, reading and attending seminars. One client wanted to put a special A/C filtration system to improve indoor air quality, so we figured out how to do that and began making that a priority on our homes. We did rainwater catchment systems on some projects, and we learned to put in solar hot water heaters. In all we built 19 earth-sheltered (underground) or earth-bermed homes.
In 1984 I was introduced to Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs)-they're sandwich panels with two facings or sheathings on the outside and a core of insulation, bonded together with a structural adhesive. I found we could get almost the same efficiency with a properly oriented SIP shell as we could with an underground home. This was a big advance. We were doing one to three earth homes a year, but bankers were always skeptical of them, so buyers usually needed a big chunk of cash. With SIPs it became easier to build homes bankers would finance-they looked conventional, with no dirt on the roof.
Dealing with doubters
I had some major doubters back then. Some friends, family members and other builders were concerned that we were catering to a fringe market: They'd say, 'It's not a real house, it's one of these tree-hugger homes. There's not enough interest in that stuff. Nobody else is doing that-why would you?' They wanted me to be doing what everybody else was. The thing was, we're succeeding now because we were learning to do things other builders weren't. We had a rough patch in the mid-'90s, and my mom-who was a big supporter-suggested I consider a job opening at the post office.
Even a general manager I hired back around 1999 said 'Energy efficiency is just a small niche-we need to build some regular spec homes and start flipping them. Forget SIPs, they add to the cost-you've got to get more square feet per dollar.' But that's not what I wanted to do! I had no passion for that.
The thing I enjoyed most was the people: fulfilling the dreams of the clients who came and wanted extreme energy efficiency. They wanted to make a difference for themselves and typically for the environment, and they were willing to invest time, energy and money to do it. These folks found great satisfaction in building their homes, and then every month seeing their incredibly small energy bills while living in an extremely comfortable, healthy, safe, low maintenance, environmentally sensitive home. It brought me great satisfaction to do something that was different than what other people were doing and was better for everybody, and to see what a difference these homes made in people's lives and on the environment.
I didn't have any passion or energy around building tract homes and competing on cost and looks. I wanted to build homes that make a difference. It was either do this or do something else entirely-building conventional homes was not appealing at all.
Riding the green wave
Around the late '90s green building was starting to take off. The Internet was huge in that regard. I remember in '99 I was at Duke University for a self-awareness conference for business owners called Leadership Trust. One of the attendees asked if I was a green builder, and I thought a minute and replied, 'Well, I guess I am.' 
Then in 2004 I was at the International Builders' Show and I noticed this event had a line going out the door. I saw a friend in the line and asked him what he was up to, and he said he was going to the EnergyValue Housing Awards Banquet. I had never heard of it. The next year we applied for the award, and since then we've won five gold medals and one silver. Though we have just three employees, myself included, revenues have roughly doubled in the last five years to between $2 million and $3 million, and I conservatively expect them to hit $4 million this year.
We stayed put in a small, niche market, even though many people told us it would never pay off. Then when green got hot, we already knew how to build green homes. The key is to follow your heart, have patience, find the right assistance-our consultant has made a very positive impact on me and my company-and keep learning so you get better at what you do. -- As told to Nate Hardcastle
Don Ferrier was the first builder in Texas to have a home certified as a LEED-H (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design Home) and was the third builder in the nation to achieve the LEED Platinum level. Don has been named:
- 2007 Green Builder Advocate of the Year by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB).
- 2008 Dallas Builders Green Builder Advocate of the Year
- 2009 Texas Green Building Advocate of the Year
- Dallas Builders "Godfather of Green"
- 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Energy Value Housing Award Winner
- To the NAHB's Green Building Subcommittee's Board of Directors
- To the Built Green Texas Board of Directors Committee
Check out Don Ferrier's homes.
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