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Two big signs hit you in the eye when you drive up to the 3,777-square-foot brick home under construction in Raleigh’s Belmont Ridge neighborhood: “Olde Heritage: Builders, Developers, Stewards” and “Custom-built for Taylor and Sylvia Blakely.”

The Blakelys weren’t looking primarily for a green home when they asked green builder Chad Ray of Olde Heritage Builders to find a lot for their retirement home. But Ray pointed out the couple could receive a tax credit the first year for some of the four-bedroom home’s sustainable features like Energy Star windows and appliances, a sealed crawl space and a solar water heater that enables 85 percent of the water to be heated by the sun. The tax credit would offset some of the home’s cost — about $165 per square foot.

The Blakelys were satisfied. “We want to be good stewards of the land and do the right thing if it isn’t going to cost us much more,” said Taylor Blakely, a landscape architect.

On a recent walk-through of the couple’s unfinished home — one of 40 entries in last weekend’s Home Builder’s Association Green Home Tour — Ray pointed to another sustainable feature. “Brick is a natural low-maintenance product,” he explained, also noting the shipment came from nearby Sanford, which saved fuel and money.

Ray, an avid outdoorsman once frustrated by an internal conflict between his ideals and his business, started building green three years ago when “a light went off” while attending an National Home Builders Association Green Building Conference in Texas. “I suddenly realized you can be a steward of the environment and a home builder too,” recalls the Zebulon native whose parents, Betty and George Ray, founded Olde Heritage in 1984. “It was clear the green path was the answer.”

Okay, but how green?

“How green a home can be is decided by what you can sell in your market,” Ray said. “The more demand from the public, the more builders will build green.” Ray is vice president of the Green Home Builders of the Triangle (GHBT), a local HBA program that certifies green features in area homes by using a point system for its main designations of bronze, silver and gold.

That system allows the developer, builder and home owner to select the green initiatives, which must then be verified by a qualified third party such as Southern Energy Management of Raleigh and Charlotte. The company’s professionals inspect and verify a home’s green features using a checklist to compute the ratings.

Southern Energy Management also provides sustainable energy solutions to residential and commercial clients. “We start out with the basics like Energy Star [an EPA energy and money-saving program],” explained Maria Kingery, company co-founder. “We try to work with the builders in the earliest stage of development and help them select realistic green goals.”

Southern Energy Management helped Ange Signature Homes plan the sustainable features of its air-tight stone and fiber-cement house in Hasentree, a golf course community in Wake Forest. The five-bedroom home is on the market for $849,000. Ange started building green last year with a custom Parade home in Youngsville’s sustainable Hidden Lake community. That home was awarded Audubon’s three-leaf designation. “We realized then we could build a better house and became green builders,” said Rusty Ange III, a former naval officer with a background in mechanical and nuclear engineering. He is president of the company he co-founded in 1995 with his father, Elton R. Ange, Jr.

Some of the green features in the 4,283-square-foot Hasentree home include Energy Star synthetic windows, appliances, and lighting; TechShield Radiant Barrier sun-blocking roof sheathing which can reduce attic temperatures by up to 30 percent; and a 1,700-gallon rainwater collection system for irrigation.

Moreover, this home has an insulated timer-controlled hot water circulation system that delivers hot water in a second to any faucet in the house. The system is turned off during periods when the water is not used. “Sometimes it’s a choice of being more water efficient or more energy efficient,” Ange notes.

The home will receive a silver designation from the Green Home Builders of the Triangle.

Actually, the only GHBT Gold designation in this year’s Green Home Tour went to M Squared Builders and Designers for the company’s custom-built one-story home in Hillsborough’s Deer Run community. The 2,247-square-foot house on Lake Orange, which is also a place of business, was contracted at $168 per square foot. Although the three-bedroom home does not include solar panels, it is oriented to take advantage of the sun for passive solar.

“You can have a Gold (level) home and not do all of the green initiatives,” notes M-Squared president Michele Myers, last year’s GHBT chair. “Basically, it’s a combination of points but it’s the client who chooses the options,” she explains.

The Virginia native, who once suffered severely from a variety of allergies, built American Lung Association’s first Health House in North Carolina seven years ago and has been spreading the “G- word” ever since. It worked. Myers notices new home buyers choosing more green features like geothermal heat pumps, solar panels, cisterns and rain barrels.

One of the green initiatives demanded by the Lake Orange client was a high-quality indoor environment. “We were extremely careful of all material selection, making sure no chemical out-gassing would occur in the home’s interior,” Myers said. Other precautions include exterior termite-bait systems, an Energy Star wood-burning fireplace that deposits chemicals outside the home.

Of course the house is tightly sealed and caulked and includes such energy-efficient features as low-e aluminum-clad windows, 14 Seer heat pump, a blown fiberglass blanket, etc. You get the picture.

Seems like everything’s coming up green, but the question is, will it last or is this just another fad like the avocado- green carpeting that nobody uses anymore?

“Green building is definitely not a fad”, Myers emphasized. “It is an extremely growing trend in our industry and I believe that in five years this could be part of the [International Building] Code. In fact, with global warming already here and energy prices going through the roof, the consumer market is going to demand it.”

E-mail Iris June Vinegar at Irisjune11@aol.com.