The home WOW factor
A 7,104-square-foot home built near Orlando to show off everything green and glam awaits peer approval.
Carrie Alexander Special to the Orlando Sentinel November 20, 2005
Wow. Orlando home builder Alex Hannigan did it. Fourteen months ago, when he was preparing to start on The New American Home '06, he said he wanted his showcase house to have the "wow factor."Despite the project's many challenges, this 7,104-square-foot home in southwest Orange County should easily elicit that response when it opens for tours early next year. The house, which is expected to have a price tag significantly higher than $3 million, boasts a view of Lake Burden from nearly every room. Amenities include five fireplaces, a second-story library and an outdoor living space with a vanishing-edge pool, a spa and gas-fired tiki torches.The demonstration home is expected -- no, required -- to be fabulous. Each year since 1984, the National Association of Home Builders has constructed a house at the site of its convention to showcase state-of-the-art materials and techniques.In January, Orlando hosted the International Builders' Show for the first time, and the show's centerpiece was a Mediterranean home in Baldwin Park built by Goehring & Morgan.This January, the show will return to Orlando, giving Hannigan, president of Hannigan Homes, the chance to show off a stellar Florida-style home to thousands of building professionals. About one-tenth of the more than 100,000 attendees typically tour the showcase home. After the show, the house will be open to the public.The mission of the builders group is to demonstrate design ideas, products and technologies that can be replicated in houses across the country at various prices."Nobody's going to replicate the entire house," but builders and homeowners can walk away with a few ideas for their own projects, says Bill Nolan, a past president of the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando and co-chairman of the national builders' New American Home committee.Every home-building project has its challenges, but try constructing a demonstration home by a committee in less than a year with groups of manufacturers lobbying to have their products included.Add to that a set of circumstances particular to this home project, such as the lack of electricity, water and passable roads.The site chosen for the home is the first to be carved out of a new subdivision known as Lake Burden at the Lakes of Windermere. When Hannigan broke ground for the home, the land was raw, and generators had to be hauled to the site to power up tools. Water had to be pumped from the lake to mix the concrete."I knew going in, this was going to be difficult,'' Hannigan says. "We knew we'd have to start with generators, and we didn't have roads and there was no power. And power, water and roads are three key ingredients in starting a home."In June, Hannigan says, the constant rain produced so much mud that he would lose an entire week of work at one time."I couldn't get to the house. Nobody could," he says. "It was really a challenge. I said, 'Someday, we'll look back and laugh about this but not today.' I have never in my wildest dreams thought we could complete this house under these conditions."The crew expected to have power sometime in July, but it didn't happen until the first of this month -- about the same time running water arrived.Plus, Hannigan was expected to build the home to be "green," or environmentally friendly, which was breaking ground for The New American Home program and for him."I think it's [green building] the wave of the future,'' he says. "I think that we should all start looking at that and taking it seriously."The show house, which is Energy Star-rated through the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America program, will receive green certification that verifies the house is energy-efficient and uses environmentally sensitive materials and principles in its construction.Hannigan says the decision to build green is part of the reason for choosing WCI Architecture & Land Planning of Coral Springs to design the home. The company has been a state leader in green building.As homeowners catch on to the benefits of building green, more houses will be built with some of the same principles used in The New American Home '06, says John Orgren, WCI regional design manager and co-designer with Flavio Coronel on this project.The reason, Orgren says, is that the concepts just make sense. Using wood from sustainable forests, for example, means resources have been saved for the next generation. Placing the air-conditioning system in a semiconditioned space means "it doesn't have to cool as much, and there's less chance of mold," Orgren says.
