Hello and welcome. This is Nolan Formalarie with Discover NC Homes and “Nolan’s News”. I have Patrick Wright here with me from Hagood Homes (https://hagoodhomes.com/).

Nolan
Patrick, thank you for joining us today. We’re actually sitting in one of his parade homes, which we’ll be doing another video about, but we’re we’re here at 2560 St.James. And this is the beautiful, a Harbor Town III model built by Hagood Homes. Personally, I am a huge fan of Hagood Homes, we’ve done business together. They’ve built an amazing home.

Patrick, thank you again for coming. Can you tell us what sets you guys apart? Can you name a few key differences that you do in your homes?

Patrick
Yeah, we fill a unique niche in Brunswick county and certainly in St. James, as a semi-custom builder. What does that mean? It really means a couple of things: first and foremost is that we have a collection of plans and those plans can be modified to fit the client specific requirements.

And we’re very blessed and fortunate that the co-founder of our company, Troy Kenny – she’s an amazingly talented award-presented designer. We would often go back to Troy and ask her about making changes to both the interior floor plan as well as the elevation to fit the client’s requirements.

So it’s not about trying to convince them that this is what they should have, or this is how the house should look. It’s really talking about how they live and what their preferences are and offering those abilities to our clients.

Nolan
That sets you apart from other semi-custom builders because not all of them do these custom changes.

Patrick
It’s the fun part of my job. It really is – to talk to a client and ask them not about the square feet of the home, but “do you have a big family, do you entertain, do you have dogs?” – all these other pertinent questions that affect the specific house.

Okay, so that’s usually the first thing we talk about. The other element is that we talk about size, but size is relative as to how you live and how the house lives. And this is a great example of how a house- this house is around 3,000 square feet, 2,500 on the first floor, but it lives so incredibly well. This is a very, very popular home because uniquely is that we’ve taken the living area and the kitchen area, the dining area, we’ve moved into the outside wall. And what that enables us to do is to provide all these additional windows and bring the natural light in.

But to Troy’s genius, how was she able to delineate this space from that space, or this space from this space? And she does it very cleverly with the ceiling details! She’s brought the ceiling down a little bit, she’s provided a nice little coffered element in the middle and then she’s vaulted the kitchen and dining area. So even though the rooms are attached, they feel different.

Then we step into our very, very popular four seasons room – she delineates that space from this space by providing a case opening.

So that’s probably number two – is understanding how you live and understanding how the house lives. There is an element that we want to know, which is what kind of furniture do you have in bedrooms and things of that nature, but it doesn’t drive our conversation, like “I have to have a 3000 square foot house” but it’s something that we then go back into.

And I think the last thing is we have embraced and we’ve actually taken the lead with all builders in probably the county with regards to energy efficiency. It was one of Jim’s ideas. Troy is Jim’s wife. He wanted to build a better house. That’s always a prerequisite of what we do! It’s not building the house faster, it’s not building it less expensively, it’s not using inferior materials or inferior subcontractors. It’s how we can design a home that lives better, and then incorporate materials that make the house last longer or cost less.

And one of the things that we do is we have now spray foaming the exterior walls of our house, and then we’re also doing our attics and the garage ceilings.

The technology has been around for many, many years. We started using it I think probably three years ago. It’s an open cell spray foam. It does breathe. We want the house to breathe, but it basically reduces the heat transfer from the outside to the inside, OK?. That’s number one.

Number two is that we’ve insulated our slabs. We do do a raised slab construction because of the county having a lot of ground moisture, we’re so close to the ocean, things of that nature. So we insulate the slabs, we insulate the headers, and then we came up with a brilliant idea.

Jim came up with a brilliant idea early in the year, of using a triple pane window. So unheard of to use three panes of glass in a home in Brunswick county! But once again, we were trying to achieve a highest energy rated home as possible within a price parameter that makes it affordable. So our new windows are a triple pane window.

The last component is that we’ve changed our HVACs. And this is a great example here in the four seasons room. This room, because of all the glass, even though it’s triple pane, will require a lot of air conditioning, because the sun comes up.So most other builders will use a antiquated system called a mini split, which is kind of a small heat press or a pump on the backside and a little air box up here. Some builders will try to force air with a conventional one speed fan. But then it has problems with dumping air in other areas of the house.

So this system is called a TRANE 18 SEER XV. Not to get technical, the 18 SEER is the seasonal energy efficiency rating. So most builders are using a 14 or 15 SEER. So we’ve stepped that up three levels! And then the key is that we have now taken the system and we have a variable speed fan. So imagine if you want, a hairdryer. You’ve got low, medium and high, OK? And what this enables us to do is to provide a limited amount of air just to that room, without having to dump the rest of the air to the other parts of the house.

Nolan
That is efficient!

Patrick
So it’s really kind of cool that this house is around 3,060 square feet, OK?. All of our homes are HERS (Home Energy Rating System) certified, which is an energy certificate. We have a third-party company that comes down and they’ll do a blower door test and leak test and all these types of great tests to verify that our homes are achieving a very, very high energy rating. But when we incorporate the triple pane windows with the spray foam technology and the variable speed HVAC system, we’re achieving 45%-50% reduction or energy of rating or energy savings, and our clients are enjoying $1,200-$1,400 a year in savings!

So it’s one of the things that I talk about. If you want to save money and design a home that lives better, lasts longer, and then take the next step and put in a great HVAC system, then Haygood’s a great choice for you!

Nolan
Yes, it is a great choice!

Patrick
Our four seasons rooms are unique in the sens that we’ve gotten rid of the exterior slider. Most of the people are doing interior French doors here. These clients have decided to go ahead and do a case opening, but you look at this and look at how unique this is! We use a drywall ceiling, we use drywall interior walls, we get rid of the exterior slider and continue the hardwood floors and then uniquely different is that Troy insisted on doing an eight or six foot sliding window, an upper and lower fixed transom and the eight foot doors. So it really is a sunroom or a four seasons room. It’s a really unique to feature of Haygood Homes.

Nolan
It is! Well, Patrick, thank you so much, I appreciate it. And you guys will be seeing them in the parade of homes in the next few weekends!

Patrick
Stop by and see me!

If you are interested in buying a home in the Brunswick area in North Carolina, check out our search page.

About Nolan Formalarie

Nolan Formalarie has been in the North Carolina Real Estate Industry for over 8 years and enjoys every minute of it. He is involved in every aspect of the industry including selling and purchasing residential property, home watch services, property management, association management and construction.