Mike and Kristina Heintz Testimonial
TC Legend Homes built our Bellingham retirement home back in 2013. I used to tell people that, “Were it not for Ted Clifton and TC Legend homes we would not have been able to retire here”. Now I’ve amended it to, “If not for TC Legend Homes we would not even be able to live in Bellingham, let alone retire here”.
When my wife Kristina and I first became interested in green building in the early 2000’s in Salt Lake City, we started attending “green home tours” every year. What the homes featured on these tours all seemed to have in common were; they were very large, very expensive, and relied on high tech gadgetry to achieve efficiency . The tours tended to leave us with the impression that green building was a plaything of the rich.
It was our belief that an environmentally sustainable house could be designed and built in a manner comparably affordable to a similar sized conventional home. This became our goal when we moved to Bellingham and set out to find a contractor for our retirement house build. We spoke with other builders in Bellingham, but we were always told it couldn’t be done, or that they weren’t interested in such a small project with an equally small profit for them.
It wasn’t until we contacted Ted at TC Legend Homes that we found a builder who immediately grasped and shared our vision of affordable sustainability. Ted designed us a small, very affordable home. The design incorporated simple elements of passive solar gain in a well insulated, properly oriented house.
Having never been involved with the building of a new house before we were led to expect it would take longer and cost more than was quoted. Our experience was much different. The house cost exactly what was quoted, and was built faster than anticipated. In fact, the whole project was completed, start to finish, in about three and a half months.
One event stands out in my mind. When the foundation slab was being poured, Ted discovered there was more concrete in the truck than needed. His crew immediately set to work building forms for a porch floor which was originally going to be gravel to save money.
It’s interesting that the only changes we have made in the seven years since TC Legend Homes built the house, were to change things from what we stubbornly insisted on to what Ted had suggested in the first place.
Our philosophy going into this project was that “it isn’t the house that is sustainable; the house enables the owners to live a sustainable life comfortably”. Ted Clifton and TC Legend homes understood this philosophy completely and helped us achieve our goal where no one else was willing or able to.
This very inexpensive house was designed with the intention it would perform close to “Net Zero”, in fact, we are actually “Net Positive”. We create more energy than we use. We most heartily recommend TC Legend Homes to help make your dream come true.