Evolutionary Home Builders

General information

Weiss Building & Development prides itself on being a leader on the cutting edge of the green building movement. Having been a member of the US Green Building Council since 2005, we are not new to the idea of green building. With over half a decade of practice in the field, we have been pursuing our education in that subject rigorously since we started our company.

Green Building is a real passion of owner, Brandon Weiss, who is one of the countrys first 25 Master Certified Green Professional through the National Association of Home Builders, and a Leader in Energy & Environmental Design Accredited Professional through the US Green Building Council. The passion started with the priorities of occupant health, energy efficiency, and environmental responsible practices. Through studies and research, the high durability, comfort, low maintenance, and health of a certified green home is something that resonates with every homeowner, regardless of their environmental beliefs. Owner, Brandon Weiss, view's himself as not only a builder, but a building scientist. Building science means everything that goes into the health and longevity of a home, and green building is the forefront of Building Science.

Weiss Building & Development will not even build a home without utilizing the quality techniques of green building such as flashing techniques, overhang depth, durability, maintenance schedules, and lifecycle analysis of the products in the home. This is done to ensure our customers that their home will last the test of time without needing constant maintenance. Our belief is that a home is a place where family should gather, relax, and enjoy time together, instead of requiring constant work and maintenance to keep up. It is also that reason that all of our homes come with a 3rd party certification of quality and green building. That is one reason we offer a 10 year warranty on all window flashings while all other builders offer 1 year. We also offer a 15 year structural warranty on our homes. That is how confident we are in the quality of our building practices, and the studies of building sciences.

Weiss Building & Development can use these green building standards at a similar cost of a traditionally built home, to ensure higher quality and durability as compared to a traditionally built home. You can have a green home from a sustainable, quality sense at a competitive price without having to add the more expensive and eco-friendly elements such as geothermal or solar panels. The concept of green really means quality and having your home work together as a functional system.

The health of the homes we build is the most rewarding part of what we do. Just knowing that our clients and their families are living in homes that are far superior in health and safety gives us a great deal of pride in our work. With so many building products containing urea-formaldehyde, toxic substances, and VOCs, it takes a lot of work and knowledge to find materials that do not contain these materials. This is a true passion of ours, and we are already years ahead of our competition in occupant health. Our homes are tested after construction to take measurements of air quality to give actual data that our homes are measurably healthier and safer.

Unlike many builders who have put homes up as fast as possible that may last 8 years before needing major work with a total lifespan of 40 years, Weiss Building & Development homes are built to make it 30 years before any work will be needed with a lifespan of over 200 years. This is achieved through a lifecycle analysis of the products used on the home.

It is because of all these reasons that all of our homes come with a 3rd party certification of quality and green building. This ensures that we are doing exactly what we say we are, and it is qualified. When we say we build a quality home, it is backed up by third party inspections during and after construction that go much deeper than the local village / county inspections. Homes that are built to code have the lowest possible quality that is still legal, and are obsolete as soon as the new building code changes come out. Our homes are built beyond code so that they will not become obsolete as energy codes increase. Third party certification will also give our clients a higher resale value when they go to sell their home because of the quantified energy and maintenance savings, as well as the qualified quality claims.

Not only does Weiss Building & Development LLC build green in the field, but we also run our office and business green. We use all recycled paper / file boxes, reuse all scrap paper, recycle waste paper products, reuse office products, use all green cleaning & sanitary products, and purchase alternative energy credits to offset vehicle emissions.

Green building can be best defined as cutting edge building science and best building practices. A definition by the USGBC states �� fundamentally a building must be designed and built to perform as a system. It must take into account a multitude of individual performance characteristics in order to perform well as a whole. To be a green building it must perform against specific performance standards. In other words the performance must be real and measurable. The performance matrix includes: site planning, resource / material efficiency, water efficiency, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and homeowner education.�

Weiss Building & Development currently has more third party certified green homes than any other builder in Illinois. We have also built many first of its kind green homes. We remodeled the first house in the world to achieve both NAHB Emerald and LEED Platinum as remodels. We have also built the first Certified Passive House in the Chicagoland area (the first in Illinois outside of Urbana � Passive House US Headquarters), and the 28th in the country.