Hibbs Homes

Hibbs Homes is an American home building company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. The residential construction company builds luxury and custom homes. Since being founded in 2004, the company has worked to promote green home building through national and international projects, and recently announced the start of construction of St Louis's first fully energy efficient community.
Hibbs Homes was founded by Kim Hibbs and Jan Hibbs in 2004 when Kim left his job as a local NBC-affiliate reporter in St. Louis to begin building custom homes. The company was one of the first green home builders in the St. Louis region and has grown into a national advocate for green home building as a national advisor to the White House and the U.S. Department of Energy on sustainability and energy efficient home building practices.
Certified Green Home Building Professionals
Hibbs Homes practices high-performance home building practices, designed to make homes more energy efficient and durable. President Kim Hibbs is a Master Certified Green Professional through the National Association of Home Builders.
Vice President Matt Belcher is a nationally-recognized green builder, consultant,and educator.He also serves as the Director of High-Performance Buildings Research Center at the University of Missouri Columbia.
The company is a certified RESNET EnergySmart Builder and serves on the RESNET Board of Directors.
Both Hibbs and Belcher have participated in briefings with the White House Administration on climate change, sustainability, and high-performance home building. Committed to education on green home building, both have served on national green building committees and have been featured keynote speakers on symposiums dedicated to promoting green building practices.
High-Performance Home Building Projects
Active House USA
Hibbs Homes build the first Active House in North America in 2012 in Webster Groves, Missouri. The design, approved by the Active House Alliance, formed in 2010 in Demark, incorporates principles of active house construction - energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and a design that takes advantage of sun, shade, and natural air flow (passive solar orientation). The project's goal was to build a house of traditional design, while incorporating efficiencies to make the utility costs negligible. Partners in the project included Architect Jeff Day & Associates, Verdatek Solutions, Velux, Laclede Gas, Midwest Energy Efficiency Resource Consortium and others.
The home included energy efficient features such as SIP (structural insulated panel) construction, passive solar orientation, triple-glaze windows, zero/low VOC-paints & finishes, energy recovery ventilation, solar PV for electricity, high-efficiency furnace, and the use of reclaimed building materials salvaged from an existing home on the building site.The combination of these features and the high-performance building methods achieved a number of American green building certifications, including:
* National Green Building Standard (ANSI ICC-700)
* EnergyStar Certification
* EPA Indoor airPLUS
* Building America Builders Challenge
Initial projections at the time of construction of this house was that the home cost 5 percent more to build than a traditional construction home of the same size, but that it could save the family up to $200 per month in utility costs.
A follow-up with homeowners three years after moving in showed that it outperforms traditional homes of the same size by 80%. The University of Missouri studied the home for the first year of the family's living there with meters and detectors to measure things such as humidity, formaldehyde, carbon dioxide and other air pollutants and found that the home's air quality exceeded their expectations.
The home served as a model in sustainable home building - for both construction industry professionals and homeowners. Case studies and articles on the project were featured in TIME Magazine and in a segment on Higher Education TV, starting discussions on how green home building practices can be implemented as a matter of common practice - not just as a trend.
Proud Green Home
In 2015, Hibbs Homes announced the completion of Proud Green Home, a high-performance home located in West St. Louis County. The energy efficient five bedroom 3,700 square foot Prairie-style home was the third high-performance showcase home built by Hibbs Homes in the midwest. The home served as an educational tool for home building professionals, offering tours in February 2015, with educational presentations from national experts involved in the project.
The home was built for a family who had a child with severe asthma and allergies. Because of the indoor air quality improvements available with the high-performance home building style, the homeowners worked with Hibbs Homes and Architect Curtiss W. Byrne to develop a home with continuous ventilation, low VOC's, and low allergens.
The green home was built in partnership with the University of Missouri-Columbia's High-Performance Building Research Center and the Midwest Energy Efficiency Research Consortium, which are working to collect long-term energy and water usage data.
St. Louis's First Energy Efficient Community
In September 2016, Hibbs Homes announced that it is working to building the first fully energy-efficient new home community in the St. Louis region. The 'Timbers at Fox Mountain' will feature Energy Star appliances and Energy Star-rated windows, and will feature timber frame and hybrid timber frame home designs, which are naturally more energy efficient than traditional home construction.

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