BASF announced today that through its Center for Building Excellence, it will collaborate with M Street Homes of Houston, Texas, to help it cost-effectively build high-performance homes that are healthier, more durable, and energy efficient.

M Street Homes is the first builder in the Houston area to employ the BEYOND.High Performanceâ„  approach from BASF, which emphasizes cost-effective techniques to reach an extraordinary level of energy efficiency and sustainable construction, driving homes towards a net-zero impact through the use of renewable energy, homeowner education and active energy conservation participation.

“BASF is at the forefront of energy-efficient construction and has a reputation of doing things the right way, so it was appealing for us to align with BASF’s methods,” said Randy Erwin, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for M Street Homes. “Our relationship with BASF is valuable because the high performance building materials, expertise, and energy modeling provided by the Center for Building Excellence allows us to stay on the leading edge of green and energy-efficient building.”

The BASF Center for Building Excellence staff offers consulting, plan reviews and other services to assist builders in constructing homes using applied building science. The BEYOND.High Performanceâ„  program helps builders go beyond typical new construction methods to achieve superior homeowner comfort and efficiency.

The M Street Homes team has been committed to establishing a high standard of stewardship to the health of its customers, the community and the world by building homes that are sustainable and more environmentally friendly since 2007.

“We’re excited to work with builders like M Street Homes to help them deliver affordable, quality, high-performance homes under the BEYOND program,” said Rick Davenport, Director of Sustainable Construction for BASF in North America. “We applaud M Street Homes for its commitment to homeowner satisfaction from the planning stages to the final build.”

M Street Homes achieves a Home Energy Rating System® (HERS) score of 50 on finished construction projects, which means it requires only 50 percent of the energy of a conventional code-built home and comes renewable ready. Homes constructed to be M Street Edge, the company’s energy efficiency program, include cellulose wall insulation, BASF closed-cell spray polyurethane foam attic insulation, and a high-performance heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. They also feature a hybrid wall system that contains rigid thermal insulation products from BASF that add strength to make them more sustainable in storms as well as the ManaBloc® plumbing system, which reduces water use and plumbing connections while delivering hot water to every outlet faster.

“We’ve always been a little ahead of the curve when it comes to energy efficiency, and with the BEYOND.High Performance program, we’re taking it to the next level,” said Erwin. “Our customers want to have an energy-efficient home, but they don’t want to have it at the expense of putting their home upside down in value. With M Street Edge, we allow homeowners to have an energy-efficient home without having to spend irrationally to get there, and they reap the benefits of it. In fact, we’ve had customers show us their electric bills because they’re so excited.”

The HERS® Index score is a scoring system established by Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), a third party, in which a score of 100 is what a standard new home built to 2006 IECC would score, while a score of 0 is a new home that has net zero energy use. The HERS® Index is a registered trademark of RESNET.

BEYOND.High Performance is a service mark of BASF.

ManaBloc® is a registered trademark of Viega LLC.

M Street Homes
M Street Homes, headquartered in Houston, Texas from its inception, has been designed to embrace each customer’s “personal” viewpoint throughout the home building process. Our philosophy is simple, “It’s About The People!”. We have specifically hired and trained our M Street Homes professionals to look at homebuilding as a customer driven experience rather than a bottom line driven system. This means that our sales people are really interested in what is most important to the home buyer, that our builders take the time to pro-actively explain to you how things work, and what we are going to do when a problem presents itself.

Most importantly, we focus on being good communicators. Because building a home is a complex series of coordinated activities involving lots of people. So we make sure that our treasured customers are not left in the dark. Above all, we challenge ourselves to build your home as if it were our own. We inspect your home with the mindset of “would this be acceptable to me if it were my home?” Whenever we call you on the phone or have a meeting with you we think about how we would want to be treated.

We are committed to establishing a higher standard of stewardship to the health of our customers, the community, and the world through building homes that are sustainable and more environmentally friendly. We will achieve this through a comprehensive quality building program called “M Street Edge.” Our homes will be healthier, safer, more durable, energy efficient, comfortable, and environmentally conscious than most of our competitors. This commitment can be confirmed with third party performance testing and public documentation. Quality and value are the cornerstones of M Street Homes. Our customers simply get more of both when they buy one of our homes.

For more information, visit www.mstreethomeshouston.com.

BASF - The Chemical Company
BASF Corporation, headquartered in Florham Park, New Jersey, is the North American affiliate of BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany. BASF has more than 16,600 employees in North America, and had sales of $18.5 billion in 2012. For more information about BASF’s North American operations, visit www.basf.us.

BASF is the world’s leading chemical company: The Chemical Company. Its portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics, performance products and crop protection products to oil and gas. We combine economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility. Through science and innovation, we enable our customers in nearly every industry to meet the current and future needs of society. Our products and solutions contribute to conserving resources, ensuring nutrition and improving quality of life. We have summed up this contribution in our corporate purpose: We create chemistry for a sustainable future. BASF had sales of €72.1 billion in 2012 and more than 110,000 employees as of the end of the year. Further information on BASF is available on the Internet at www.basf.com.

BASF Corporation

BASF Corporation

BASF is the world's leading chemical company: The Chemical Company. Its portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics and performance products to agricultural products, fine chemicals and oil and gas. As a reliable partner, BASF creates chemistry to help its customers in virtually all industries to be more successful. With its high-value products and intelligent solutions, BASF plays an important role in finding answers to global challenges, such as climate protection, energy efficiency, nutrition and mobility. BASF posted sales of more than €50 billion in 2009 and had approximately 105,000 employees as of the end of the year. Further information on BASF is available on the Internet at www.basf.com.

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