Q&A with CMS President Chad Statz
GoStevensPoint.com: Tell us a little bit about the history of CMS and your background in construction and building.
Statz: Well, my late father was a builder, and I worked with him when I was growing up in southern Wisconsin. After graduating college at UWSP with a Natural Resources degree, I worked for a local builder for about five years before I decided to start my own construction business here.
GSP: What sets CMS apart from other builders in central Wisconsin?
Statz: You know, spending all that time working with my dad and then building homes on my own after college, I started studying building science and how/why we build houses the way that we do. What I realized is that, in terms of how houses are built here in America, virtually nothing has changed in the past 50 or so years. Homes here in America are primarily built for curb appeal– not that there’s anything wrong with that– but, generally speaking, they’re often horribly inefficient and performance is not an issue to the homeowner or builder. Now, in Germany for instance, they have a different philosophy on home design, which is primarily based on efficiency.
I started to realize that home building is all about energy, the movement of energy, whether it’s electricity, heating, cooling, take your pick. I realized there are ways to build houses that have great curb appeal, but can also dramatically reduce the amount of energy required to live in and maintain it, thereby saving the homeowner a lot of money in utility, electricity and heating and cooling costs.
GSP: What are some of the things you do in new construction that make homes more efficient?
Statz: Well, It starts with the home’s design considerations. For maximum efficiency, we use Structural Insulated Panels (SIP), which are foam-core wall panels for the most airtight shell possible. Once you’ve got that in place, you can start to address some of the other things that will increase efficiency, such as the positioning of the house to allow more sunlight in the winter and blocking sun in the summer, lighting choices inside the home and appliance choices. Such tight homes require an advanced air system that dramatically increases the air quality of the home. We recently completed a new home in Stevens Point that has been certified as the most efficient house in Portage County and the 8th most efficient in Wisconsin. It’s so efficient, in fact, that it doesn’t have a direct fuel furnace. All of the houses we now build are enrolled, inspected, and tested with the Wisconsin Energy Star Home program. We’ll work with the homeowners to build houses that meet their needs and are as efficient as possible with strict regard for their goals and budget.
We know that we can compete with other builders on something that is quantifiable. All of our new construction homes are efficiency tested and certified by a third party so we’re not just using words like ‘quality.’ We’ve got something that we can show a customer, verifiable numbers that prove we have a superior product.
CMS Construction, in addition to building new homes, also does energy efficiency updates to existing homes and remodeling. For more information, contact Chad Statz at 1-715-213-3432 or visit their website at http://www.cmsconstructiondesign.com.