Hoping to spark a "green" building wave, Roanoke's C2C Home tentatively plans to start construction of its first environmentally friendly house in November.

Construction on the house, in the 400 block of Harrison Avenue in Northwest Roanoke, was to begin more than a year ago.

But C2C Home officials said the experimental project hit several snags: a hoped-for building material lacked a patent; a firm that created one of the designs disbanded; some designs proved too impractical to be built here; few of the designers have the skills to produce precise construction plans; and construction costs proved too high.

During the past year, C2C Home also has converted from an all-volunteer effort to a nonprofit, recruited a board of directors, drawn up plans for several more houses, solicited donations of cash, building materials and in-kind labor and helped inform local builders and buyers about sustainable building.

Roanoke's C2C Home also continues to collaborate with Charlottesville-based architect William McDonough, whose "Cradle to Cradle" green building concepts are internationally known, and give the Roanoke C2C program its name.

The Harrison Avenue house doesn't satisfy all C2C standards, but it takes a big step in the right direction by helping to promote public understanding of green building, said Gregg Lewis, the Roanoke architect who led the C2C competition.

"It was far more challenging than we anticipated, but the work we did will make a long-term contribution to the community," said Nell Boyle, C2C Home's managing director. "We've worked through a lot of difficulties, but we have a lot of people at the table who still want to contribute."

Construction of the Harrison Avenue house is expected to start in November if the house plans are approved by Roanoke's Architectural Review Board and the Gainsboro Steering Committee. Construction is expected to take about three months, Boyle said.

Blue Ridge Housing Development Corp. is the project's primary builder. Several local firms, organizations and individuals are supplying free or reduced-cost labor and materials for the three-bedroom home.

The house will be a modular structure, which is less expensive and more architecturally compatible than earlier home plans that were considered for C2C's first house. Those houses had features such as walls made of glass or "rammed earth," a compressed mixture of earth and concrete.

The modular house will have many green features, including fiber cement siding, recycled insulation and carpeting, energy-efficient windows and sustainably harvested wood. The wood, paints, varnishes, countertops and other materials are free of arsenic and other heavy metals and toxins.

The expected sale price will be about $75,000 to $95,000, about the average home price for the neighborhood. C2C Home will make no profit from the house, which will be sold to a low- to moderate-income buyer. An earlier design was dropped because its construction cost was $225,000.

The C2C house will be one of the first green homes in the Roanoke Valley, but officials expect more to follow as builders and buyers learn more about the energy savings and environmental benefits of sustainable building.

"It's very important for Roanoke to get national attention for our desire to do sustainable design and development," said Bob Fetzer, president of Building Specialists, Inc. "I think it will be important for people to actually walk in or drive by and see a home built from the C2C competition."

Environmentally friendly building takes many shades of green, ranging from energy-efficient windows to more expensive solar heating, geothermal heat, vegetation roofs and a host of other features.

Green construction typically costs more than traditional building, but the difference can be as little as several thousand dollars, which can be recouped through lower utility bills, Boyle said.

C2C Home started as a home design and construction competition in 2004, drawing 6,000 inquiries and more than 600 entries from around the world.

The competition was organized by the Roanoke Regional Housing Network and the Council of Community Services as an effort to promote sustainable building and revitalize the city's core neighborhoods.

C2C Home has two full-time employees and a $250,000 annual budget funded by donations from local government, foundations, companies and individuals to help pave the way for sustainable building in the Roanoke Valley.

Lewis said many organizations, companies and individuals deserve credit for sticking with the C2C Home effort. The C2C's principal sponsors are Roanoke City Council, the Carilion Foundation and Landmark Communications, which owns The Roanoke Times.

"It's been a very complicated process involving a lot of conversations and negotiations with a lot of partners," he said. "If all we were about is building houses like everybody else does, it would have been pretty simple, but we're embracing a whole new paradigm."

On the Net: www.c2c-home.org