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Paris Boehm and Richard Myers hope a development they are planning near Adel leaves a small footprint on the environment and a big impression on home buyers.

“We’re so excited that we’re giddy,” Boehm said about the development, which they plan to build on 109 acres that have been owned by Myers’ family since the 1950s.

Their goal is to build a community of what Boehm calls “sustainable” homes that would qualify for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization that establishes standards for construction that has minimal impact on the environment.

They plan to launch the project by building their own LEED-certified home, a plan they hatched after first considering the rehabilitation of an 18th-century “mansion” that stands on the property.

One step to meeting LEED standards is to build a home that meets standards as to size. For example, a three-bedroom home can contain no more than 1,700 square feet. By “mansion,” Boehm is referring to homes, such as the old farmhouse, that seem to exceed practical needs.

“The days of the mansion are long gone,” she said.

But the LEED certification and the concept of building a sustainable home go beyond that simple measure, Myers said.

Myers is certified as an EcoBroker by EcoBroker International, an Evergreen, Colo.-based organization that trains real estate agents to help clients buy and sell homes that are environmentally friendly.

Myers has a personal interest in preserving the land that made up the family farm.

He said the property is within an area northeast of Adel that the city hopes to annex. With annexation comes development, and Myers is concerned that unless he prepares for that process now, he will lose control of what happens to the farm in the future.

In addition to building a LEED-certified home that could serve as a model for other homes in the conservation community, Myers and Boehm plan to return much of the 109 acres to natural prairie.

The number of homes built in the community will depend on how the farmland progresses under prairie habitat, Boehm said.

“We want to deal with the land before we anticipate how many homes it can accommodate,” she said.

Myers said the concept is to “honor” the land, protecting it from wasteful water runoff and building homes that are “healthy and green.”

That means using non-toxic building materials, building homes from lumber that is harvested in areas where trees are replanted and being mindful of which components, such as wallboard, can be recycled or are made from natural materials.

Boehm and Myers have found a willing participant in the project in Nick Knight, a home builder from Earlham.

“He is a sustainable builder who flies under the radar,” Boehm said.

For his part, Knight said he probably has been building under LEED standards for the better part of his career; he just wasn’t aware that there were LEED standards until meeting Boehm and Myers.

He encourages clients to use solar energy to heat their water and geothermal units that can warm and cool their home by using the temperature of the earth as an energy source.

Knight said he uses both systems in his own home.

“We met Nick for the first time on May 6 and we didn’t have to explain what we were looking for in a sustainable home, and he just got it and he understood the larger impact,” Boehm said.

Boehm and Myers also were attracted to Knight’s home building plan, which involves getting clients involved in the design process and all vendors involved in the construction schedule.

Knight also brings a practical view to the process, a view that he developed while building homes with his father, then working as a carpenter in San Francisco for several years building extravagant, multimillion-dollar homes for celebrities before returning to Iowa and operating the family construction business for the last 15 years.

“The truth is that no building is good for the environment, so just calling buildings sustainable and environmentally friendly is a contradiction in terms,” he said.

As a result, he attempts to minimize the impact of building a home by essentially building the structure from scratch. He does not use pre-built roof trusses, for example, preferring to “stick build” the structures on site to make sure that lumber is not wasted and also to guarantee that all elements of the building fit as they should.

Knight said the homes he builds have qualified for the federal government’s Energy Star designation for the last five years or more. He noted his fees are slightly more expensive than those of other builders, but that homeowners have lower overall costs because of energy savings.

“You have a lot more attention to detail, the way things are tied together, the way things are tied up tight, Knight said. “It means your drywall isn’t going to crack later, little things that make a house last forever. It is construction meant for people who plan to live in a house for a long time rather than build it and sell it for a profit.”

He is not concerned that the home he builds for Boehm and Myers will meet LEED standards.

“I basically see it as a lot of paperwork and inspections,” he said.

Boehm and Myers plan to educate potential home buyers on the benefits of building LEED-certified homes. They want the development community LEED certified, not just the homes in it.

They plan to convert an 18th-century barn into a community gathering spot with a fitness center and a community garden nearby.

“We really want people to think of this as a community rather than a development,” Myers said.