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Builders and remodelers trolled the booths at last week's building expo at the Charlotte Convention Center, looking for life rafts to help them stay afloat in the stormy economy.
Many are tackling smaller jobs to stay busy until construction rebounds. Which products might appeal to value-minded consumers? And, especially, which products offer high energy savings for a low price tag?
"Those are the questions," said Larry Airey, executive officer of the Lake Norman Home Builders. "That's why they're here... That's part of the conversation this week."
For instance, consumers want to build "green," he said, but they're weighing that against their tight budgets. "They're telling builders, 'We can't pay more than X. What can you do?'"
The show was smaller than in years past, but the mood was surprisingly upbeat as builders sought answers.
The seventh-annual 21st Century Building Expo & Conference was hosted by the N.C. Home Builders Association.
It featured 222 booths, compared with 370 last year. "In this economy, it was more difficult to get vendors," said Heather Crews of the NCHBA. There was just one $10,000 prize drawing, instead of two.
Attendance dipped, but still was a respectable 4,500, compared with 5,300 last year.
"It has been better than I thought it would be," said Mike Fulton, who staffed a booth for O'Hagin's, an attic ventilation product. "Traffic has been pretty good.... I'm from Florida, and shows there really have been horrible."
Among those checking out the show was Neal Forney of Ingleside Builders, which builds and renovates in southeast Charlotte.
Forney is taking smaller jobs during the downturn, and looking for products that are both affordable and environmentally friendly. And he arrived with a list of products and systems he didn't want to miss: sealed crawl spaces, no- and low-VOC paints from Sherwin-Williams, and zoned, super-efficient heating and cooling systems.
Like many builders and remodelers, he's earning green-builder certification. Reflecting that growing interest, the show was dominated by products pitched as environmentally friendly. A dozen builder seminars during the show focused on green topics.
Consumers are interested in green, too - but aren't willing to pay lots more. Just 2percent more, according to one recent survey.
Forney said homeowners can spend a lot for green technology, but don't have to. That's one lesson from the training. The class instructor spends lots of time on products and techniques that offer the most impact for the money. "We're taught to grab the low-hanging fruit," Forney said.
Even a layman could identify some of that low-hanging fruit on the show floor.
I spotted a handful of attic and crawl-space ventilation companies, including Atmox, a local company that specializes in crawl-space ventilation. In this area, odds are good that either improvement would help at your house.
Tankless water heaters are increasingly popular with Charlotte homeowners. They heat water only when you turn on a faucet, so you don't pay to heat a tank full of water when there's no demand. Also, they take up less space in your utility closet.
Rinnai, a popular brand, was drawing lines at a booth. Even the vinyl siding folks were pitching a "green" angle.
In a display at the Vinyl Siding Institute booth, heat lamps baked the back sides of fiber cement siding and insulated vinyl siding. The cement siding was hot to the touch, while the vinyl was barely warm - as lots of show patrons reached out to discover for themselves as they walked past.
