Title: Executive vice president, California Coastal and president of urban operations for KB Home Born: Los Angeles, 56 years old Education: Took classes at Cal State Northridge and USC Career Turning Point: Switching from commercial real estate to residential real estate. Most Influential Person: Monroe High School football coach Bernie Sherman; Mike Keston, former chief executive for residential home builder Larwin Cos. Personal: Lives in Valencia with wife of 30 years, Lauri. Has two adult children, daughter Amanda and son Thomas. Interests: Scuba diving, freshwater and ocean fishing, baseball fan Saving on water is on the minds of a lot of people in California, and likely no one more so than Tom DiPrima, an executive vice president with L.A. homebuilder KB Home. The Valencia resident helped develop the company’s net zero homes, which use solar panels and energy efficient fixtures and appliances to consume no more energy than they produce. The first house was built in Lancaster last year and also was highly water efficient, with real-time water-monitoring, gray water recycling systems and dishwashers that reduce water usage by a third. “We are always looking for innovative ways to differentiate ourselves in the market especially with the resale community which we feel is our biggest competitor,” DiPrima said. The 56-year-old’s next project involves a partnership with Nexus eWater Inc., a Canberra, Australia company. The companies have developed a system that captures gray water and filters it for use on landscaping. KB has installed the system on a single San Diego home and is working out the kinks before rolling it out. DiPrima has worked for KB for 20 years after starting his career in commercial real estate. Over his career, he has witnessed a shift as homeowners who once demanded lush lawns have come to recognize the beauty in plants that originate in California’s dry climate. “There is a lot you can do today with xeriscape landscaping,” he said. Question: What do you do personally to conserve on water? Answer: I am in a new KB Home (in Valencia). I have a lot of the water-savings features. All my grass is artificial. Over the last seven, eight years I’ve been trying a lot of different plant species that are low water use. I’ve found some that are just gorgeous California native plants that bloom year round and that attract hummingbirds. I am doing all those kind of features. When did KB start to provide homes with lower water consumption? A few years ago – ironically before the drought kicked in – we were looking at ways to make our homes more water efficient. We started a few years ago with the bold move of making all the fixtures in our homes WaterSense certified fixtures. The whole fixture is designed in a manner where it feels it is putting out a lot of (water) volume but it’s not. It is a very low-flow fixture. Does that really make much of a difference? We have installed over 250,000 of those WaterSense fixures. You are talking about nearly 3 million gallons of water savings daily going into the homes that we have built. That’s like four and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools every day. What is your latest initiative? On top of that we are working with companies with innovative ways that we could capture some of the water used in the home and re-use it for the landscaping. That is what we partnered with Nexus (eWater Inc.) on. How does that system work? It is the first (gray water) system to be certified for use in a residential home. The toilets and the kitchen sink water still goes to the sewer. The water we rely on every day to take a shower, wash our hands, bathe in, we capture that in a tank and then we filter that. We agitate the water that then goes through a charcoal filter and the last process is it goes through a UV(filter) that takes out any microorganisms. It cleans that water to almost drinking standards. We then save the water and use it to irrigate the landscaping. Is it available in Southern California? It just got certification a few weeks back. We are getting ready to do it as a test case in a project in San Diego. We are getting ready to bring it into our communities as an option for the customer to put into their home. We are a little bit away from when we are rolling it out everywhere. In some cases this may not work in some communities, like urban multi-family where you don’t have the space for the storage tank. What is the additional cost of this system? The cost of the system, splitting the plumbing and the electrical that goes with it is roughly about $10,000. We are doing that in a low quantity. We believe that as we get into more production we can cut that cost in half in the future. What else has the company done? We have also been focused on smart technology. We introduced a new dishwasher through Kitchen Aide that is available to our customers using 33 percent less water. This dishwasher is smart enough to take the soapy water at the end and store it so when you do your next load of dishes instead of using clean, potable water it is using that soapy water left over. How is the net zero home project going? The first home we did at net zero (in Lancaster) we are talking $100,000 in additional cost to build that home. We’ve been able to cut that by a third. How did you come to KB Home? I have been with KB for 20 years. My focus is operational. My expertise tends to be on how do we put a home together and build it. We do lot of sharing. I can reach out to one of my peers in Texas or Florida or Northern California and ask them what they are doing. They are not afraid to call me and say, “Hey can you help us with the design of this?” Did you do any sharing with water efficient systems? We have been doing more of the sharing of water with others. Likewise I have had other divisions within the country share data with WaterSense and some of the things they are doing. We are always collaborating. Relative to the (Nexus) gray water, we took the lead on that one. What was your career turning point? I was in commercial (real estate) most of my life. I was building a big commercial project and someone asked if I would be interested in coming to work in residential and thought I would be a great VP of operations. So I switched over in the early 1980s. I found it to be really optimistically challenging. What was it about residential real estate that fit? I started to realize that if you are on the outside looking in it seems that you get a piece of property, develop it and go. I realized it’s not that simple. It’s very difficult to get projects through the entitlement process in California. I saw so many family members that struggled to get into a home. I really felt like I was fighting for the right for someone to have a home. I started to get focused on that. Who has been the most influential people in your life? I had a previous boss, Mike Keston, who ran the Masters of Real Estate (program) at USC and thought so highly of me and that I could do more. Frankly, I never would have had the opportunity to go to USC and take classes if it wasn’t for him. I look at him as one of my mentors. I had a football coach, Bernie Sherman (at Monroe High School) many years ago that taught me the value of teamwork. It is a life lesson I try to pass on in both business and in years that I coached. We are most valuable not for what we do for us as an individual basis but how we make the team stronger. What are your outside interests? Anything active. I am an avid scuba diver. I love water sports. I love to be outdoors. I love to fish, both freshwater and ocean. My son and I look forward to diving a few times a year. I’m a big baseball and football fan. I coached high school baseball. Where do you like to go scuba diving? One of my favorite places to dive because of the sea life is Cozumel. I like to dive Hawaii. I’ve dove Costa Rica. I love warm water climates. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and space reasons.