Find out more About us

Touchstone Builders

In 1999, after several years working with a local custom home builder, Douglas Schenkel started Touchstone Builders, Inc. With his experience in home building, combined with a background in banking and finance, starting his own company was natural. But forming the most important foundation for Touchstone Builders, Inc. was the honesty, integrity, and commitment to hard work that Doug learned growing up right here in Tennessee. In his years as a collegiate and professional soccer player, Doug learned the lessons of teamwork and determination and what it takes to work for excellence. These lessons still guide him in building homes for families all over middle Tennessee.

Doug is married to his wife, Dawn, and they have two children, Grayson and Greer. As a husband and father, he knows and understands the needs of today’s families when they are building a home. With years of experience and determination, Touchstone Builders, Inc. continues to grow, build better sustainable custom homes and expand into land planning  both residential and commerical developments.

Building Green – For Today & The Future

Building Green-Sustainable houses is ultimately about building safe, comfortable living environments that balance with their surrounding natural environments. It is about integrating planning and design with climate and site analysis to maximize the energy efficiency, durability, indoor environmental quality and water conservation of our structures, while simultaneously minimizing waste and our impact on natural resources. It is only through understanding this balance that Touchstone Builders at Jackson Valley can meet the challenge of putting this understanding into an actionable plan. In order to guarantee the performance of a house, we have to understand how the house works. A house is a system, and it performs and behaves as a system. All the parts and pieces are interdependent and interactive. When we apply building science, our goal is to make sure that we affect home building in a positive way over the long term as well as the short term. This way, we can add years or decades to the useful life of the home, and we can improve the quality of life of the home’s occupant over the whole lifetime of that home.

A home that lasts twice as long has half the environmental impact, regardless of what is built. Touchstone Builders at Jackson Valley is “Green Built” , but we will concentrate on how you can claim “built better” – better than we have been, better than the competition, better than the minimum ‘green’ ratings other builders are claiming. 80% of all New Home Built are built by 20% of all Builders. Those 20% are really just a very big marketing company who happens to build houses.

Touchstone Builders is conscientious enough to build a home that:

• uses less energy
• is more comfortable
• has cleaner indoor air
• conserves water in times of drought
• is more durable
• requires less maintenance on the weekends
• protects their resale value

Benefits

It’s about the benefits to your family, not the methods you employed to achieve them. We know our customer, empower that customer through education, act with transparency to back our claims, reassure buyers that your home performs as promised through proof points, and we explain the economic benefits of your product.

We are better built custom homes with all of the bells & whistles. Our Better Built homes include several sustainable features such as;

• Gas tank less water heater
• Insulated hot water lines
• Ductwork with sealed mastic systems are zoned for peak efficiency and comfort
• Low-E windows and doors (if glass)
• Advanced framing techniques for increased insulation
• LP Techshield roof decking
• Energy Star dishwashers
• Energy Star ceiling fans
• Low flow plumbing fixtures
• “Jumper ducts” for proper return airflow
• R-13 insulation in walls
• Low VOC Paint Coverings
• R-38 insulation in ceilings
• Crawl space with 2″ rigid foundation insulation

Read more about why ‘going green’ makes such a difference.