Is Your House A Friend To The Environment?

Date: Fri 29-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: STEVEB

Quick Words:

home-garden-environment-house

Full Text:

HOME and GARDEN with photos

Is Your House A Friend To The Environment?

BY STEVE BIGHAM

Newtown residents Don and Donna Lococo began looking at homes in the Northeast

more than two years ago after both were transferred from Atlanta, Georgia.

They had their eyes open for a house in the country that provided a wide open

interior and bright sunshine. What they found at 27 Hi Barlow Road was all

that, and more.

The Lococo's contemporary home is unique. Set on a hillside in the southwest

part of town, the 1,500-square-foot house makes the most of its natural

surroundings.

"What we really liked about the house is that it's very open and very sunny,

and Newtown is just such a beautiful area," Mrs Lococo explained.

Built in 1982, the contemporary, complete with cathedral ceilings, features

both passive heating and cooling systems. Using a special 35-foot greenhouse,

the homes gets the maximum amount of use out of the sun. In the winter, heat

from the greenhouse is ventilated into the house and piped away from the house

in the summer.

While the south side of the house has plenty of windows and skylights, the

north side is actually underground, protecting the home from the cold arctic

winds that seem to find their way through most conventional windows and doors,

driving up heating costs. The Lococo's roof actually slopes down to the earth.

Though the thermal greenhouse is effective in heating the house from March to

December, it does not work as well in December, January and February, when the

days are short and the skies are gray with few glimpses of the sun,

"We moved into the house in 1993. We've had two spectacular winters during

that time period," Mrs Lococo explained.

There used to be electric heat in the house, but it has since been removed. In

its place, the Lococos have installed under-floor hydronic heating. Using

propane, water is heated, then run under the floor of the house, similar to a

radiator. The Lococos installed ceramic tile flooring to help hold in the

heat.

"It does well at taking us through the cold days," Mrs Lococo explained.

Hydronic heating was once featured on This Old House , the television home

improvement program on PBS.

The greenhouse's sole purpose is to control temperatures in the house; it

becomes too hot during the day to grow seedlings, according to the Lococos.

In the summer, the homeowners grow vines over the top of the greenhouse to

shut out the heat from the sun. The house is designed for maximum ventilation.

For cooling, the home features a 28-inch pump that runs 25 feet below the

house, where water is cooled to a constant 53 degrees.

The house was designed and built in 1982 by noted composer Vaclav Nelhybel who

intended to use the structure as his retirement home, but he opted to move out

of town, instead.

The Lococos, who moved to Newtown in 1993, say the house was well designed

with ceiling fans, effective cross ventilation and air-lock entry.

The homeowners say now that they've got the energy saving part of the house

down pat, they're looking at ways to recycle water.

"I guess once you get started you just want to keep going," Mrs Lococo joked.

Using The Sun

Several homes in Newtown feature solar paneling, an energy efficient system

that caught on in the late 1970s and early 80s.

Richard and Ann Uhrlass of Brookwood Drive installed solar paneling on the

roof of their 3,000-square foot ranch home 16 years ago when a concern about

rising oil prices swept the nation. They've been very pleased with the

results.

"It never made sense that when you wanted to take a shower on a hot, humid

day, you'd have to turn on the furnace," Mr Uhrlass explained. "Solar paneling

has been a great investment."

For about nine months out of the year, the passive solar paneling provides

domestic hot water to the home.

Mr Uhrlass said he received a 40 percent federal tax credit for installing the

panels. Such tax credits were removed during the Reagan era.

A Different Story Out West

If energy efficient homes have worked so well, why are there so few homes in

the area built with that in mind? According to John Klopfenstein, a realtor

with Curtis & Crandon, it's just not cost effective.

"It's very expensive and I'm not sure it ever really caught on," he said.

While environmentally friendly homes are not the norm here in the Northeast,

it's a different story out West.

Three hours north of San Francisco, lies Sea Ranch, a lush community in

Mentocito County overlooking the Pacific Ocean. While all the homes are

beautiful, they each share one thing in common Á being environmentally

friendly. In fact, building homes out of recycled materials is a requirement

there. Billy Crystal is among a handful of celebrities that call Sea Ranch

home. There, like many places in California, people, are recycling everything

from cans and bottles to bath water, which they often use to water their lawns

and gardens.

Building homes from recycled materials takes being environmentally friendly to

another level, but out West, it's the way to go these days.

"It's really become a new trend in architecture here in California," explained

Carmen Chandler of California State University at Northridge.

Similar to Sea Ranch, Prairie Crossing, a conservation community in Grayslake,

Illinois, is currently building homes that will result in an estimated 50

percent reduction in energy use for space heating and cooling, water heating

and lighting, while improving indoor air quality. It will promote recycling

and the use of recycled materials.

Parade magazine recently did a cover story on a home outside Missoula, Montana

that featured everything from tile flooring made out of recycled fluorescent

light bulbs to carpeting made from plastic milk jugs and old tires.

Steven Loken's Montanan home, built in 1990, has become a showcase for

architects and builders looking to catch on to one of the nation's hottest

trends. Folks come from far and wide to marvel at his landscape, grown with

drought-resistant plants that require little water, tiles made of recycled

windshields and a tree house for kids built from lumber left over from the

home's construction.

Another environmentally friendly trend is the construction of natural,

non-toxic housing, according to by Iowa builder and writer Michael Murphy.

Michael Chelnov has mastered the art of building homes out of dirt,

specifically, rammed earth construction. Sounds crazy, not to mention dirty,

but it's actually been a round for years. In France, 15 percent of the

country's rural homes are made of dirt.

The number one advantage to a dirt home, according to Mr Chelnov, is that it

provides lots of heat storage mass for passive solar homes, and its dirt

cheap.

Taking a page out of the building techniques of the infamous "Three Little

Pigs," George Swanson is building houses out of straw, which are actually very

sturdy (supporting concrete tile roofing for solar collection), energy

efficient and able to breathe.

Layered with borax and clay, the straw is rot and fire resistant and able to

support several tons of concrete. in addition, the straw houses effectively

filter out toxins.

At the University of Oregon, Charley Brown, the director of the Energy Studies

in Buildings Laboratory, recently built a prototype energy efficient home

which is being monitored to chart the actual energy savings. The house

includes a system to recover heat from electrical appliances and carpeting

made from recycled plastic soda bottles.

According to a landscape expert from Catholic University of America in

Washington, DC, a microclimate around your home can be created with a

strategic placing of trees, shrubs and arbors.

Iris Miller explains that by placing shade trees and shrubs around

three-quarters of the property and leaving a fourth open to the sun for

vegetables and flowers, homeowners can create a sort of wind tunnel. Done

effectively, the expert on architecture said it could eliminate the need for

an air conditioner in the summer.

As we enter into the 21st Century, more and more people are realizing that

recycling isn't just a fad anymore.