Green Sanctuary Program
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Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship
Green Sanctuary Program |
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March/April 2005 by Vincent Standley National Geographic The Green Guide http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/107/kitchengreenhome - article no longer available online "I wanted to build a house for myself and my mother that was practical, eco-friendly and affordable," says Claudia Peduzzi, an elementary-school reading specialist who lives in southwestern Rhode Island. And to suit their "cooking-intensive lifestyle," the kitchen had to be spacious, beautiful and functional. Long before buying the land for her dream house, Claudia had researched and planned many details. Why green? "I was attracted to the energy-saving side of it, then other things sprouted from it," she recalls. In the summer of 1991, Claudia and her sister, Mary, drove to Maine for a three-week class at the Shelter Institute, where they learned environmental impacts as well as basic design concepts both in the classroom and in practice on job sites. "Although we were apprehensive at first, because building is a male-dominated profession, most of the lectures, as it turned out, were given by very knowledgeable women," she says. As Claudia's experience shows, green homes are gaining ground in the United States: 13,224 were built in 2002 alone compared with 18,884 for the entire decade of the 1990s. The trend is attracting a broader economic spectrum of homeowners thanks to public awareness, new technologies and a growing market in environmentally sounder materials. As defined by Daniel Chiras, author of The New Ecological Home (Chelsea Green, 2004, $35), building green means minimizing the negative impact on the natural world while creating a healthy living environment. The U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) has developed standards that encompass a building's use of natural resources, healthy materials, recycling and more. (Currently available for commercial properties, schools and apartment buildings, LEED certification for houses is scheduled to debut in early 2006.) Building green is equal parts science and ethics, but mostly it's just common sense, says Bob Chew, the owner of Earth-Friendly Homes and Claudia's building contractor. In 2001, when she had her construction loan in place, Claudia teamed up with Chew to design and build the house, giving special consideration to the safety and comfort of her 80-year-old mother, Claire. "I wanted to build a house that was familiar," Claudia says. In the end, she based the design on her childhood home, a two-story, Cape-style house built by her uncle. She kept what she loved about that house, such as the sink in a sunny corner of the kitchen, while adding a walk-in pantry, a canning station in the basement and grab bars for Claire. They broke ground in September 2003. Following a LEED principle of working with the natural site, an army of granite boulders that occupied the lot were used for retaining walls to prevent erosion. The house's walls are insulating concrete forms (ICFs), made of concrete poured between foam boards. ICFs save on labor costs and are extremely energy-efficient, but you have to plan carefully. In the kitchen, for instance, "When the concrete wall was poured, we left a void where the stove-exhaust hood needed venting. We laid out the windows so that the window trim was flush against the cabinets," says Steve Gardner, president of Remodel Wrights, which worked with Earth-Friendly. The focal point of the high-ceilinged kitchen is a Kohler cast-iron sink with enamel coating, centered below four southeast-facing windows. The view overlooks an expansive back yard and a small grove of arborvitae evergreens. Appliances and an L-shaped countertop run from either side of the sink along the south- and east-facing walls. An island countertop completes a triangulated work area with plentiful daylight. Electric lighting is provided by free-hanging pendant lights over the island, a surface-mounted fixture above the sink and fluorescents under the cabinets. To reduce the up to 40 percent of a home's total energy that a kitchen typically consumes, compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) were used as much as possible, and all appliances are Energy-Star certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including the dishwasher and the built-in Sub-Zero refrigerator. The house itself, which generates its own electricity with solar panels, received the EPA's highest rating five stars. Although the Peduzzis draw energy from the utility grid at night, over the year their electricity averages out to 100 percent solar from the 32 Kyocera 167G photovoltaic rooftop panels, which produce up to 5,344 watts of DC power, enough to run everything from the broiler to the living-room chandelier and its six CFLs. Of the system's total $43,692.50 cost, $26,720 was covered by the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, a collaboration between state and federal energy programs (for more info, see sidebar). Since moving in, Claudia has even sold some electricity back to the utility. She'll probably save about $700 a year at today's rates and earn $300 from the energy she sells, Chew estimates. The kitchen's amber bamboo flooring conforms to LEED standards, as does the formaldehyde-free AdvanTech engineered wood subfloor. "I liked that the bamboo was fast-growing and didn't kill trees," Claudia says. The countertops are Canadian Stanstead Gray granite. For the maple kitchen cabinets, however, Claudia went with the "looks, quality, price and value" of Plain and Fancy, though the wood is not per LEED standards. Claudia and Claire moved in a week before Christmas, 2004. Shortly after unpacking, they threw a true housewarming by cooking Christmas Eve dinner in the "Italian tradition" for the 35 family members who had helped them move. |
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