Gold in the Hills
(Page 3 of 4)
May/June 2006
By Robyn Griggs Lawrence
To host large meetings and weekend retreats, Michael needed a room that would hold 40 or 50 people, as well as a kitchen that could feed them. He designed two private guest suites for out-of-towners. He also wanted an office with a good-size board room for meetings, a serious game room for big parties and a large root cellar for the produce he grows on the property. All of that added up to more space than Michael had anticipated—6,000 square feet in all.
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“The house is certainly not scaled as a conventional family house would be, and it was definitely a challenge to do a house this size and have it not appear that large,” Gold says. “Yet, when you come in, even if there are just two or three people in the house, it doesn’t seem huge. There are no large, cavernous spaces. It’s broken up enough so you feel a sense of intimacy.”
Michael describes it as “a big house with lots of little places to hang out.”
To accommodate the building site’s steep slope and to minimize the visual impact of all that square footage, Gold placed half the house underground. This also helps keep the home cool in summer months.
Getting off the grid
While Michael wasn’t sure exactly how his vision would play out, he was adamant about two things: He wanted to use natural, local materials and he wanted to power the place without fossil fuels. After a brief flirtation with wind power and small-scale hydro (which would have been harmful to the creek), Funk and Gold happily discovered that the site was in an ideal spot for collecting solar energy. An array of 92 photovoltaic panels and a large battery bank would supply Michael’s needs—within limits.
“We couldn’t have air conditioning, which I was a little afraid about—even though I don’t even really like air conditioning—because this is a hot climate,” Michael says. Because the home is naturally ventilated, as long as Michael opens all the windows at night to capture the cooler night air, he says it stays comfortable during the day. “That was a big relief,” he says. “I have to admit, I had a bit of doubt until I’d experienced all four seasons here.”
Providing for the needs of such a large home using only solar power is no small feat. Michael has become acutely aware of everything that sucks up energy, and he’s doing his best to educate his houseguests as well. “I’m a freak about saving energy,” he says. “A lot of people don’t have that same consciousness, so I’m always running after people, turning off lights behind them.”
Michael has reduced his energy use by about 25 percent since he moved into the house four years ago, and he made it through last winter—when the distant sun generally doesn’t provide a lot of power—without resorting to the back-up propane generator.