Turning a House into an Eco-Home
(Page 2 of 3)
November/December 2006
By Carol Venolia
I also didn't need to be a hero. While I was content to remediate minor problems, I didn't want to take on a house with major problems such as mold or structural flaws.
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Tap nature
The most cost-effective way to live sustainably is to make use of freebies from Mother Nature: light and heat from the sun, cooling from shade and breezes, water from the sky and nourishment from the earth.
Assess what's possible and desirable in your region based on climate, topography, local resources and culture. Is passive solar heating important to you? Then don't buy a house on a north-facing slope in a deep forest; no amount of remodeling can help you there. If you're in Alaska, you need a different strategy; there just isn't enough winter sun for it to be a primary determinant. In the South, your focus might be the potential for shading and breezes instead.
I knew that I wanted to stay in Santa Rosa, California, which has a mild Mediterranean climate where it would be easy to improve a home's energy efficiency with passive solar heating, daylighting and natural cooling. I also could develop outdoor rooms to extend living space and increase comfort. So my early criteria included good solar gain, access to breezes (without major pollution sources upwind) and outdoor spaces around the house with potential to become living areas.
Pick your place
The location of a house determines a lot about its green potential. Can you get to work and stores by foot or bike? This simple step probably reduces your ecological footprint more than anything you'll do to the house itself. On the other hand, you might want to avoid being near sources of air or groundwater pollution and to distance yourself from noise pollution. Outdoor rooms are a lot less fun when you can't hear each other talking, and it's hard to enjoy natural ventilation when you must keep the windows closed.
In my case, these location factors were in conflict. I wanted to avoid noise pollution and have fresh air and quiet when I sleep; unfortunately, living near downtown-which would put most of my daily errands in walking distance-would mean living near major highways with their noise and air pollution. I ended up choosing good sleep over a central location-but my new house is near a bike path, and a little shopping center is an easy walk away.
Rate the green potential
Finally, there's the house itself. In theory, one can change almost anything, but tearing out and replacing things can waste resources. So it's a good idea to decide what features the place should already have, and which ones it's reasonable to change. I decided I could add windows if a house had none on its south-facing walls, but I wasn't interested in rebuilding the structure to change its orientation.