“Feel my windows,” Al Rosen tells you. Feel his windows?
But you do, and the floor-to-ceiling glass enclosing Rosen’s den and living room is cool to the touch, despite the blazing weather outside. This is triple-glazed glass filled with argon gas, and it lets in sunlight (which saves electricity and lightbulbs) and insulates against heat in the summer and cold in the winter.
When Al and Myra Rosen bought this house in 1997–it then had a darker interior filled with heavy marble slabs–they began an eco-remodeling effort that continues to this day.
Try a glass of the Rosens’ chlorine-free purified water from the low-flow kitchen faucet. Have a seat on the curved blue couch in the sunny living room, built from wheat board and formaldehyde-free foam and upholstered with untreated cotton fabric. Its pillows are filled with kapok, a natural seed fiber.
One glance through the house will tell you that green building isn’t the same thing it was a decade ago, when eco-consciousness first began to drift into the corners of the mainstream. There is nothing plain, stark or utilitarian about this 4,000-square-foot house resting on the edge of Mandeville Canyon in Brentwood, Calif.; instead, sunlight drifting through windows and skylights illuminates an interior landscape constructed of clean, modern lines and infused with vibrant color.
As the Rosens testify, living green is no longer a kind of countercultural penance in which you must forgo comfort, personal style and your retirement savings in order to give back to the environment. In the last five years, green architecture firms, publications and building materials have leapt from relative niche obscurity to the forefront of culture and design. Even the big home improvement chains such as Home Depot and Lowe’s now stock green materials–say, certified wood harvested from renewable sources–and independent green building stores are opening throughout the country.
Five years ago “you would mention green building and get a lot of blank stares,” says Alex Wilson, executive editor of the monthly newsletter Environmental Building News, a veritable bible for anybody leaning toward green. “Today it’s a known term for an increasingly large portion of the population.”
That “known term” is relative, of course. What “green” means to one person is rarely what it means to another. By most estimates, green living mixes varying amounts of ecological sensitivity, social responsibility and concern for your health. These days builders and remodelers can easily put together a diverse palette of materials and techniques that fulfill all three requirements.
A clue to green’s newfound popularity lies here with the Rosens. This is their second stab at eco-renovation; their first project, redoing a Santa Monica, Calif., condominium in 1992, began as a purely aesthetic endeavor. They had heard talk of “sick buildings,” Rosen says, “of people who lived in mobile homes which were made out of plywood and were very tightly sealed, and these people were getting sick.” So in the spirit of caution they decided to avoid oil-based paints and materials that contained formaldehyde.
Rosen pulls out an article about a 2004 decision by the World Health Organization to upgrade formaldehyde–a chemical found in many household products, such as glues, plywood and furniture foam–from a probable carcinogen to a known one. Once considered junk science, the theory that chemicals in building products tend to “off-gas,” or seep into the indoor environment, and thus into our lungs has gained significant scientific credence.
“It’s the smell of a new carpet,” says Monica Gilchrist of the Green Building Resource Center in Santa Monica. “It’s that new-desk smell–you bring in a new desk, and the panels are put together with a glue that contains formaldehyde. Off-gassing is the continual emission of the chemicals from the product. These chemicals are found in blood levels over time.”
The health component of green building is intertwined with energy efficiency, with trying to live within our environmental means–after all, a dilapidated planet is perhaps the largest health risk imaginable. Like a growing number of folks, the Rosens believe that our indulgent lifestyle is hardly sustainable. As “ozone depletion” and “global warming” enter the mainstream vocabulary, as hybrid cars begin to frequent our freeways, what was once perceived as a leftist rant is becoming a societal priority.
Buildings, it turns out, use twice as much energy as cars do–and roughly 70 percent of all electricity in the United States goes to power buildings, says Robert Watson, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York City. Much of that electricity comes from the consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels.
About a third of the Rosen’s electricity comes from photovoltaic cells installed on the roof, while a separate solar panel heats their hot water.
Systems like these are expensive, but as Rosen sees it, you have to look at the entire equation rather than simply the start-up cost. When the photovoltaic cells produce more electricity than is currently being used, the excess energy feeds back into the grid and the calibrated power meter actually runs backward, reducing the couple’s utility bill. By Al Rosen’s calculation, he and Myra should recoup their investment in about 10 years–and then start saving money.
Just look around the Rosen’s living room for evidence of their commitment to green building. The hardwood flooring is certified cherry, protected with a sealer made from vegetable oil and natural waxes. The blue-and-gray throw rug is woven from natural fibers and dyed with plant pigments. The coffee table replaces formaldehyde-laden plywood with wheat board–literally boards made from wheat straw, held together with formaldehyde-free adhesive–and it’s veneered with cork and painted with non-toxic paint.
The walls beyond are coated with paint that emits no volatile organic compounds, and if the walls were opened you would see that much of the plywood has been replaced with wheat board and other natural alternatives. The typical fiberglass insulation has been replaced with recycled cotton insulation–and cotton is also embedded beneath floors and above ceilings to increase energy efficiency.
Nearly all of the materials in the house are of natural origin instead of petrochemical alternatives–wood, granite, slate and other stone, copper, steel, glass and ceramic, cork, linoleum. Virtually all of the paints, sealers, adhesives and coatings are low in toxicity and are environmentally sensitive. As with many green projects, each new material had to go through a “life cycle analysis” before being used:
Where does the product come from?
How much energy did it take to create it?
What does it do during its lifetime–does it off-gas?
How does it end its life, at the dump or by being recycled?
Most indications suggest that building is going to get greener, and quickly. Industry has already begun to react to the demand for green products at cheaper prices.
“Mainstream building products have become greener in the last decade,” says newsletter editor Wilson. “The paints have much less off-gassing than had been the case. All fiberglass is 20 percent recycled content.” At the same time, he says, small start-up companies have begun producing innovative products “ranging from shingles made with recycled plastic, to decking materials made from a composite of recycled plastic and wood fiber, to more efficient ventilation systems.”
The non-profit U.S. Green Building Council instituted a green certification program in 2000; called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), it certifies building projects using a four-tier rating system. Since its debut, 167 commercial building projects have been LEED certified, which is about 5 percent of the U.S. new construction market, says Rick Fedrizzi, president of the organization. The council plans to unveil a residential LEED certification in mid-2005, which should help the rest of us agree on a definition for “green.”
As science begins to validate the underpinnings of green philosophy, and as trailblazers lead the way toward sustainable engineering that’s aesthetically pleasing and affordable, greenies are no longer just the Birkenstock-clad, granola-munching contingent. They are also real estate investors and retired business owners. They green their homes and their lives not out of a desire to climb a soapbox but rather because, as Al Rosen puts it, “you have a choice, and one way is responsible. Why not do the responsible thing?”
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Step by step to a healthier home
So you want to live in a more ecologically sensitive environment, but you don’t have the wherewithal for a complete remodel? Don’t fret, says Alex Wilson, president of BuildingGreen Inc. (www.buildinggreen.com)–there’s a lot you can do short of opening up the walls. Here are six easy steps you can take to “green” your house without breaking the bank:
Lighten up: Replace incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents. We used to think of fluorescent lights as being cold and flickery–like cheap grocery store lighting–but advances in the technology mean that you likely won’t be able to tell the difference. And you’ll be saving energy.
Fill in the gaps: Address the leakiness of your home. Very often, more than half of winter heat loss and summer heat gain comes from leaks that can easily be sealed. Bring in a weatherization specialist who pressurizes or depressurizes your house and can plug leaks with caulk and gasketing materials.
Be water wise: Install water-efficient shower heads and faucet aerators in bathrooms. This saves both water and energy. Most showers have screw-on fixtures, so you can buy and easily install a high-quality low-flow shower head (about $20) that provides a satisfying aerated stream while using much less water than before. If you want to test the efficiency of your current shower head, position a large bucket to catch the flow, turn on the shower and time it for a minute. If it produces more than 3 gallons of water, a 2- or 2 1/2-gallon shower head would be a good investment–with the savings on your water bill, it’ll usually pay for itself in a matter of months.
Lose the fumes: The next time you paint anything, choose paints that produce no volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Most major paint manufacturers now offer lines that are zero VOC. If a zero-VOC paint doesn’t fit your design scheme, look for one with extremely low levels–less than 20 or 30 grams of VOC per liter.
Don’t waste heat: Tune up your heating and cooling equipment. Replace filters on air conditioners and heat pumps on gas furnaces. If you heat with oil or natural gas, bring in a technician to check the burner efficiency. You can often boost the efficiency of the heating system by 5 percent or 10 percent if it hasn’t been tuned up and cleaned recently.
— Steven Barrie-Anthony
