The smartest homes are those that tread lightest on the environment. if your house is less than brilliant, don't worry...a few simple steps can help.

By Michelle Roberts Matthews - photography by Charles Punzo

 

Your great-grandparents’ house was green. That little clapboard cottage may have been painted white, but it was, more than likely, environmentally friendly. Energy wasn’t wasted with appliances that were kept humming day and night. The inside wasn’t kept at a constant 68-degree temperature year-round. Your great-grandmother didn’t clean with toxic chemicals. And she probably had a deep porch where the family could cool off with a nice breeze.

 

Everything old is new again. Some of the best ideas for going green, according to local experts, come from simpler times.

 

From renovations of historic homes to new construction, Walcott Adams Verneuille Architects, a 20-year-old firm in Fairhope, Alabama, has seen green living take off in the past couple of years. This time, says architect Mac Walcott, it seems to be an idea whose time has come, rather than a passing fad. “This gradual approach is real, and I’m excited about it,” he says.

 

The interest in environmentally friendly design and construction has gotten so strong along the Gulf Coast that in April, Mobile hosted the first annual GreenCoast conference, bringing some 600 people to check out 70 booths and hear 25 speakers. Organizers Wendy Allen and Charlene Lee of Smart Coast say the Green Building Council conference will rotate among host cities in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida in future years.

 

According to Wendy, the GreenCoast conference came about as a way to “protect our quality of life” on the Coast. “Green building will do that,” she says.

Allison Anderson of Unabridged Architecture in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, sees green building as a solution to the problems Americans are facing today. “As people, we have not asked for pollution, long commutes, or higher gas prices,” Allison says. “But what we have asked for has resulted in things we don’t really want. We have to rethink things like density, the size of houses, and where we put them.”

 

Learning from the Past
Allison, whose firm specializes in designing sustainable structures for civic organizations and institutions and who lives in a green home she designed, says her firm is “totally excited about new technology like low-VOC products and solar panels, but we don’t forget that a lot of the best ideas are rooted in the past and in the way people built in this area.”

 

Edward Jon Cazayoux, a retired professor of architecture whose company, EnvironMental Design, specializes in historic preservation and sustainable design in new buildings, grew up in the second oldest parish in Louisiana, surrounded by old homes that he took for granted at the time. Today, he considers those structures “national treasures.”

 

Edward, who lives north of Breaux Bridge near Lafayette, has done extensive research into the way the French adapted their native architecture to the Gulf Coast climate, incorporating porches, windows for ventilation, and building on piers to make themselves more comfortable in our harsh, humid climate.

“There’s a lot to be learned from what was done before the Industrial Revolution,” he says. In his renovation work, Edward has seen evidence of the use of salvaged materials in the mid-19th century.

 

Saving an old house, after all, is the ultimate form of recycling. One of Walcott Adams Verneuille’s clients wanted to save an 1890s cottage in Daphne, Alabama, that was literally leaning over. They didn’t expand the home’s tiny footprint; instead, they maintained its integrity while making it functional and beautiful. Once they started stripping off the layers of paint, they loved the look of more than a hundred years’ worth of colors on the walls, so they sealed the walls as they were.

 

“Sometimes renovating is an exercise in restraint,” Mac says.

 

Building for the Future
Practicing restraint is key to green living, Allison says. “The first step is making the smallest house possible. If you’re not using a room every day, you have too much house.”

 

Allison, her architect husband, John, and their three children moved into their home a block from the beach in Bay St. Louis just a month before Hurricane Katrina hit, and it was one of the few surviving structures in the downtown area. “Permanence and durability of a structure are big factors in sustainability,” she says.

 

Though they rarely do residential design, the Andersons consider their home “a demonstration house to illustrate some of the principles of green building.” Their house is designed in a modern style, with an inverted “butterfly roof” that allows rainwater to drain off the front into a rain garden and off the back into a cistern for irrigation. It has an 80-percent-recycled-content metal roof and a grass roof and was built using recycled contents, reclaimed material, locally harvested wood, and rapidly renewable resources such as bamboo and cork floors.

 

The Andersons’ latest addition is solar panels, which they say will eventually reduce their electrical usage by 50 percent.

 

One of Walcott Adams Verneuille’s clients is “pushing the envelope” with their home being built in Rosemary Beach, Florida, that takes building green to new heights. Built on a narrow, 35-foot-wide lot, the shotgun-style home is built with insulated concrete forms that aren’t often seen along the Gulf Coast. The homeowners are aiming for platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Homes certification, and if it is awarded, the home will be one of the first on the Gulf Coast to achieve that level of excellence in green building.

 

Also in the works for the firm are two homes designed to be “green from the ground up” in the unusual conservation community of Dauerwalden in northern Baldwin County. The two homes will be vastly different—one will look “like Grandmas’s house,” Mac Walcott says, and the other will be edgier—but both will showcase the best of eco-friendly architecture and construction, from funneling breezes via a “thermal chimney” effect to reusing “graywater” from sinks and showers, to daylighting.

 

Architect Cazayoux spent four years building his home, which he designed to be “very energy efficient.” To heat and cool the 3,200-square-foot house, he says, costs only about $80 a month. Not only is he being green; he’s saving lots of green, as well. Saving the earth can also save money.

 

• House smart: green your home
• Park place: garage makeover
• Oasis at home: bathrooms
• light up your life
• Now you're cooking: kitchens
• Home for the holidays: christmas decorations
• Open Invitation: Outdoor rooms

• Walcott Adams Verneuille Architects
• Unabridged Architecture
• EnvironMental Design

Bright Ideas

Picked by Roslyn Lowe

The trend toward sustainable design is going slowly as we’re still very much attached to the oil-based economy. But there is hope, especially with post-Katrina awareness. The way forward is a little unclear. However, solar energy hangs on the tongue of many architects, lighting designers, and interior designers, and has become a comfortable beacon of hope for the future…despite the Federal Government’s cutting the tax break for homeowners who install solar panels.

 

One thing the government can’t tax—yet—is that golden orb in the sky, the sun. Daylighting has been used for years—actually, centuries—and is a totally non-electric way to light up an interior space. Architects and lighting designers have developed crafty ways to bring natural light into the unlikeliest of places. One company called Solatube uses mirrors and light tunnels to stream sunny delights right into the middle of a home! (www.solatube.com)

 

So long-term it’s cost-effective, LED lighting technology gets better every month…like computers. Actually, it is a computer. LEDs are most commonly used in applications where you don’t see the light source like cove lighting above a row of kitchen cabinets or within a bookcase to highlight your favorite obect d’art.

 

Since LEDs last for 20 years, they are incredibly sustainable. They don’t generate much heat so you’re not competing with the air conditioning. You’re also not burning up electricity because LEDs  use only15 percent of electricity for the same amount of light given off from traditional sources.

 

The necessary steps in lifestyle changes are definitely on the horizon, even if they are baby steps. Words like “recycling,” “organic,” and “energy efficient” are more than commonplace. Once you get the hang of it, going green doesn’t have to be mean, deprived, or boring!

Greening your home

Courtesy of Catherine Hall-Pate and Rebecca Bryant of Walcott Adams Verneille Architects

 

Simple suggestions to help improve your green IQ.

 

1 - Use compact fluorescent light bulbs.

2 - Use trees or trellises to shade southern and western windows.

3 - Seal air leaks around doors and windows.

4 - Adjust your thermostat and use ceiling fans to circulate air.

5 - Open windows when humidity and temperature are pleasant.

6 - Install flow-restricting aerators on faucets and water-conserving showerheads

7 - Use low or no-VOC paints, sealants, caulks, and adhesives.

8 - Reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost.

9 - Use native landscaping, rather than thirsty lawns.

10 - Buy EnergyStar and Weather Wise appliances.