Vermont Environmental Consortium

June 19, 2007
Green Buildings Benefit People As Well As Environment
by
Daniel Hecht

Just a regular morning in an unusual era. Our friend Ward calls to see if we’d like to look at a house he recently designed and built. Just over to Riverton, not too far for a short weekend jaunt.

An architect working out of Montpelier, Ward Joyce is slim, dark haired, with an edgy persona that stems from his sharp appreciation for ideas – especially those that apply to his trade. While it’s not unusual for an architect/developer to build a spec house, Ward’s is special because it reflects changing trends in architectural design. A house is the envelope that encompasses and shapes our living habits; a green building thus helps us to broadly and systematically reduce our environmental impacts.

Ward and I and four assorted kids pile into his van. As he drives and tells me about the house, I think back to earlier periods of environmentally-conscious architecture.

Hmm. First came concern for heating costs, in the 1970s. The gracious, high ceilings of Vermont’s Victorian-era houses squandered heat, so we retrofitted by dropping ceilings. This kept floors warmer, but aesthetics took a hard hit: It ruined the proportion of rooms and often cut off the tops of windows. Then there were those heavily-insulated window shades that kept out cold. They also kept out daylight; many of my environmentalist friends lived in tomb-like twilight.

In the 1990s, the “green” house evolved: double-glazed windows and super-sealed doors held in heat, artificial materials helped save forests, dedicated air inlets kept woodstoves from sucking in cold air. Commercial buildings were built with non-opening windows, minimizing loss of heat or AC-cooled air.

But they were so Tupperware tight that your ears popped when the front door opened or closed. Plastic surfaces, limited natural light, stagnant air, that hushed, pressurized feel: no wonder sick building syndrome first occurred around then.

So I went to look at Ward’s house with some trepidation. I’d have to say something nice, even if I hated it.

Fortunately, times have changed. We have smarter technologies, and we now know that interiors have psychological and physiological effects on their occupants. Ward’s spec house is one of a new generation of green buildings, designed to nurture our humanity, not suppress it, and to connect us with the natural environment they’re helping to preserve, not isolate us from it.

Ward’s house is lovely to look at, outside and in. It invites the outdoors inside with a south-facing wall made mostly of (opening!) windows – triple glazed to retain warmth while maximizing solar heat gain.

No low ceilings. The main room peaks at over twenty feet, but warmth stays at living level due to an in-floor radiant heating system. Heat that does rise from floor or woodstove is wafted back down by strategically-placed ceiling fans.

Our bodies prefer fresh air, not re-breathed smog, and our brains need it, too. Studies show our moods are more positive, our thinking more acute, when air moves and has varied temperature. Cheeses may prefer Tupperware, but upright naked apes benefit from sensory stimulus.

So Ward designed a ventilation system that brings in outside air via ducts that exchange heat with outgoing air; pre-warmed, the fresh air requires less energy to heat. Simple technology allows occupants to control air circulation, cycling it at varied times and volumes, for a house that will always feel fresh and welcoming.

Efficient heating despite high ceilings relies on concrete floors imbedded with hot water pipes. The concrete is left exposed to best transmit heat, but it’s not the grey, soulless stuff of garage floors. Dyed in gentle, mottled colors, glazed with a water-based finish, these floors resemble lustrous marble. Hot water for both heating and domestic use is produced by one tiny, super-efficient, on-demand propane unit.

Ward selected construction materials to limit environmental impact. But they’re not plastic; this house is full of richly-textured, natural materials. The woodstove’s massive hearthstone is a scrap slab of Barre granite. The hardwood bar-top is from a butternut tree that had died a natural death, not one cut for this purpose. Kitchen counters are concrete, dyed black and polished to a high shine reminiscent of the best black marble.

Surprisingly, efficiency measures added little to construction cost. Two-by-eight wall framing versus 2 X 6, 16-inch deep roof trusses versus conventional 12-inch, thicker insulation, radiant heat floors, triple glazed windows, heat exchangers: the added cost totaled less than $27,000. Using 50% of a conventional house’s energy, these measures are a bargain that’ll be appreciated a few years down the road.

Green architecture is a strong and growing segment of Vermont’s environmental economy. Contractors have eagerly embraced the new skills, materials, and technologies required to build green. And, from large firms like TruexCullins and William MacLay to sole proprietors like Ward Joyce, more and more architects are designing spaces that not only reduce environmental impact but refresh our minds and spirits as we occupy them.

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For more information on Vermont’s burgeoning green building movement, visit Vermont Green Building Network’s superb site at www.vgbn.org.

Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

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