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 Photo by Erin Dreistadt
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Home&Garden green builders corner winter 07
How a young couple built a green home on a tight budget. by Erin Dreistadt
My husband, Jason, and I shared project-management duties, which helpedfulfill another goal of our natural lifestyle—mom at home with our baby. I could do the paperwork, permits and bookkeeping from home, as well as shop online for fixtures, appliances and materials. Although I wasn’t working a “traditional” job, my efforts would result in 33-percent equity in our home by the end of the first year. Sure, it wasn’t all roses. I found myself trying to dig a trench with a pickax while our baby napped in the car next to me. Truly, the hardest part was balancing our commitment to building a sustainable, healthy, low-impact building with our tight budget. Jason has his own landscaping business (Native Edge Associates Inc.), so he could oversee construction during the slow winter season. He also had some knowledge about building from a construction site he’d worked on a few years back, but basically he’s just the kind of guy who can figure out anything. We endlessly schemed up all sorts of possibilities of what and how to build. We thought of straw-bale circles with rooftop gardens and earth-ship greenhouses, but we quickly found out the difficulty in obtaining a loan for “alternative building.” So we revised our plan, which ended up being traditional stick-frame construction using wood from downed dead trees (available at most lumber suppliers upon request). To our delight, the bank approved this plan with the condition that we complete construction in one year. Jason drew and redrew our design until we finally came up with a modest 1,200-square-foot home that relied on passive solar. For easy accessibility, we bought land close to where we were living in the foothills at 9,000 feet. It was a small, 1-acre lot with lots of southern sun, but it was affordable because much of the land was on a north slope that made it tricky to fashion a building site and find room for the septic system. The least disruptive and most economical approach was to choose a small foundation and build upward. The final house ended up being 2.5 stories high, with cathedral ceilings, a large, half-walled loft, and an entire wall of south-facing windows that maximize passive-solar-heat retention and the mountain views. In fact, every room in the house has south-facing windows, and the stone floors further increase the home’s thermal absorbency. Our beautiful, sunny home is so bunkered and strong we wouldn’t even know the ferocious wind was blowing if it weren’t for the swaying trees outside every window. (It’s a wonderful feeling to be in a warm, sunny house during a cold, windy winter!) On the exterior, we used Hardiplank concrete siding, which is long lasting, partially recycled and fireproof, and assists the passive-solar thermal absorbency. Due to the slope, the house is partially built into the earth, which provides added insulation and a summer cooling effect. Our beautiful native and xeric garden, with a large, unique rock outcropping, surrounds the home’s south side. Good Vibrations Since we built our home as green as possible, it feels especially good to live in it. I found out you don’t have to have a lot of money to build green, but you do have to do a lot of research. The more research I did, the more affordable green options I discovered. I read every magazine about homes and green building I could find. These magazines were full of all the little details I needed, including brand names and the phone numbers and addresses of green product manufacturers. I also compiled a notebook that became my bible of information to help us weigh decisions; in order to go for the better product here, we had to settle there. And believe me, we considered every detail to remain true to our beliefs in sustainability and healthy living, while staying within our budget. For example, we chose radiant-floor heat for its efficiency and health benefits, especially in our dry climate where forced-air heat can be brutal. But when it came to insulation, we couldn’t afford cotton or Airkrete foam insulation, and cellulose wouldn’t deliver the efficiency we needed in such a hostile climate. So we chose non-formaldehyde fiberglass with relatively few airborne particles. And, without forced-air heat, there aren’t any ducts for these to escape. While building our house, we took down as few aspen trees as possible, which we peeled by hand (another one of my projects) and used for inside trim and a stair railing. We also used local pine wood for the rest of the trim work and the kitchen cabinets. We accepted that we had to use drywall, but painted with low-VOC paint. We used recycled pop-bottle carpeting and recycled carpet padding with nontoxic glue. We chose concrete countertops with inlaid agate, and our kitchen island is a scrap piece of flagstone that Jason ground down with a diamond blade. We sealed all wood with Safecoat low-VOC finish, and used water-based sealers on the stone floors and countertops. We also used nontoxic adhesive for all of the framing, chose fluorescent or halogen light bulbs for all of the lighting and bought only Energy Star® appliances. It was hard work, but our home proves that regular people with modest incomes can build a sustainable, healthy, green home. The only things needed are information and a firm commitment to building green. What we ended up with is more of a dream-come-true than I ever imagined. We have a beautiful piece of land with an amazing house that we built with a conscious decision to respect the Earth. Erin Dreistadt is a freelance writer and mother of two. Her practical experience in green building quickly turned into a passion, and she and her husband, Jason Griffith, hope to do a similar project again someday. Jason co-owns Native Edge Associates Inc. of Boulder, a sustainable landscaping business and a member of the Boulder Green Building Guild.
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