Energy Efficiency

Someone said to me at a luncheon last August that if the media talked long enough about a housing bubble, there would be one.

Sometimes, we can be a force for good, however, and one example of that is the effort we've put into talking about "green" or sustainable building over the last decade or so.

It seems that green is taking off, or at least being given more recognition -- most recently at an exhibit, "The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design" at the National Building Museum in Washington.

The press release for the exhibit, which runs till June of next year, began, "If Mr. Blandings were building his dream house today, it would be green -- in the environmental sense, that is."

While few completely green houses are yet being produced, much of what is being built has sustainable features -- energy efficiency and improved indoor air quality are the most common.

"The potential ecological benefits that are possible through the advances in sustainability tracked in [the exhibit] are significant in a land like ours, where more than a million single family homes may go up in a given year, and the typical size of a new suburban home far exceeds that of previous generations," said Donald Albrecht, the lead curator of the building museum's exhibition.

So what is green, exactly?

There are five principles of sustainability, as identified by green advocates. They are: optimizing use of the sun, improving indoor air quality, using the land responsibly, creating high performance and moisture-resistant houses and wisely using the Earth's natural resources.

The principle I rarely see examples of is responsible land use. Houses are getting larger, and although there is a movement back to cities and older suburbs, most of the development continues far from the urban core.

Every year, sprawl continues to consume one million acres. So the suggestion that buying a smaller, more compact house on a lot near work, public transportation and community services doesn't seem to yet have many adherents. Buying in a neighborhood where houses are clustered together flies in the face of one and two-acre zoning requirements in many suburban communities.

How many of your neighbors use safer organic pesticides or forgo watering the lawn?

It will take time to change. Changing learned behavior is tough, and after 50 years of suburbanization with few rules and little concern for the environment, it is tough to change the mindset.

That's because, I assume, accommodating change requires work, and that goes against the prevailing demand for low-or-no-maintenance life.

It would be hypocritical of me to say that I consciously adhere to the five principles of sustainability.

I do refuse to water the lawn, and have been planting drought-resistant grass everywhere I can, reseeding right before a rainy period. When I do water, I take what I need from a rain barrel that is designed to discourage mosquito breeding, owing to my concern about West Nile virus.

I do live in a smaller house than my last one, and have resisted emulating my neighbors efforts to add on to theirs. That means that I've learned to make better use of the space I have. A smaller house means less maintenance, too, and offers greater control.

Thanks to a generous rebate program from the state and the tax credit program approved as part of the federal Energy Act of 2005, my wife and I are designing a solar powered electrical system that will be tied into the utility company grid.

The quality of the indoor air is higher than in our last house, thanks to a whole-house air cleaner. The discovery that my wife has chemical allergies means that we avoid certain products, using only low-VOC paints and adhesives.

The cardboard boxes that held the cabinets for the kitchen remodel at our old house were so full of formaldehyde that they had to be piled in the basement and covered with canvas tarps until we could get the kitchen built.

One thing we did recently is replaced a 10-year-old window air conditioning unit we use in our master bedroom to compensate for the failure of our central air conditioning system to cool the room.

It was an EnergyStar rated unit, and much more efficient than our older one. Compared with a 1990 model, for example, an EnergyStar rated refrigerator would save enough electricity to light a house for 4 1/2 months.

There are other "green" things you can do that simply qualify as being sensible. One is to repair leaky fixtures, since a single drop from a leaky faucet can waste as many as 10 gallons of water a week. The same goes for running toilets, although that can waste a lot more water.

Another: Install low-flow showerheads, faucets and toilets. Low-flow faucets reduce water consumption and the cost of heating water by as much as 50 percent. Using a low-flush toilet can save 2.1 trillion gallons of water and $11.3 million nationwide every day.

That's if you can get a low-flow toilet to work. My advice: Look for a dual-flush model that provides you with flushing options -- one that uses less than a gallon for light duty.

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