NYT - The New Trophy Home, Small and Ecological

The New Trophy Home, Small and Ecological

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For the high-profile crowd that turned out to celebrate a new home in Venice, Calif., the attraction wasn’t just the company and the architectural detail. The house boasted the builders’ equivalent of a three-star Michelin rating: a LEED platinum certificate.

The actors John Cusack and Pierce Brosnan, with his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, a journalist, came last fall to see a house that the builders promised would “emit no harmful gases into the atmosphere,” “produce its own energy” and incorporate recycled materials, from concrete to countertops.

Behind the scenes were Tom Schey, a homebuilder in Santa Monica, and his business partner, Kelly Meyer, an environmentalist whose husband, Ron, is the president of Universal Studios. Ms. Meyer said their goal was to show that something energy-conscious “doesn’t have to look as if you got it off the bottom shelf of a health-food store.”

“It doesn’t have to smell like hemp,” she said. ....cont'd

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/us/22leed.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1214132408-sv2mtv0cHJDA8k1xuW42ag&pagewanted=all

Similar thing happening with some new buildings in New York

...would be if there were like a really good guidebook on how to convert your existing home into a more eco/energy friendly one, that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

My main problem is that the information seems to be so....dispersed at the moment. I want one of those orange books from home depot which consists of 300 different things I can do to make my home more energy efficient myself, and what I need to do it, how to do it, with pictures and step by step instructions in one big 'bible' so to speak.

Why is it that beautiful, green, modern home design is only for rich people? What about the rest of us....

Particularly if they're modestly sized. What bothers me are gargantuan homes that claim to be "green."

I saw something on cable about Larry Hagman's 25,000sf home. He claims it's 'green' because he runs it all off of solar power. Solar power is certainly good, but nobody needs to take that much land and materials from the planet just for one home.

but MASSIVE, MASSIVE lawns and water features and pools that waste MASSIVE amounts of water, but they're "green" because the homeowner only uses organic fertilizers or recirculates the water or heats the pool with a solar panel or whatever. :eyes:

That requires homebuilders to incorporate certain features in every home. Here are some of my pet peeves about new homes in my area (I'm in Texas):

- The windows in many new homes suck. Put in good ones.
- Most new homes in my area do not have windows on all four sides of the house, which really screws with cross-ventilation. With big houses placed on small lots, I think they do this for "privacy" reasons, but there are ways around it with good design. I can make it four to five months a year without heat or A/C, but I could go longer if the windows were placed so that I could get a breeze through the house.
- Many new homes in my area have entryways with ridiculously high ceilings (some going all the way to the second floor ceiling) with these hilarious little shelves here and there to put knicky-knacks and so forth. Beyond the issue of finding a way to dust those shelves, why would anyone want to heat and cool non-living areas?
- I think all houses ought to have roof gutters already installed, with at least one of them feeding into a rainwater storage tank -- which placement is considered as an integral part of the house design - some little covered area appended to the roof or something like that.
- Storage space issues. I was in a new McMansion recently, with enough room for a family of a brazillion, but barely enough pantry space for a skinny couple. This IS an energy issue, because if you don't have enough room to store food for the family for a week or two, you waste gasoline running back and forth to the store. There are a bunch of easy and cheap fixes for this problem.

Just my .02.

BTW, welcome to DU! :hi:

What I don't like are double hung. They are least thermally efficient.