Greening your home
by Joseph SantangeloTruro resident Jeffrey Rogers, his wife and two sons live in the first top-rated environmentally sustainable house in Massachusetts.
Drawing warmth from the earth through a geothermal heat pump and generating photovoltaic electricity from sunlight, the home’s net energy use for the year is nearly zero. It also makes use of solar hot water, passive solar sun tempering and solar tube natural light, along with high-efficiency, low-voltage LED (light-emitting semiconductor diode) fixtures and Icynene spray foam insulation to fill voids and crevices.
His 2,100-square-foot home, built in 2006 using renewable and durable materials, has achieved the LEED-H Platinum certification – the highest possible ranking in the nationwide Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system for homes. It was the first platinum home in Massachusetts and only the eighth in the nation. Lesser rankings are gold, silver and basic certified. The National Association of Home Builders’ green building program uses a similar gold, silver and bronze scale.
While Rogers lives in the ultimate green home, many of the systems and features he used are adaptable to retrofitting or remodeling existing homes throughout Southeastern Massachusetts.
“Most solar panel systems get installed on existing homes,” Rogers said. “The same is true of solar hot water systems. Geothermal is easy enough to do if you have a well on site, as are sun tunnels and special high energy-efficiency windows.”
Whether a project involves building from the ground up, remodeling or just making a home tighter, green products and construction methods are attracting interest among consumers, designers and builders. Rising energy costs, along with water conservation and global warming concerns, are bringing green building to many homeowners’ minds.
Green homes use less energy, water and natural resources, create less waste and are healthier for occupants.
Green building systems and materials are found increasingly throughout the construction industry. Frequently, sustainable design, materials and products can be found not only in traditional single family homes but also in:
• modular homes such as Epoch Homes, built with materials pre-assembled at a Pembroke, N.H., factory and completed by independent local contractors such as The Building Company in Brewster;
• planned communities like The Pinehills in Plymouth, which set aside 70 percent of its land as open space, and employs high performance wastewater treatment and reuses treated wastewater for irrigation;
• other residential projects, including a proposed Provincetown police academy dormitory and a proposed solar photovoltaic system at the nonprofit Champ Homes in Hyannis;
• offices, such as the new International Fund for Animal Welfare headquarters in Yarmouth; and
• schools, including the new Cape Cod Community College science and technology center in Barnstable.
A growing green trend
Lynn Mason-Small, marketing director at Mid-Cape Home Centers, notes, “There was some interest in solar energy in the early 1980s, but that fizzled out. There is some trepidation from the industry that it may fizzle out again, but we don’t see that happening at all.”
With consumers consistently paying $3 a gallon for heating oil, the current focus on energy conservation and environmental design seems to be here to stay. The company has made a commitment to becoming a resource for builders, architects, landscapers and homeowners looking for information on green building products. Together with local organizations, it has held focus groups and now is launching a green building educational series open to the public.
Mid-Cape Home Centers also offers a complete line of green building products at its 11 stores and on its Web site.
“Consumers are driving the green effort with their increasing need to save money on their homes,” she said. “People are remodeling their homes, they are adding energy-efficient windows, and they want their homes to be energy-efficient. Part of it is social consciousness and concern about the environment. But there is not a real authoritative source for information.”
Mid-Cape Home Centers also partnered last summer with the Cape Light Compact to encourage consumers to upgrade old dehumidifiers and air-conditioners with new energy-saving models by offering a credit toward the purchase price.
Like most home stores and appliance dealers throughout New England, Mid-Cape Home Centers promotes a full line of energy-efficient Energy Star appliances.
New building methods
Old technology such as building insulation is becoming more efficient. Robert Evans, with partner Alison Alessi at A+E Architects in Brewster, designs projects using hard foam insulation that covers every inch of building exteriors rather than the traditional fiberglass batt insulation between wood studs.
“As far as construction material,” Evans said, “one of the big things is getting an airtight envelope around the house. Instead of 2-by-6 studs, we use 2-by-4s to save wood and add rigid insulation on the outside of the sheathing and then put on cedar siding.”
Evans added, “With a tighter house, what we recommend to people is an energy-retriever ventilation system to circulate air throughout the house. On a new house those types of detail are easier to do.”
Nevertheless, he said, it is possible to incorporate green features into existing structures. About 80 percent of his work involves renovation and additions rather than new construction.
The firm is planning to develop a house that combines both solar and wind energy, using solar panels and a wind turbine. As long as a building lot includes enough area in case the turbine should blow down in a storm, he said, wind turbines are feasible for individual homes. “The Cape is a good place for a hybrid system using solar and wind. We’re not in the Southwest with sun everyday, but we have an abundance of wind.”
So far, Evans noted, residential recycling of so-called greywater from sinks, tubs, washers and showers for use on lawns and gardens is frowned upon under the Massachusetts plumbing code, but exceptions have been granted.
Payback periods
Depending on what systems are included, green construction can cost roughly the same as, or up to as much as 20 percent higher than, conventional construction. With manufacturers’ rebates and government tax incentives, solar energy systems could pay for themselves in six years or less.
If homeowners plan on moving within that time frame, the project still could be cost-effective by providing more comfortable living in the short term and a more desirable house for future owners over the longer term.
Some green products have no payback at all, but are an investment in social responsibility. That includes using wood flooring certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as coming from a sustainably harvested forest rather than a clear-cut forest.
Using paints with few volatile organic compounds also have no payback period, but they may provide intangible benefits such as a healthier environment for home occupants.
Some green energy conservation building practices cost virtually nothing, such as caulking joints where walls meet floor decks and where floor joists sit on foundations to prevent air intake.
How green to make your home? It often comes down to a personal lifestyle decision.
For Jeff Rogers it became a commitment. He said, “Because I was an environmental consultant, coming home to run a family business, I started to green my own life. It became a passion, I guess, and then turned into a business opportunity. It just worked out that way. I decided to mesh my environmental knowledge and knowledge of the building industry to work with contractors so they have the best of both worlds.”
When he was planning his platinum rated home in Truro, Rogers found that green products were not readily available. So he founded New England Green Building, a division of his family’s Conwell ACE Hardware and Lumber in Provincetown that he now manages. New England Green Building also has partnered with New England Lumber to serve the Boston metro area. In addition, New England Green Building partnered with Cape Light Compact for a light bulb exchange program. Rogers is certified as a LEED Accredited Professional to advise consumers on green building products and also is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Hampshire at Durham in natural resources and earth system science.
“Building the home was a great experience and we’re very happy with the house. It is probably the most comfortable house we have lived in. When we had two windstorms recently, we could barely hear them. Wind was not coming in around the windows.”
“I would not expect everyone to do all the things we did, but they are able to pick and choose their battles,” Rogers said.
Published in Cape Business Health & Wealth March/April 2008
Joseph Santangelo Joseph Santangelo has been a statehouse bureau chief, a corporate executive and currently works for the Connecticut Legislature. 
