Sunlight and Clay Make for ‘Greenest’ Home

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RISMEDIA, March 27, 2008-(MCT)-When some couples plan their dream home, they fantasize about Olympic-size swimming pools and walk-in closets. Scott and Jackie Wood fantasized about sunlight.

Long before buzzwords such as “sustainable design” and “green building” came to prominence, the couple dreamed of a home situated to take in the largest possible amount of sunlight, built using natural resources.

“We were into green building probably 30 years ago. We talked about it _ what we’d do if we built our own green home. We never thought we could afford it,” said Jackie Wood.

Thirty years later, to her boundless excitement, Wood is sitting in the home she and her husband used to talk about.

Their Menlo Park, California house, more than a year in the making, is indeed filled with sunlight. At any given time of day, the countless skylights and well-placed windows cast long, dramatic blades of light down rose- and orange-tinted walls, which are made of natural clay and insulated to keep the house warm on cold days without the use of a heater.

The light turns the walls to shades of caramel and illuminates the building’s boldest feature: a curved ceiling with beams that overhang the kitchen, living room, dining room and hallway like the upside-down bow of a tall ship, sailing west.

“I take pictures of the walls as the day goes by and e-mail them to the architect,” said Jackie Wood, referring to architect Polly Osborne. Wood and her husband, a physician, are rounding out their first year in the house and have come to notice how even the quality of the light changes as the seasons evolve.

The wide, wood-lined hallway also gives the couple a tranquil place to practice tai chi, a meditative Chinese martial art, in the mornings. They even nicknamed their home the “Taiji” house, reflecting the traditional spelling.

Tyler Hammer, executive director of Sustainable San Mateo County, praised the design of the “Taiji” house and the materials it uses.

“If you just put some thought into the way you’re going to orient the building, how you design the windows and walls, you can use the environment to do a lot of the heating and cooling for you,” Hammer said.

Many of the house’s dominant features are indeed very practical. A narrow lot required that the building be tapered like a triangle, pointing into a garden that surrounds the home on three sides and giving maximum light through floor-to-ceiling windows.

Cross-ventilation catches the prevailing winds, keeping the house cool in summer while heat rises and dissipates. Radiant heating-a series of copper coils under an unembellished concrete floor-keeps every room at a consistent temperature without use of a dusty furnace or dirty fireplace. The solar panels on the garage offset some of the couple’s energy costs.

The Woods even spent time and money on details such as custom bamboo cabinets and other certified sustainably harvested woods, including some reclaimed from the previous home, which they dismantled to make room for theirs. The kitchen countertop is made of compressed quartz rather than a slab of marble dug out of the earth.

“It’s what we call a no-brainer. If you can use materials that minimize how much damage you do to the Earth, that is more beneficial,” said Wood. The “green” design and fixtures added to the cost of the home, but not substantially, she said.

She is quick to add that incorporating even a handful of green details, rather than a total overhaul, is still an important way to help the planet by cutting energy costs if possible.

“Some people do much more outrageous things-it’s where you sit in the spectrum. Any small thing someone does is just as valid as doing everything,” said Wood.

© 2008, San Mateo County Times (San Mateo, Calif.).
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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