Save those old blue jeans. Turns out they can be useful house warmers.
Whidbey Watershed Stewards presents the Green Home Tour in a new format and with new earth-friendly ideas to explore. Participants can join the tour of seven different green-built structures from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 2 at five South Whidbey locations.
Owners and building experts will weigh in on the tour and talk about low-impact development techniques, energy-saving building methods and materials, water conservation and how to retrofit for solar panels.
“We want to encourage people to see how these ecological practices work, and adapt them to their own situations,” said event chairwoman Nancy Stiefel Boyle.
“Each home offers a different way to think about use of precious resources like land and water. This is important as our population expands,” she added.
The tour has been dormant for several years, and in that time craftsmen have been busy building green. This year, there are a variety of homes on the tour, from a working farmstead in Glendale to a new development in Langley, to straw-bale structures in a co-housing community, to another with a unique approach for single-family living. Throughout these houses, there is an emphasis on low-impact development, energy-saving heating methods and landscapes that help manage on-site water and stormwater.
When the stewards began the Green Home Tour nine years ago, builders were new to the concepts for building green.
“Eco-building techniques were fairly new then, and people flocked to see straw-bale homes, some with solar arrays or living roofs,” event organizer Rene Neff said.
“We used Island Transit buses to keep a low-carbon footprint. It was exciting, and we learned a lot.”
Times have changed, and builders such as Dan Neumeyer ofJADE Craftsman Builders, who is a leader in the island green-building business, is happy to show the fruits of his eco-friendly labor.
“We always try to incorporate green practices in all our buildings,” Neumeyer said.
“That means minimizing waste, creating a well-sealed home and extra insulation for efficiency, using natural materials and using low toxic, or low volatile organic compounds for all paint and plywood,” he said.
Several JADE Craftsman homes are on the tour, including the common house at Maxwelton Creek with its graceful swooping roof covering a turret. The roof cone is fitted with cement tile and recycled rubber “slate” shingles custom fit for the curve of the turret’s top.
Other green-building systems used on the home include insulated concrete forms, structural insulated panels, strawbale walls and solar panels both for grid-tied electricity and heating water for radiant in-floor heat and domestic hot water.
Another of the JADE-built homes on the tour is at Dow Farm, and includes cedar board and batten on the outside, red alder wood that was cleared from the site and used for flooring and trim, and salvaged old-growth Douglas fir used for the house’s beams. Many of the fixtures, doors and cabinets were salvaged from earlier use, such as a porcelain claw-foot bathtub. Kitchen countertops are made from recycled cellulose fiber, and radiant floor heat provides cost-effective comfort along with the cotton batt insulation that was made from recycled blue jeans.
Neumeyer said that building green doesn’t need to cost a lot.
“There are a variety of green practices that improve the healthiness and energy efficiency of any home,” he said.
Tickets for the tour are $20 each, $10 for students and youths, and are available at the BookBay and Moonraker shops, or at www.brownpapertickets.com. Visit www.whidbeywatersheds.org for more information.
Carpools are strongly encouraged due to limited parking at some locations. There may be some walking to get to a house, rough ground to traverse and shoe removal at some locations. Sign up at www.RideShareOnline.com and qualify for a prize.
