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EcoHouse Project
Friday, April 27, 2007
by Jim Daniels
Land Use Seminar Coming!
Our team is currently working on putting together seminars about land use in a four county region in Southern Indiana. The Counties include Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick, and Gibson. We will be showing some historical data in a GIS format and looking to determine trends from that data. We can then extrapolate that data to the next twenty to thirty years and get a feel what the future might hold should those same trends continue.
Good, bad, or ugly. There may be differing opinions. One thing we would like to do is get a feeling for what attendees would like the future to look like and think through what kinds of things need to occur to help that along.
Do we want to change or create new ordinances? Adjust zoning? Do nothing? We are all stakeholders in the future. We owe it to ourselves and to posterity to participate in inventing the future.
The fifth in the series will be in Gibson County on Thursday, February 10th. Time is from 6:00 to 8:30. If you are interested contact me at jdaniels@vanderburghgov.org, or call 812-436-7801. Put Gibson workshop in the subject line.
Eco House complete and sold.
For our first project, we settled on a new home built to demonstrate the economic and ecologic advantages of building efficiently, healthfully, and safely. We had originally planned to raise the money and then build the home ourselves, but Patricia Bunner-Colbert, a Sustainable Evansville Board Member suggested getting the high school building trades students to build it! Perfect! The process could also be an educational tool.
We were able to convince them to take the risk. And even if nobody toured the house, hundreds of students and their instructors have already been touched by the challenge. What we challenged the students to do was this: build a marketable home that fits into its neighborhood and uses less than half the energy of a normal home, that incorporates a high percentage of recycled materials, that uses resources wisely, that has good indoor air quality, and that has a landscape plan that requires less water and pesticides. Later in the process, we also gave them the challenge of making it disaster resistant.
The results of their efforts astound visitors. The exterior of the home is meant to blend gracefully into the neighborhood. The exterior is a dramatically open plan with soaring ceilings and a beautiful view of a pond with the woods of the Pigeon Creek beyond. Jaws drop when I tell them that a state testing agency study predicts that the 2300-square-foot home will cost $253 to heat and cool FOR THE YEAR. Visitors always frown and say, "you mean for a month." "No," I repeat slowly, "F o r t h e y e a r." Then I tell them that everything they walk on in the house, including the deck out back, is made of recycled material. Then I tell them that this is the first home in the nation to be certified disaster resistant by the Institute for Business and Home Safety. Then I point out the wet-blown cellulose insulation. Then I talk about the ground-source heat pump. Then we play with the operable ventilating skylights. Then they notice that the lights in the bathrooms are sensor-controlled fluorescents.
And it goes on and on. But what really floors them is that all of
this was designed and built by high school students and all the
technology and materials are locally available. Then the inevitable
question; "how much more does it cost?"
"About 5 to 10 percent more," I say.
Then the second inevitable question, "why aren't all houses built this
way."
"Indeed," I answer. "Why aren't all houses built this way?"
Sustainability is not a frightening thing, unsustainability is. Everybody wins in a sustainable community. EcoHouse is a small step in the process toward that path. Stay tuned!
Or, better yet, join us on that path and help us learn our way to a more sustainable future for the Evansville area.