Lexington, KY - Green options permeate practically every element of day-to-day life - from cleaning supplies to utilities, gardening to remodeling, transportation to grocery shopping, from drinking water to eating a peach.
Of course, with most over-saturations come some drawbacks - as Stefan Rumancik of Designer Builders mentions in this feature, the price on many green materials is overly inflated due to their current popularity; companies are taking a sentiment that should probably be reserved as good common sense, and capitalizing on it left and right.
While it can be difficult to decipher which shade of green any given company's motive truly is, the good news is that the green trend has undoubtedly imparted a higher level of environmental consciousness to every day decision-making for millions of consumers across the world.
The other good news is that there is no shortage of resources, both locally and nationally, to turn to for tips on how to lessen your ecological footprint - no matter how lofty your intentions (or your budget).
And even more good news: the government will pay you to lessen that footprint - Kentucky offers a 30 percent income tax credit for individuals and businesses for most energy-efficient renovations, residential or commercial, through Jan. 1, 2016.
Though transportation often takes the heat as the leader of mass consumption of nonrenewable energy, as Casey Mather and Michael Hughes of CSC Design Studio point out, buildings actually account for more energy consumption than any other sector. With that in mind, we turned to local experts in sustainable building and construction to provide some advice on ways to incorporate more environmentally responsible practices at home, whether it's building a new house or addition, or remodeling or retro-fitting your current dwelling.
These experts' perspectives on environmental responsibility and sustainable design go much deeper than the current green trend, and their tips range from the simple and every day (like opening your windows) to the ambitious (installing photovoltaic solar panels to move your home toward net-zero energy).
Given the complexity of the topic of sustainability, in all its facets, what follows on the next five pages is a general overview and starting point for anyone interested in making eco-friendly changes at home (we know you want to save Mother Earth, but the financial incentives from Uncle Sam certainly don't hurt).
Lexington is home to many additional experts on going green, and we encourage you to peruse the Bluegrass Green Guide at bluegrassgreenworks.org to explore further options.
Prajna Design & Construction
Prajna Design & Construction was formed as a partnership between David Wittmer and Garry Murphy after both graduated from the UK College of Architecture in the 1980s. Since the beginning, the firm has focused on the intuitiveness of design, honing in on the marriage of sensibility and sustainability. Though the word "green" wasn't thrown around in the '80s, Prajna has been incorporating green practices into their work long before it became trendy, from utilizing reclaimed wood and maximizing natural light, to focusing on quality craftsmanship and simplifying.
Named after an ancient Sanskrit word meaning intuition, Prajna's studio is located in a grist mill in Troy, Kentucky. The team has completed hundreds of home remodels, additions, new homes and retail projects in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, New York, Florida and the Bahamas.
Though Prajna specializes in new construction and renovations, we asked them to help generate some ideas as to how to incorporate sustainable practices at home, without going through a full-blown remodel:
Painting: use low or no VOC paints and non-toxic clear finishes.
Heating Ventilation-Air Conditioning (HVAC): consider long-range costs in terms of energy use when you replace your furnace or air conditioner (geothermal, duel fuel furnace, the most efficient unit that you can afford). Use a higher Merv-rated filter when you replace filters on your air handling unit to ensure better indoor air quality.
Water Heaters: again, consider long-range costs and consider a solar water heater or on-demand water heaters.
Windows: when you replace, upgrade to the best-insulated windows you can afford and be sure that they are properly installed, flashed and insulated around. Maintain the windows and screens and open the windows!
Appliances and Fixtures: when you replace, upgrade to the most energy and water efficient ones you can afford and then have them serviced regularly.
Carpet / Furnishings: remember that everything you bring into the house affects the air quality of the house. Begin to understand what out-gassing means and try to avoid materials and products that contain harmful elements. Open the windows!
Lighting: change to long-lasting energy-efficient bulbs; add natural lighting by adding new, properly orientated windows, skylights or light tubes.
Yard / Landscaping: use as little drinking water as possible to water your lawn or garden. Plant native plants species and control the amount of water runoff your property produces.
Remodel: if your house does not meet all your current or future needs, consider remodeling or adding an addition instead of buying a new home. Then take the time to consider the "Green" possibilities in each decision you make.
CSC Design Studio
In the mid 1980s, long before "sustainability" became a buzz word, professors Richard Levine and Ernest Yanarella founded the Center for Sustainable Cities, a think tank within the University of Kentucky focusing on exploring and advancing the theory and practice of sustainability. The CSC Design Studio, a full-service architecture firm led by Levine along with the help of research assistants/architectural apprentices Michael Hughes (LEED AP) and Casey Ryan Mather, was founded in 2005. While the Center for Sustainable Cities' focus is on research, the CSC Design Studio is able to apply 30 years of solar and sustainability-driven research onto residential, commercial and urban design, with a focus on creating affordable zero-net energy buildings using the Passive House Standard (the highest energy efficiency standard in the world, developed in Germany).
The firm, which has long theorized on the definition and implications of sustainability, maintains that it is an ongoing holistic operation - and essentially, an extension of the design process.
"It's figuring out how to live within the constraints of local culture, preferences, site and resources, and while working within a land budget," Hughes said. "We start out with a budget in the form of land and work backwards from that."
"If you're creating imbalances, you need to be held accountable for that, and those imbalances need to be negotiated within your Sustainable Area Budget," Mather said.
Defining sustainability:
Acknowledging that the concept of sustainability is deeply complex and often misconstrued, we asked CSC Design Studio to provide some direction for citizens concerned with implementing sustainable practices within their own city.
While we consider sustainability an integrated process and don't promote lists of things to do to "become more" sustainable, below are a few important actions for concerned citizens:
Participate in the local planning process. Demand the implementation of integrated planning that considers your city as a part of a regional self-sufficient system and looks far enough ahead to prevent bad short-term decisions.
Reduce energy consumption through energy efficient design. Buildings account for 40 percent of the total energy use in the United States. Buildings that meet the Passive Solar House Standard use 90 percent less energy than a typical new construction for space heating, and 75 percent less in total energy use. Passive Solar House Standard strategies include superinsulation, airtightness of the building envelope, ventilation using an energy recovery ventilator, triple-glazed windows with insulated frames, and optimization of passive solar and internal heat gains.
Install photovoltaic solar panels to achieve net-zero-net energy use. Once the Passive House Standard is in place, a small, affordable solar photovoltaic system can be installed to generate the home's small electricity needs. Excess electricity can either be stored in batteries or sent back into the electric grid. A grid-intertied system can be sized smaller than a standalone system that uses batteries, and in Kentucky any excess energy will be credited to the owner. The result of an appropriately sized system will be a net annual energy bill of $0.
Guyon Architects Incorporated
Guyon Architects has long focused on blending sustainable building practices with state-of-the-art architectural design. Specifically, New Native Houses, a concept developed by Guyon's principal architect Scott Guyon, incorporate the six elements of Essence, Soul, Intellect, Body, Spirit and Society to achieve architectural harmony, resulting in a design that has an every day, uplifting impact on the home dweller while maintaining environmental consideration. Guyon has long employed solid, natural building materials and geo-thermal water systems in his constructions.
Guyon's current project, Moderna Community, takes the concept of environmental consideration and design innovation to a new, community level. Guyon, founder of the Miller House Museum, has developed a plan that calls for a 43-house residential community of architecturally designed, LEED-certified houses to be constructed around the museum, located in northeast Fayette County off Old Chilesburg Road. Through the use of solar panels and the collection of rainwater, each house in Moderna will potentially approach complete energy independence from public utilities, such as electric, gas and water. Plots for the community, which will be the first of its kind in the United States, are now available, and an open house will be held at The Miller House Museum from 5 - 9 p.m. on Oct. 22, featuring more information about the plan and a model of the home prototype. For more information, visit www.modernacommunity.com.
Tips for new homes
While it is possible to retro-fit a home to be more energy efficient and less taxing on the environment, starting with a clean slate provides a much greater advantage in moving toward net-zero efficiency. We asked Guyon to outline some of the sustainable design techniques he recommends incorporating when you have the advantage of starting from scratch with a new construction.
1. Building orientation should allow sun angles to be managed so that summer sun is shaded by overhangs.
2. Enhanced insulation of the building shell.
3. High-grade doors and windows with Low-E coated glass for heat control.
4. Long-cycle materials to lower the need to replace exterior elements, thus using less overall resources during the life of the building.
5. Geo-thermal heating and cooling. Borrowing from the 54-degree temperature available four feet below the Earth's surface can significantly impact the amount of energy used for heating and cooling.
HomeGrown HideAways
Nestled in a 100-acre green "holler" 11 miles from Berea, HomeGrown HideAways is situated on a vast and multi-purpose space. Whether it is serving recreational or educational endeavors, the emphasis is always green - directors Jessa and Nathan Turner, whose home is also on the property, have poured their energy into conducting extensive energy-efficient renovations since they bought the property last year. The land is now running entirely "coal-free," according to Jessa, with the help of Bluegrass Energy's EnviroWatts program, which offsets all electrical usage by relying on energy from biomass (landfill gas), sun, wind, water and geothermal springs.
HomeGrown HideAways serves as an educational facility and eco-retreat, available for workshops on a variety of eco-topics. Jessa and Nathan have expertise and experience on just about everything "green" under the sun, from green roofs and natural building materials (including cordwood and EarthBag construction), to bio-diesel processing, waste vegetable oil, and wind and solar power.
The land, which includes RV hook-ups, a concession stand, a covered stage and an eco-friendly bath house, is also available for events ranging from retreats and class reunions to festivals and weddings. For more information, visit www.homegrownhideaways.org.
Natural Building Materials
HomeGrown HideAways takes green construction to a new level - they have built a number of structures entirely out of natural material. We asked them to provide a list of natural building materials that can serve as alternatives to concrete, brick, mortar and vinyl.
Most folks are familiar with wood and stone, and Kentucky's deciduous forests and Karst topography make these readily obtainable. Much like conventional construction, we like to use stone for foundations and stem walls, and wood for framing; below we have provided information on other materials that can be used to construct livable structures.
Straw is an excellent insulator and has the ability to add tensile strength (ability to withstand lateral pressures, such as wind) to a mass wall. A typical stud wall may have an R-Value (ability to resist heat flow) of around 13, whereas a wall built from bales of straw can have an R-value of over 30.
Sand is most often employed in natural building as a material that adds compressive strength (ability to withstand downward pressures) when combined with other materials. Since we don't live close to a good source of typical masonry sand, limestone dust can be an excellent local replacement.
Clay is a very versatile substance that can be sculpted, turned into brick or utilized as a natural paint or plaster. Clay is abundant in most areas of Kentucky, but can be exceptionally labor intensive to use as a building material since excess debris must be screened out before it is ready to use. Mixed with straw and sand, it is a building material called Cob.
Cob is similar to Adobe, except that instead of forming bricks and baking them in the sun, the mixture is used to create the mass of the wall itself and then allowed to dry in place. The combination of these three materials creates a matrix of strength
Designer Builders Sustainable Construction, Inc.
Started by Ray Rumancik in Danville, Designer Builders Sustainable Construction has focused on sustainability since its humble beginnings as a small fence, deck and renovation company. Ray's son Stefan, who has been running the family business since 1998, recalls a green building project he completed with his father on their organic farm as a child.
"It was basically built out of trash," Rumancik laughed. The home's modifications were built virtually only with building scraps and refuse his father collected from other construction projects.
The green emphasis stuck with Rumancik, and his business has benefited from the trend in recent years. Still, Rumancik laments that sustainable materials are overwhelmingly priced higher than they should be because of that very trend.
"We give customers a discount on the material markup on a lot of our [green materials]," he said. "We installed a solar hot water heater for a renovation we did in Danville last fall, and I didn't mark it up at all - it's expensive to do, and I was just glad to get it on one of our projects. I really try to work with people on 'green' products and
systems that we've never done before. It incentivizes people a bit."
Green tech
Energy-efficient/green technologies to incorporate in a new home or addition courtesy of Stefan Rumancik, Designer Builders Sustainable Const. Inc.
1. Insulation/ Air Sealing (existing structure). This is the most basic energy efficiency improvement to make on an older home. The cost is very reasonable and the return on investment can be in as little as two years. By using new spray foam systems, the structure becomes airtight and the overall performance is drastically improved.
2. Solar Hot Water Systems. These systems are relatively simple to incorporate in an existing home or during a renovation. The return on investment on average is seven to nine years in Kentucky - with a number of installers in the state and current federal /state tax credits these systems have a promising future.
3. Tank-less Hot Water Systems. If solar cannot be used, opt for an on-demand system next to the tank - they allow the user to only heat the water needed rather than use energy to maintain hot water round the clock.
4. Rainwater Collection. Rainwater collection can be done on many different scales: rain barrels, the most basic form, or underground tanks for new constructions or greater watering needs. They greatly reduce the amount of storm water run-off and also lower the usage of treated water, both very large expenses for any municipality.
5. New Windows. The most commonly used window for a retrofit is a vinyl series window, but these lack the architectural appeal of a wood clad unit. One overlooked benefit to new windows is the ability to naturally vent the home and lower the number of overall days per year the HVAC system runs, which promotes healthy indoor air quality. If you're replacing windows, be sure to have the old weight cavity filled.