A Green House By Any Other Name Would Still be a ‘Home’

Do you save your bottles and cans every week in an effort to be more green? What if you collected rainwater so you could flush your toilets? Well that’d be some dedication huh?

Short Beach residents Nancy Dittes and Curtis Johnson are that dedicated--so much so, they spent more than two years constructing a green home from scratch with the help of architect and North Branford resident, Lindsay Suter. The couple is opening their space for public tours on Saturday, April 16 to share the knowledge ( sponsored by PACE (People’s Action for Clean Energy) and the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund are limited to 20 people will be offered at noon, 1:30 and 3 p.m.)

Sitting in their dining room with an unseasonable warm breeze blowing off the Farm River last week, Suter said of his clients (now friends), “Their explicit wish was that they wanted to share this with other people and promote green living techniques.”

But before you think of this green couple and their two teenage sons as the typical holier-than-thou environmentalists, you should know their cause is not celebrity or fad; it’s pure, real and so honest, it makes one think, ‘Hey, maybe I can be that green too.’

Arriving on time for his interview with Branford Patch, Johnson pulled up his driveway on two wheels--a florescent orange shirt signaling his presence.  He rides his bike to and from New Haven every day where he’s the Senior Attorney and Program Director of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment. As he talks, their house number, 53, cut out from an old department of transportation sign, shines in the afternoon sunlight, a telltale sign of more interesting things inside to come.

Waiting with a pitcher of chilled water, Dittes welcomes her husband and Suter inside and something about the place just feels like “home.”

At first glance, the house seems pretty normal. At 2,000 square-feet, it’s the perfect size for a family of four and the vista of the river outside their family room ties the whole picture together. But something is off; the home was constructed recently, yet the floors are distressed, the doors are antique and no, nothing is from Pottery Barn.

The group explains: Much of the home’s furnishings, hardware, floors and doors are reclaimed. In fact, Suter shares that Fairfield country is a treasure trove (or has been in the past) when it comes to finding perfectly good building materials. Before winding up in a bottomless landfill, John Tuminski of Center for Green Building, rescued the items for Johnson and Dittes from a 1923 tear-down home in Fairfield county.

“Re-using building materials,” said Suter, “is extremely difficult, but it worked out perfectly here.”

Though the vintage white oak floors in the home were much cheaper than buying brand new, what the family saved in price, they paid for in time. Each floorboard had to be stripped of nails and the tongue and groove removed to relay the pieces. Often, said Suter, “We value our time more than our resources and that’s why we are in a pickle.”

Working nearly day and night for two years straight, taking only one day off for a quick getaway, Dittes shares that she and her family devoted every waking moment to the construction of their green home. In order to make their project a reality, the family had to construct the space on a limited budget, assuming most of the grunt work to make it happen.

Truth be told, Suter was apprehensive to take on the project when he heard that they were hoping to construct the home for $138 a square-foot. “I had my doubts,” he said but added, “If it’s not affordable, it’s not sustainable.”

Even Johnson shares that he and his wife had reservations. “Even though we loved the idea, we shelved it. It was totally outrageous so we forgot about it.”

You see the home-build wasn’t years of planning for the family– though Johnson did buy his first solar panels in the 1980s– the home came into the family’s lives by happenstance.

Canoeing up the Farm River one afternoon, Johnson and Dittes saw a For Sale sign on the bank of the river near an abandoned, burned down home. They inquired about the property and then waited for the price to come down. After months of “shelving” the idea, the space became theirs and a tree-cleared lot, thanks to the home removal, became the future site of their green home.

“It’s a responsible thing,” said Suter, “to re-build and also they made a commitment to improve the site.” He added, “You can’t just focus on the less bad; we have to focus on more good.”

Improvements to the site started right from the foundation. The home, situated on a floodplain, is pulled back from the edge of the river and built on steel columns leaving the ground impervious to water. Gravel below the home prevents runoff and allows for incidental storage and covered space to park cars. The building lot was also utilized so Suter could design the home to be southern facing to allow for optimum sun exposure.

This sun exposure, which is captured by Photo Voltaic panels (or PV electric solar panels) provides a surplus of 14.4 kWh/day– more electricity than they can use. The excess is sold back to the grid. Also on the home’s roof are hot water solar panels, which helps to heat the home through a high-efficiency boiler for radiant floor heating). In layman’s terms, Johnson said, “You can tell old people like me, the floor is warm when you walk around in stocking feet.” Though he jokes now, it’s important to mention that Johnson did all the plumbing for the home himself, including installing a 50-gallon barrel for the rain-water-dual-flush-toilets. The upside to his labor was reduced cost; the downside is that when something breaks, Johnson has to call himself for maintenance.

The southern facing of the home allows for sunlight to stream through skylights and dense walls filled with scrap and re-purposed sheet rock help to trap heat. In the warmer months, passive solar shading is achieved through roof eaves on the second floor and exterior shades on the first floor. An open floor plan on the second floor and transoms over doorways, allow for airflow throughout. There is no air-cooling system in the home, but with the cool breeze off the Farm River, it’s no surprise that an air conditioning unit would not be necessary.

In addition to regulating heating and cooling through Suter’s design, the home is heated by a wood-stove in the colder months, which is insulated by a stone hearth to retain and give back heat– not to mention it adds to the look and feel of the homey space.

As Johnson, Dittes and Suter stroll through their home explaining how everything from the framing (non-wood, S.I.P.S., natural insulated panels) to the paint (No VOC, no volatile organic compounds) was chosen with intention, one gets a real sense of what Suter meant when he said, “It was like building efficiency upon efficiency.”  The air-tight, Energy-Star-award-winning home is worthy of boasting all its accomplishments, but there’s something more about this green home; perhaps it’s the family, who really makes it a success.

“It’s not a hair shirt,” said Johnson. “The sustainable design is more comfortable and more enjoyable.”

If you are interested in taking the tour, you can purchase tickets, $15 per person,here.