HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — With utility bills rising faster than inflation, a house that produces more energy than it consumes might sound appealing.
Robert Fortunato's "Green Idea House" has been doing that for over a decade. He remodeled his family's 1959 house into a 2150 square foot environmentally friendly home, and he says he did it for less than the cost of a traditional remodel.
"It's one of the first net-zero energy, zero carbon case study houses that was built for less cost than standard construction," he says, and the remodel involved "standard construction materials and off-the-shelf technologies that anyone can use."
Shepherding such a project requires a lot of time and energy from the homeowner. There's research and planning, some stubbornness when it comes to working with contractors and suppliers and now some updates for a climate that's warming faster than expected.
Still, Fortunato's family ended up with a stylish, contemporary, four bedroom, two bath home. While a project like this is not for everyone, Fortunato hopes others will learn from his family's experience and take on similar projects. In that spirit, here are five lessons from the Green Idea House.
You'll need to get into the power business
In planning for the remodel, Fortunato wanted to stop using climate-warming fossil fuels as much as possible.
"We had just seen so many instances where the oil companies were not being responsible for the environment," he says. But reducing fossil fuel use was a challenge. "We had a gas hot water heater. We had a gas furnace. We had all gas appliances," he says.
Disconnecting from the local gas company saved some money during the remodel because he didn't have to reinstall gas pipes throughout the house. And in replacing appliances they chose electric ones, including an induction stove.
To replace gas and to supply electricity in his home, Fortunato got into the power generation business. He installed 26 solar panels on the roof that generate all the electricity the house uses, plus enough for two electric cars.
"We really haven't had an electric bill or a gas bill in the last 13 years," Fortunato says. He did have to pay $18,000 upfront to install the panels. He estimates his family saves about $4,800 a year in utility bills, so it took four years to recover that initial expense before the electricity became almost free (there are still utility connection charges, since he remains connected to the grid).
Spending money on rooftop solar is not affordable for everyone, and the industry has gained a reputation for high-pressure sales tactics. NPR has reported on ways to protect yourself.
There's lots of research and planning
From the street, Fortunato's three-story, modern house fits in with the neighborhood of expensive modern and Mission-style homes.
One of the features is the flat roof, which extends five feet over the front of the house. It hides the solar panels, which some consider ugly, so they can't be seen from the street. The extended roof has another purpose that saves energy.
"Sixty percent of the energy that is saved, in terms of heating and cooling, is through that overhang alone," Fortunato says. In the summer, it shades the southwest-facing house when the sun is higher in the sky. "And then in the wintertime, the sun rises low in the sky across the horizon. And the sun goes into the windows and actually heats up the house for free."
Taking advantage of a home's location and then planning construction in this way takes research and planning. Fortunato says the concept he employed is an ancient one, adopted from Native American cliff dwellings in, what is now, Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.
On the other side of the country, the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities (CGBC) employs the concept for its HouseZero office in Cambridge, Mass. office. They are adapted for that location with fins that shade the windows.
"Rather than horizontal overhangs, those are vertical ones to allow the control of the sun on the east and west, where the sun is lower in the sky," says Ali Malkawi, professor of architectural technology and director of the CGBC.
The HouseZero functions as both a laboratory and the CGBC headquarters. The building "contains several miles of wire and hundreds of sensors," but he says this high-tech part has to be paired with good design.
"You cannot apply a technology in a building that is not designed well, that's taking into consideration all these simple principles that we knew for hundreds and hundreds of years," Malkawi says.
In the Green Idea House, one example of this is an open stairway that doubles as a "thermal chimney." It keeps the house cool, without air conditioning and saves more energy. "We kick open the two vented windows at the top of the chimney and the hot air just naturally evacuates," Fortunato says.
Hermosa Beach's celebrated mild climate contributes to the success of technologies like this. Fortunato says a house in a place with more extreme weather likely would have to deploy other measures to keep it comfortable.
In planning this remodel, Fortunato also tried to avoid the need for electric lighting during the day. "If the sun is out, we actually don't need to turn on any of the lights in the house, in any of the rooms," he says. Several skylights bring light inside, and in the evening, efficient LED lighting helps reduce electricity consumption.
You have to ruthlessly stick to your plan
Using LED light bulbs is a relatively easy solution that most Americans have adopted, as the lighting industry also switched to the energy sipping technology. But other features of the Green Idea House do not have consumer momentum and industries working in their favor. Pursuing them required Fortunato to remind contractors and suppliers of his goals to make sure they're achieved.
For example, the brown metal siding on the house was selected because it was made in a nearby factory in Fontana, Calif. Fortunato wanted to avoid burning fossil fuels to have it delivered across the country.
At the end of the ordering process he confirmed with the supplier that the siding would come from the local factory. "And then he said, Well, no, you ordered a color brown that only Texas makes," Fortunato told NPR, with some exasperation. He asked what colors come from Fontana. "And it was very similar. And we said, 'Let's go with that.'"
Fortunato also "replaced an old garage door opener that used 15 watts just sitting there continuously." The new one uses about 80% less electricity, waiting to sense when someone pushes the button. It's a small savings but important to Fortunato.
It's important to figure out your goals and question motivations to make sure the goals are actually accomplished, says Chris Magwood with the clean energy non-profit group Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI).
"Having me as a consultant is like having that annoying two year old in your house because I just go, why? Like, why a solar house?" says Magwood, who wrote a book about designing more efficient houses.
He says if choosing solar is about the environment, rooftop solar panels make more sense for homeowners in states that burn a lot of coal for electricity, such as West Virginia. But they may not make as much sense in a state that gets most of its power from cleaner sources, such as California.
Magwood says constructing an efficient home takes a lot of time and dedication, though he says it's getting easier with certification programs like Energy Star and LEED. They ensure contractors and manufacturers meet efficiency standards.
You might have to update your plan
When Fortunato began remodeling his house 15 years ago, some of the technology that's common now was just starting to be sold. That includes heat pump water heaters, which save energy by moving heat from one place to another instead creating heat with an element or flame.
Fortunato installed two of these efficient water heaters — one for hot water and another to supply radiators that heat the home — in his garage, which gets plenty of heat from the sun. But he says contractors treated the concept like "science fiction."
"They gave me quotes for five or six times what it should cost to actually install the thing. They were estimating their learning curve, and they wanted to charge me for it," he says. So, he had to explain how the water heaters worked.
Fortunato designed the house without air conditioning to save energy. He assumed the climate would warm about four degrees Fahrenheit over the life of the house.
"I think we've already broken that threshold," he says. Scientists do say temperatures have been rising faster than projected. So, he installed shades on the skylights to reduce the temperature in the house. "And we might go to a very small air conditioning unit if, in fact, we need it."
Fortunato is learning that as humans continue burning the fossil fuels that heat the climate, he has to make other adjustments, like regularly washing off his solar panels. "We live on a busy street and all of the carbon burning cars deposit this layer of black soot that needs to be cleaned off the solar panels," Fortunato says. "It's so ironic, right? The thing we're trying to fight actually is depositing this thing that reduces the production of the solar panels."
Don't expect everyone to follow your lead
Fortunato and his family hoped their experience would encourage others to build their own Green Idea House.
"We wanted to make the house something that anyone would want to live in," he says, so they tried to strike a balance between affordable and attractive. That was after seeing some efficient homes that, he says, looked like "spaceships" and "mud huts."
The family has offered to share what they learned, led many tours through the home and even hosted a reality show to spread the word.
But houses like this, that produce more energy than they use, are still just a fraction of a percent of the 140 million housing units in the country. Fortunato says that's "very disappointing." Ultimately he hopes the money his family saves will help convince others to build homes like his.
"Just rough math, about $200 a month for the house and about $100 each for the cars," Fortunato says. That's $400 a month in utility and gasoline savings that could keep adding up, 15 years after the Green Idea House was finished.
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