A great way to get ideas for making your home more eco-friendly, or building your dream green home, is to tour other green homes. So I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a video tour of a beautiful home that Barry Schram, owner of Lamar Valley Craftsman, just completed for one of my clients (video at bottom of this post).
Barry’s business is founded on a strong environmental ethic, a passion for creating high performance structures, and a special talent for building homes that satisfy the soul. Like us, he was and still is inspired by Sarah Susanka’s Not So Big House body of work. Fortunately for the planet, more and more builders are starting to think and operate like Barry as more and more of us start to demand homes built with sustainability in mind.
My clients were an excellent fit to work with Barry. They had very specific desires for their dream home’s feel, performance, and environmental footprint. Some highlights of the home that they collaborated to create include:
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Concrete floors with in-floor radiant heat and Buderus high efficiency boiler.
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Heat recovery ventilation system.
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Passive solar design and Tamarack whole house fan to eliminate the need for air conditioning.
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Energy efficient appliances and lighting.
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Sierra Pacific aluminum clad exterior low-e windows.
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Optimized natural lighting including Solatube Daylighting System.
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Lots of thoughtful Not So Big details including a special window detail for growing herbs, built in bookshelves and window seats.
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Other sustainable building materials including locally sourced beetle kill pine for exterior soffits, MDF trim to minimize use of harvested timber, and recycled content decking.
It is also worth noting that this house is an infill project in Old Town Fort Collins on a lot previously occupied by a 1920’s-built cottage that was beyond rehabilitation.
The home has a great open floor plan, with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, plus an office/away room. It has about 3,100 total square feet – about 2,100 above ground with another 1,000 at a “garden level”. It also has a detached 2 car garage with alley entry.
So I hope you enjoy the video tour and hearing more about this great home from the builder himself. If it whets your appetite for some in-person touring, the American Solar Energy Society now facilitates a nationwide grass roots solar tour, and the Parade of HomesTM events around the country are getting greener every year (just Google green parade of homes).
Don’t miss your chance to build the green home of your dreams at Midori – a new green neighborhood in Fort Collins.
