Dreams of Green

By ROBIN GOLDWYN BLUMENTHAL

HELEN AND JOHN SCHAEFER LOVE TO ENTERTAIN in their Tucson, Ariz., home. The 
expansive adobe-style house, featuring 13-foot-high ceilings and 
breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains, never fails to wow the 
couple's guests, who sometimes number well over 100. An added benefit: While 
the house is three times larger than their last one, the energy bills are 
almost exactly the same.

Protected from the blazing Arizona sun by energy-efficient windows, 
constructed with highly insulated concrete forms, and outfitted with 
radiant-floor heating powered by solar panels for winter nights, the 
Schaefers' $1.2 million home epitomizes one of the hottest trends in luxury 
housing: going green.

The Schaefers, retired educators in their seventies, didn't have to look far 
for an architect -- their daughter, Susan Schaefer Kliman, has a degree in 
energy-efficient design. But, says Helen Schaefer, "We probably would have 
tried to do some of this kind of thing even if we had another architect, 
simply because we're conservation-minded."

More and more home buyers are thinking like this. The green-building market 
is expected to grow from $7.6 billion in 2005 to as much as $39 billion in 
2010. Better, more efficient building materials are becoming available all 
the time, and builders and consumers of all stripes are coming to see that 
green doesn't have to mean living in a mud hut or decorating strictly with 
hemp.

Runaway oil prices and Al Gore's documentary about climate change also have 
given the trend a lift. Even Paris Hilton has jumped on the bandwagon, 
vowing to add eco-friendly features to her new home in Beverly Hills.

Although most sprawling luxury manses, by definition, are less 
environmentally friendly than smaller houses -- they use more energy --  
building materials like insulated concrete walls and gear like air 
conditioners that adjust themselves in response to demand for cooling can 
make the bigger structures superior in efficiency.

The Tuscan villa in Baton Rouge that Ben Elder, a chemicals executive, and 
his wife, Maria Bhacca, who owns a travel agency, fashioned from a 
flat-roofed lakefront house is a case in point. Even though their $1.3 
million home is a third larger than their previous one, Elder says the 
utility bills during the muggy Louisiana summers have been cut by more than 
half, to $400 a month. "I credit the foam insulation on all the walls and in 
the attic," he says. Such insulation expands to seal all the cracks and 
crevices that fiberglass can't reach, increasing the efficiency of the 
energy used.

But it isn't just the insulation and thermal windows that make the home 
green. Bhacca traveled around the world collecting natural materials like 
carved cantera stone from Mexico for the two large fireplaces and columns 
around the pool, and floors of Italian travertine marble. Doing without 
wall-to-wall carpeting in the 7,500-square-foot house makes the air quality 
a lot better, says Elder, who likes to look out at the view of College Lake 
while working out in his gym. He figures that details like the Brazilian 
mahogany doors, the windows and the zoned air-conditioning should help the 
couple get a premium when they put the house on the market sometime next 
year -- because they're hoping to downsize.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY IS OFTEN the focal point of green, or sustainable, 
building. But the trend also involves different methods of water 
conservation, healthier air quality, and the use of native materials or 
those recycled or produced in a way that minimizes harm to the environment. 
For instance, cork products use only the bark of the tree, saving the whole 
tree.

An interest in health came naturally to Phil Beron, an oncologist who 
decided to invest in a modernist home designed by Ray Kappe and built by 
"sustainable" builder LivingHomes of Santa Monica, Calif. The deeper Beron 
got into the field, the more hooked he became. "Really strange things happen 
when you get on this green thing," he says. "You start noticing things like 
leaving the water running when you shave."

Part of the attraction for Beron was the air quality of the home, which uses 
paints, glues and stains with compounds that don't emit harmful chemicals --  
although he concedes that some of the health benefits from these are 
impossible to notice from day to day.

Some other green touches are more apparent: The siding of the house is from 
70-year-old recycled redwood that was part of a wooden bridge, the cedar 
ceiling in the upper living area is from the highest-rated sustainable wood, 
and the bathroom countertops are made of recycled glass.

The Brentwood, Calif., home, which Wired magazine made into a showcase for 
advertisers' cutting-edge technology, also includes a solar-energy and 
radiant heating and cooling system that uses 36% less energy than a 
conventional house of its size, and a kitchen computer that allows 
monitoring of energy use.

Beron paid more than $30,000 to have the house previously on the site 
deconstructed and 85% of the wood sent to be reused in Third World 
countries. "From an architectural standpoint it makes you feel good, and 
from a psychological standpoint it makes you feel good," he says.

Beron, who paid about $2.4 million for the land, the original home and 
construction of the new, green home, hopes it will make him feel good 
economically as well. He's putting it on the market for $4.3 million, and 
hopes to plow the proceeds into the construction of other green homes.

"There's a certain cachet to having one of these homes," says Ben Kaufman, 
owner of GreenWorks Realty in Seattle, which does about 40% of its business 
in green homes. "We can differentiate and sell a green home at the high end 
of price per square foot."

Of course, green features such as better insulation and solar panels can add 
anywhere from 1% to 10% to the cost of standard construction, that 
represents a fairly modest investment in conservation. For some, lower 
energy bills help compensate. But "on the higher end, cost is not the 
issue," says Baton Rouge architect Kevin Harris. "It's the appeal and the 
sense they're doing their part to save the environment."

All over the country, owners of green homes echo that sentiment. "We have 
three girls, and we said, 'If we're not going to do something for the 
planet, who will?' " says David Ronn, a Houston attorney who used 
energy-efficient insulated concrete for the walls that cut the required 
output of the air-conditioning system by about half; easily renewable bamboo 
for the floors, and a solar hot-water heater that feeds into two tankless 
water heaters, which heats water only as it is used.

The Ronns also injected a bit of whimsy into the house, installing a slide 
for their children next to the stairs. The builder, GreenHaus Builders of 
Houston, even used recycled blue jeans to soundproof a recording studio.

"If you're already spending this much money, why not try to do a little 
more?" says Allison Nutt, who is on the board of the Nature Conservancy. 
Motion-sensitive lights and extra-thick, energy-conserving walls are being 
incorporated into the $8 million, French-style mansion in Jackson, Miss., 
that she and her husband, David, expect to occupy in another 
year-and-a-half.

They plan to incorporate such energy savers as windows that let in the light 
but not the heat of the sun, and tankless hot-water heaters. What's more, 
the use of reclaimed materials and old beams will make the house, which is 
situated on 170 acres, "look like it's been there for several hundred 
years," says Nutt.

THE GREEN ASPECTS OF HER FRENCH-STYLED DOMICILE figured in the decision of 
Lori Perkins, a 47-year-old realtor and restaurateur, to trade up recently 
to the $1.9 million home in the Lake Club section of the Lakewood Ranch 
development in Bradenton, Fla.

Standing in her living room, which has 25-foot ceilings and looks out on the 
pool, Perkins cheerfully recites the water savings achieved by her low-flow 
toilets (11,000 gallons a year), which are used in her 4.5 bathrooms. 
Building green "may cost a little more in the beginning, but in the long run 
it saves money," says Perkins, whose four-bedroom home has a monthly water 
bill that totals just $53.

Perkins proudly displays her Energy Star-rated highly efficient LG washer 
and dryer set, for which she paid $2,800 -- more than 50% higher than the 
standard fare. She notes that she'll cut down on both her water usage and 
dry-cleaning bills because of the versatility of the machines.

In a feature especially tailored for drought-plagued Florida, the developers 
of the Lake Club put down Empire Zoysia sod, which uses less water than 
standard lawns and is pest resistant; they also require 80% of plantings to 
be native or drought-resistant. In addition, the sod is irrigated by a drip 
system, rather than sprayed-water, from the man-made lake behind Perkins' 
home. There is a downside to this: The irrigation water smells a bit 
stagnant, but Perkins says the odor soon goes away.

Developers, builders and architects are leading the charge in sustainable 
building. Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, a local developer behind Lake Club, 
requires its builders to attain a certain number of points from a menu of 
green-building features.

Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, recently started building a sustainable 
luxury resort in Costa Rica. It will be set on a 650-acre seaside tract and 
incorporate both green technology and local cultural traditions.

But consumer demand is there, too. "Surveys show people enjoy our nature 
trails the most," says Tom Danahy, president of LWR Communities, a unit of 
Schroeder-Manatee. It is preserving half of its sprawling 30,000-acre tract 
at Lakewood Ranch for recreation, open spaces and parks.

In many parts of the country, green developments are shaping up as one of 
the strongest segments of the faltering housing market.

"Green building has become hot," says Casey Roloff, developer of Seabrook, 
an upscale vacation community two hours west of Seattle that has taken the 
trend to heart.

All the residences, including the $2.5 million oceanfront properties, are 
accessible to town (Pacific Beach) by a five-minute walk, reducing the need 
for fossil-fuel-burning cars. The landscaping is native to the area, to cut 
water use, and 25% of the raw lumber is harvested according to the most 
rigorous timber-conservation standards. The insulation is formaldehyde-free, 
and there's a high percentage of recycled content in the kitchen cabinets. 
The result: Roloff expects Sea-brook's sales to double this year from last.

SOME HOMEOWNERS ARE SO COMMITTED to the cause that they've opened up their 
houses to tours in order to encourage others to adopt sustainability 
practices.

At Ecomanor, an Atlanta showcase home owned by conservationists Rutherford 
and Laura Turner Seydel, everything from the home furnishings to the garden 
has a sustainable touch. Chandeliers made from recycled scrap iron hold 
compact fluorescent bulbs, and the craft room's floor is marmoleum, a 
covering made of all-natural ingredients.

Although the five full and two half-bathrooms outnumber the bedrooms, the 
Seydels are using a rain-harvesting system that captures rainwater for the 
toilets, and they're dual-flush -- which use only one-third the amount of 
water to get rid of liquid waste versus solid.

Used sink and shower water -- known as grey water -- gets recycled to water 
the plants. Because of this, the Seydels' $100,000 worth of landscaping has 
escaped harm during a punishing drought that brought with it a statewide ban 
on potable water use for irrigation.

Rutherford Seydel, a partner in an Atlanta-based law firm, especially likes 
the geothermal system of heating and cooling, which runs water through pipes 
that are dug way beneath the earth. This approach cut his energy bills in 
half. His favorite gear of all is technology that registers how much power 
is being used at any given time. He also likes the remote button that can 
turn his kids' lights on and off from his bedroom.

The Seydels were actively involved in the planning of their Tudor-style 
home, but verifying that the builders are doing what they say they will can 
sometimes be tricky. That's because so many environmentally correct features 
are behind the scenes, or -- as in the case of carpets recycled from soda 
bottles -- look no different from standard substances. But keeping a close 
eye on the work does pay off, because sometimes, as Barron's discovered, the 
gear simply doesn't work. During a recent stay in a "green" Holiday Inn in 
Bradenton, while visiting Lake Club, we found that lights that were supposed 
to be motion-sensitive failed to turn on or off automatically.

Fortunately, there are several certification programs -- one run by the U.S. 
Green Building Council, and the other by the National Association of 
Homebuilders, to rate and determine if something qualifies as "green."

AT ITS BEST, GREEN BUILDING can be nothing short of breathtaking. At the 
modernist Santa Fe-style Hideaway in Borrego Springs, Calif., no expense was 
spared to build a green house originally designed for billionaire 
money-manager Charles Brandes. The 6,000-square-foot home, set in the 
desert, features its own airplane hangar and runway, and more than a nod to 
green.

"This is the pet project of a billionaire; money typically isn't too much of 
an issue," says David Itzikman, who bought the house earlier this year as a 
vacation home with his brother-in-law and business partner in developer GH 
Capital, Gregory Perlman.

The architect, Drew Hubbell, explains that using straw-bale construction 
allows the two-foot- thick walls to act as a thermos and store whatever 
temperature is introduced. Helping to cool the house are overhangs and 
trellises, and the underground garage, originally built for a Ferrari 
collection, has tubular glass "light wells" that eliminate the need for 
electric lights during the day.

Windows near the roof line in the great room pull hot air out during the day 
and cool air in at night. Most of the materials are natural, with lime-wash 
plaster used on the walls to eliminate what's known as "off-gassing" of 
chemicals, and Portuguese clay tiles are used for the flooring.

The pool is even filtered with salt, rather than chlorine. But perhaps one 
of the most striking features is the roof deck. From that perch, there is an 
unobstructed view of the desert night sky in all directions, surrounded by 
1,400 undeveloped acres. Could anything be more green than that?