Printer-friendly version Email story link

The greenest house on the block

• Average estimated power bill for energy-generating home: $0

By Ben Jacklet

The Portland Tribune, Sep 17, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

ADVERTISEMENTS

The Rose House is the smallest project Clark Brockman has worked on, and he also considers it the most exciting.

The unassuming little house on Northeast Ainsworth Street is just 800 square feet, but it incorporates technologies that thrill architects like Brockman. From its staggered-stud frame to its solar water heating system, the Rose House is the first home in Portland to create more electricity than it uses.

Brockman hopes that the Rose House will serve as a laboratory experiment, a demonstration piece and, most important, a regular house that builders will want to replicate and people will want to live in.

“This house underlines so much of what I believe in philosophically,” he says as he crouches in a crawl space to show off a series of ducts designed to capture waste heat. “We’re doing so much more here, with less.”

The Rose House, designed by SERA Architects Inc. and built by Coho Construction Services Inc., is one of 20 buildings that will be showcased Saturday in Portland’s third annual “Build It Green” home tour. The tour will demonstrate the latest in eco-roofs, renewable resources, daylighting techniques and other green building techniques.

It’s all part of Portland’s seemingly ongoing push to prove itself the greenest of green cities, where sewage repairs are “clean river” initiatives and garbage collection is handled by the Office of Sustainable Development. The city boasts the largest number of certified green buildings per capita in the country.

With an eco-roof conference in June, a solar power conference in July and the upcoming Greenbuild 2004 conference expected to draw thousands of people in November, Portland is earning a national reputation among people who care about such matters as a city where sustainable design is a growth industry.

Brockman grew up in Boulder, Colo., and moved to Portland in 1993. He says he’s always had an interest in sustainable design, but it wasn’t until he moved here that he was able to put his ideas into practice. The firm he works for, SERA, has expanded from 38 staffers to 60 during the past year.

“People are moving here from other cities without a job, to work in sustainable design in Portland,” he says. “And they’re finding work.”

Coho Construction owner Dave Heslam says his green building business has grown 30 percent to 40 percent each year in and around Portland.

“I’m hearing a lot more interest from buyers who have called up and said they want the greenest house in Portland,” Heslam said. “For a growing group of people, rather than having the fanciest house on their street, they’d rather impress their friends by having the greenest house on their street.”

Dozens of recent Portland projects have made use of salvaged building products, solar power, nontoxic paints, water-soaking eco-roofs and bioswales, and geothermal heating systems. These local innovations have helped spur a national movement that becomes more mainstream each year. Two big winners for eco-roof design at the Oregon Convention Center in June, the Ford Motor Co. and the Chicago Bears, hardly classify as the usual tree-huggers.

Locally, some of Portland’s largest commercial and residential builders have adopted and marketed new sustainable practices. One of the nation’s largest residential builders, Lennar Homes, which operates locally as Renaissance Homes, uses its energy-saving designs as part of its sales pitch. Portland-based mixed use behemoth Gerding/Edlen recently won grants and praise for redeveloping the Brewery Blocks in the Pearl District with 54 solar panels, extra-efficient induction lights and a 96 percent recycling rate.

Cynthia Catto, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Columbia Chapter of Associated General Contractors, said, “When green building first popped up, I thought, ‘Interesting concept, but it’s going to be a long time before it becomes a generally accepted practice because of the upfront cost involved.’ I am overwhelmed at how quickly it has taken off, especially in the greater Portland area.”