House on Ann Arbor's West side shows homes don't need to look eco-friendly to act like it

It was really the neighborhood and the property that led Kathleen Folger and her husband Scott Ward to buy their home on Ann Arbor's West side in 2002.

After years of saving, Folger and Ward wanted to make their "forever home" the place where they plan to raise their 6-year old son and live out their retirement.

Now under construction on the footprint of their former home, the new house has all the details the homeowners wanted like a big front porch, a walk-in closet and its original stone chimney.

And, while it might not look like it, it will also be a more environmentally-friendly new house than most in the city.

"It seems like energy efficiency has gone mainstream," Folger said. "It's for everyday people trying to figure out 'What can I do?"

Planned to receive a Platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, the highest possible from the U.S. Green Building Council, the home will be featured in a public tour called “Behind the Drywall: The Visible Green House” on Saturday.

The ranch-style house isn’t especially large, nor does it have any sort of solar panels or wind turbines or any of the funky angular architecture or green roofs that are often characteristic of eco-friendly homes.

Created using materials found nearly as easily as those used to build a traditionally designed home, it is the decidedly unglamorous changes in the way the home is designed and put together that make the difference.

That’s precisely the point, according to Doug Selby and Michael Klement, the lead builder and architect, respectively, who teamed up for the third time to create a deep green renovated home in Ann Arbor.

“Most of the time, the thing that makes a home green is not the stuff you see, but it’s the stuff that’s working in the background,” said Selby of Meadowlark Builders in Ann Arbor. “Every home can have these characteristics.”

The house was rebuilt on its original footprint, and is largely made of wood recycled from the previous house.

Among other environmentally-sustainable features, the home:

â€¢ Was built to have a super-insulated building envelope to trap energy indoors using spray polyurethane foam insulation and altered building techniques to further increase insulation and decrease materials used in building the structure.

â€¢ Has windows and overhangs designed to make the home feel larger and take advantage of sunlight for a geothermal furnace system.

â€¢ Has plumbing which uses a series of tubes that are smaller in diameter than typical copper piping, which reduce overall water use. Also in the plans are dual-flush toilets and low-flow showerheads to preserve water.

While solar panels and a geothermal water heater were too much for their budget, the home was purposely designed more easily be retrofitted with those features later. Certain walls were built in a way which would make them easy to move due to changing mobility needs of the residents, said Klement, of Architectural Resource in Ann Arbor.

The cost of completing a deep-green remodel like this one costs around $400,000 to $450,000, about $60,000 more than the cost of using traditional building techniques, Selby said.

It would have a payoff period of about 10 years, figuring an annual increase of about eight percent for natural gas, he said.

Not everyone who’s building a new home or remodeling their existing home following environmentally-sustainable guidelines can go as far as Folger and Ward, Selby said.

Choosing certain elements, such as creating a well-insulated home, can give a homeowner the biggest bang for their buck, Selby said.

Building a home is always going to be expensive, Folger said, and the couple does hope to reap benefits of cost savings through saving energy in the future. They were able to save money on adding features like the geothermal system because the federal stimulus plan passed earlier this year allows a larger tax credit for purchasing them, she said.

But the point was really about reducing the environmental impact of their lifestyle.

“There were tradeoffs in cost and aesthetic things,” Folger said. “We wanted a house that looks like a house. I didn’t want something that looks obviously green. We’re building a home.”

The Brooks Street home is an example of what homeowners can do, said Charles Poat, Detroit regional chapter board chairman for the U.S. Green Building Council.

“If you get certification, that’s really an achievement,” Poat said. But there are just some changes that are realistic or possible in certain home builds or budgets. “We want people to build above and beyond code for altruism and because they’re saving energy.”

Tina Reed can be reached at tinareed@annarbor.com or follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/treedinaa.