Over the past three years, the green building revolution has traveled from neighbor to neighbor throughout the metro Atlanta area. Right now, there are at least 3,000 newly constructed homes with the official EarthCraft House certification, plus 25 completed renovations and 10 remodels in progress. Each project requires not only knowledgeable contractors, but also collaborations with EarthCraft consultants in order to earn points towards certification.

The right way to renovate
Many contractors are beginning to remodel using EarthCraft practices and standards even when they’re not seeking certification, according to Howard Katzman, Residential Green Building Services Project Manager for Southface Energy Institute. This is because the standards, even if not certified, lead to a noticeably more solid construction and a tighter seal on the house.

“Because people have been coming to us from all over, we now have several EarthCraft certification programs through-out the state and even in Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia, which just started,” Katzman says. “A lot of people are incorporating our ideas, worksheets and technical guidelines without being certified, because there are elements to our approach that anyone can adopt.”

And that is an important key to creating more eco-friendly homes—accessibility. Simple changes, such as putting in new window sashes with tighter seals and insulating attics, crawlspaces or anywhere air can seep through with Icynene (a malleable spray-on foam) or other EarthCraft-approved insulation, are things that you or your contractor can build into your current plans.

Contractors who want to begin building to EarthCraft standards can take classes with their local homebuilder’s association. After completing the program, the contractor’s next remodel has to be tested (before any work begins) to determine the problem areas. Throughout the renovation, EarthCraft consultants help determine where the most points can be earned toward certification, such as with the improvements mentioned above.

Robert Soens, founder of Pinnacle Custom Builders, is one remodeler who went through the EarthCraft program and recently completed a certified remodel. “I learned about EarthCraft renovations about three years ago, but I’ve always been concerned about the environment and the role we play in it,” he says. “We need to be responsible and responsive to the environment.”

A house in the trees
When Robin Futch decided to renovate her 1940s brick ranch home in Decatur, she understood that part of her responsibility to the environment came from understanding how many changes were practical without adding to the impact on the land. Futch, an environmental consultant, contacted Soens after learning more about the EarthCraft program from neighbors who had certified their renovation.

“We knew we were going to go to the effort to add on in terms of practicality and functionality, and we wanted to be pragmatic with it,” Futch says. “It made sense to build in a manner that was conservation-minded.” That meant adding a complete second story without increasing the footprint of the house, and also keeping its charm, such as the stone steps to the porch and all of the close-knit trees.

“When I first went by the house, I ran into a snake,” says Janis Wayne, the architect of the project. “When you get up on that hill, you’re in a different place. You’re not in downtown Decatur.”

Futch preserved that uniquely sheltered experience with nature by incorporating three openings to the outdoors: a terrace from the second-floor master bedroom, the original side porch and a patio off the media room for entertaining. The second floor also has a guest bedroom, cedar closet and laundry room, a must for Futch and her partner, Jennifer Gould, a child psychologist. “That was definitely important to us,” Futch says. It keeps them from carrying their clothes up and down the steps to the basement. They also love the central vacuum system that helps keep the dust and dander down, especially with two cats and two dogs sharing the home.

As with any EarthCraft renovation, the secrets that make the house an energy-efficient home go largely unseen. Icynene insulation in the newly gabled second floor and part of the basement keeps the house at a very consistent temperature, preventing the air system from working too hard to heat or cool. Futch incorporated a tankless water heater for instant hot water, which in the long term saves several gallons per shower that could have been wasted waiting for a conventional system to kick in. Also in the master bathroom, Soens installed radiant flooring, which will save on heating and cooling bills as well.

Soens and his team also sealed up the exposed earth from the dug-out basement, which can protect the couple from potential radon gas emissions from the granite pieces in the dirt. As a final addition, Futch replaced the windows on the first floor with ones that create a better air seal.

The original house was a modest starter home, with two small bedrooms, a living room, a dining room and a side porch. Through careful renovations, Futch and Gould now enjoy a media room, office space, a receiving room and a dining room on the first floor, and plenty of living space on the second story. Another fun upgrade is a sound system throughout the house that branches onto the terrace and patio. Now, with all of these additions, the couple enjoys a haven in the woods.

“It’s a quiet, well-insulated house,” Gould says. And the peace and environmental-mindedness from the inside extends to the outside. “We wake up and walk out onto the terrace, and all we see are trees,” Gould says. “It’s like living in a treehouse.”

An allergy-free home
Heather Angles used to buy a 12-pack of Kleenex every time she went to the grocery store. She has allergies to dust, dander, pollen and more. In her old townhouse, she used to keep a box of tissues in every room. But only recently did she buy her first box since moving into an EarthCraft house on East Paces Ferry with her husband, Tedd Sellers. And that was only because she had a coupon that was about to expire.

“In my old place, you’d be able to see the dust forming,” Angles says. “Here, literally, there is no dust.”

Sellers and Angles didn’t go searching for an EarthCraft house. In fact, they only stumbled onto the house while they were out with friends one night.

“We didn’t know what EarthCraft was until we saw this house. Now I think it’s awesome,” says Sellers, who works for GE. “It’s a responsible way to get a house, kind of like driving a responsible car. I don’t want to categorize myself as an environmentalist out of respect for them, but we only take what we need, and this was a good way to continue that into the house.”

The couple couldn’t have stumbled onto a more feature-packed home. The Buckhead house was renovated by Joe Maddox, owner of Maddox Management, as part of the New and Renew Showcase for the 2006 Southern Building Show Group, and Carl Seville consulted on the project. As a result, the house not only meets EarthCraft standards, but also meets ENERGY STAR criteria for an efficient home.

The whole house systems for air quality include:
••high-efficiency HVAC systems
• a central vacuum system
• low-E argon-filled insulated windows and doors
• Tyvek house wrapping
• window flashing systems
• energy-recovery ventilators and bath fans
• Icynene spray foam insulation

All of the appliances and operating systems are new and ENERGY STAR-approved. They include KitchenAid appliances, Metlund D’mand hot water pumps, Rinnai tankless hot water heaters and PEX plumbing supply piping, which separates your hot and cold water lines so no one gets burned if you flush the toilet while someone is showering.

All of these attributes are part of the hidden workings of an EarthCraft house, which Sellers and Angles didn’t realize would make their living experience even better. They did notice on their first visit to the house that the trim work indicated a very solidly built home.

“It’s a level of trim that you just don’t see. Everybody that walks into the house says the same thing,” says Sellers of the five-bedroom, five-bath home. “Nobody says it’s really big, they say it’s really well laid-out, everything is in the right place, there’s not a bunch of stuff you don’t need.” The house also doesn’t overwhelm the neighboring houses. “It’s this big, huge house, but it doesn’t make you want to look away,” Sellers says.

This is something that Maddox and his wife consciously try to achieve in every one of their renovations. “We have a strong interest in the neighborhood, and we really don’t like to build McMansions,” Maddox says. “We like to take a house and make it look like it’s been there for a long time. Usually, we make the enlargements to the back, and it’s done so you don’t realize it from the street.”

Maddox has such a strong interest in keeping the neighborhood cohesive because he bought the house from an old friend, and he lives only five houses down.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have really good neighbors, and we feel we have to be good neighbors, too,” he says. “So, every house we do, we try to keep the old stuff and make it blend with the new stuff so you feel like the house has been there forever, but it has all the new features.”

Part of making a house feel established is the peacefulness that both homeowners mentioned. “We built it as solidly as we would any house,” Maddox says. “But the difference is in the quietness of the house. When it’s quiet, there’s something about it that just gives you the feeling of strength. It’s like automobiles; you get out of a light car and shut the door and hear its tinniness and think, ‘that’s a cheap car.’ but if you get out of a car that’s well-insulated and shut that door, you think, ‘huh, that’s a solid car.’ ”

Another aspect that makes the house look and feel solid is the engineered floor systems that use about half the wood fiber of regular lumber and take less labor to install. You don’t get the same creakiness in the floorboards as you might with traditional old-growth lumber and installing practices.

Today, the house is so clean, quiet and allergen-free that Angles and Sellers are thinking about adding a new member to the family. “We’re thinking about getting a dog,” Angles says. “Before, we never would have contemplated one, especially with my allergies, but now I don’t notice it as much!”