Column #3 The Eco Mansion and the end of Green Building
Snufulufugus. Atlantis. Pegasus. The Eco Mansion. Are they all myth, or do any of these things really exist? The first, second and third most likely in lore, legend, and sesame street only, but the last one has distinct possibilities of becoming a reality here on the east end. The trend over the past twenty years has been to build bigger and more complex homes, with the size of your home, somehow attesting to the level of financial success you have reached. Nowhere has this been more prevalent than in the Hampton’s, where the average house size is close to 4000 sq ft! (The national average is 2500 sq ft.) The exclusive resort where weekenders have arm-wrestles over the size of their Farrell, or the bedroom count of their Fleetwood. In this land of excess it would be ignorant and naive to think that the ultra successful will all at once somehow become cognizant of their environmental footprints and start building two and three bedroom houses that are respectful of energy, however if all large homes are built with certain environmentally sensitive principles in mind, a tremendous amount can be achieved for all.
I know the Greenies will argue that a couple or a family of four certainly doesn’t need a 6500 sq ft weekend home and for most reasons they are right, but it is important to recognize the resulting benefits of a 6500 or even 10,000 sq ft Eco Mansion. While many green building components are more expensive than their traditional counterpart, this is only because they are not as widely used and manufactured. Their required use by those who can afford them will only make them less expensive to end-users as a whole. Manufacturers need the use of green products to increase in order to be incentivized to expand their production. If everyone nationwide who chose to build a home over 3500 sq ft had to use green building products, renewable energy systems and energy efficient design techniques, their use of these practices would make them affordable and available to all those building houses which are closer to the national average. With green building products being used at all socioeconomic levels, the almost certain outcome of this chain of events would be the end of what we term green building. Why? Because all we call green building would simply become known as ‘building’. The wasteful construction and design practices we currently use would become obsolete and homeowners wouldn’t have the choice of whether to build a green home or not…. all homes would be green. And this eventuality can only be made a reality if we start by turning all Mansions into Eco Mansions.
This is exactly what the town of Southampton is currently trying to do by implementing a change in their mandatory HERS Rating. A HERS Rating involves an analysis of a home’s construction plans and onsite inspections. Based on the home’s plans, the Home Energy Rater uses an energy efficiency software package to perform an energy analysis of the home’s design. This analysis yields a projected, pre-construction HERS Index. Upon completion of the plan review, the rater will work with the builder to identify the energy efficiency improvements needed to ensure the house will meet ENERGY STAR performance guidelines. The rater then conducts onsite inspections, typically including a blower door test (to test the leakiness of the house) and a duct test (to test the leakiness of the ducts). Results of these tests, along with inputs derived from the plan review, are used to generate the HERS Index score for the home. As of October 1, the town will be requiring homes over 6500 sq ft to obtain a HERS rating of 95. This almost certainly forces those building homes of this magnitude to use photovoltaic solar panel systems, geothermal heating and cooling, and solar hot water for domestic water and pool heating, in other words, to build them responsibly. What the Southampton Building Dept has done, and hopefully other municipalities will soon follow, is issue a wake up call to all those involved in the building industry; architects, builders, supply houses and owners. Either learn how to do things responsibly or you will soon find yourselves part of an old and not so popular guard. As Bob Dylan immortalized in The Times they Are A Changin, “You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.”
So the Eco Mansion is not only a good thing, it’s a Great thing! Hooray for Southampton! Hooray to the era of the Eco Mansion, and Hooray for the end of Green Building!
