Wage clean air with the peace lily and other houseplants.
Places in a planned utopia
Belvedere development will sell a green vision
Can you create a sustainable community nearly out of thin air? Local development company Stonehaus is betting it can. Its 675-unit Belvedere development broke ground on May 10, beginning a five- to six-year buildout process. And when it’s done, it’s meant to look pretty different than your standard McMansion-lined subdivision.
 The Belvedere development is aiming for the Whole Foods crowd with an ambitious green agenda. |
Aside from the standard elements of mixed- use development—retail, offices and a range of housing types—are more unusual features, like the organic farm and “civic core.” The ambition for Belvedere is not only to employ new urbanist principles of fostering community (for example, by making it easy for residents to walk to a coffeeshop) but also to meet green-building standards with low-VOC paint, rainwater harvesting and other measures.
Before there was Belvedere the sustainable community, there was plain Belvedere. Stonehaus has owned the location since 1998, and its development plans have only turned green over the last few years as sustainability exploded into mainstream parlance.
Prices for the EarthCraft-certified homes will range widely, from cottages in the low to mid-$200s to single-family homes costing over $600,000. Presumably, all residents would share some desire to live in, as Stonehaus’s Chris Schooley puts it, “a neighborhood, not a subdivision.” Stay tuned to see how Belvedere shapes up.—Erika Howsare
All aboard!
Take the EarthCraft tour and get wise to green
What’s an earth-friendly house look like, anyway? Find out for yourself by joining the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association’s tour of a dozen local EarthCraft homes, June 9-10 and 16-17 from 1-5pm. Though they represent a range of housing types—from Habitat for Humanity projects to custom homes—all are being built to EarthCraft standards, meaning they’re certified as environmentally sound by a third-party organization.
 Eyeball this house and 11 other sustainable dwellings on this month’s EarthCraft tour. At many of them, you can peer inside still-unfinished walls. |
EarthCraft proponents often insist that their houses look no different than standard homes, so it’s handy that most of the houses will still be under construction—allowing you to peer inside walls at the features that make EarthCraft houses more healthy and energy-efficient (and are often made invisible by the time a house is finished). “It’s all about helping people understand what really goes into the bones of a house” and improves its efficiency, says Jay Willer of the BRHBA. Many of the techniques would be applicable to retrofits or remodeling projects, too, he says—not only brand-new houses.
Don’t consider yourself a tree-hugger? Go anyway, says Willer. “The thing that should strike home for anybody is that an EarthCraft home will deliver 30 to 50 percent greater energy efficiency than standard construction,” he says. “It’s the right thing to do environmentally, but the bottom line is it will save you money for as long as you live in that house.” For more info, visit www.brhba.org or call 973-8652.—E.H.
Building blocks
Workshop series will lay out green building basics
Need to catch up on the green building trend that’s got everybody talking? A new series of workshops has just begun at the Habitat Store—a helpful (and free!) beginning for anyone who’s building or just pondering an environmentally conscious home. The GreenMatters series started up last week with an introduction to the schedule for the next two years, which will include topics like supplies and furnishings, EarthCraft (an eco-building program), solar power, indoor air quality and yard design. Each workshop covers a separate issue, so you can choose a few or hit ‘em all.
Check out the GreenMatters website, www.greenmatters.info, for a detailed listing of topics and dates; next up is an explanation of residential energy audits on July 11. All workshops will be held at the Habitat Store on Harris Street from 6-7:30pm, but it’s not all notepads and pie charts: there’s a social hour prior to the class (5-6pm) and a half hour of visiting time afterwards. Contact Ryan Jacoby, the Habitat Store retail director, at 293-6331 with questions.—Katherine Cox
Easy to be hard
Know your materials: insulated concrete forms
A plethora of innovative building materials are entering the market as green building becomes a hotter topic. One of these is insulated concrete forms (ICFs): blocks of polystyrene filled with concrete and recycled steel, used to construct houses in place of traditional stick-built methods. Ren Angle, a spokesperson for Allied Concrete, says his company has seen the ICF market grow since entering it 8 years ago: “When we started we were doing seven or eight houses a year…We’re doing maybe 30 this year.”
 Ren Angle of Allied Concrete shows off the inside of an ICF, an energy-efficient material that’s gaining traction among green builders. |
What are the benefits? Angle says that ICF houses save up to half the energy used to heat and cool standard homes, offsetting their 6-7 percent greater construction cost. They have soundproofing properties, do not release harmful substances into the air, and look no different than standard homes.
Too, they save on trees—though they still represent plenty of manufacturing energy in the concrete, steel and petroleum-based polystyrene. John Semmelhack of the Charlottesville Community Design Center says this is probably only an environmental negative if a structure is not left standing for its full lifespan. “[ICF structures] can be incredibly long lasting,” he says. “They can last for hundreds of years”—making the initial energy investment in materials more worthwhile.—E.H.
Leaves of green
Put houseplants to work on indoor air quality
If you‘re like me and check The Green Guide as often as you text your best friend, then you may already have read the green living site’s article on how plants can improve indoor air quality. We were surprised to learn how the leafy ones act as your personal ecosystem’s filter.
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The full story can be found in Dr. B.C. Wolverton‘s handy book How to Grow Fresh Air. Here’s the crib notes version: plants can’t reduce indoor air pollution entirely, but they can clean up the minor contaminants that float about—including those from everyday products like paint, grocery bags, computer screens, and gas stoves. Harmful chemicals are also emitted from household materials like carpet, upholstery, and ceiling tiles. Even our breath releases air pollutants.
Some recommended cleansing plants include the Boston fern, the moth orchid, the peace lily, English ivy and the snake plant. If you have a standard-size home, distribute about 15 houseplants throughout to reduce air toxins.
As long as we’re talking plants and health: Some houseplants can be poisonous if kids or pets ingest them. Ask at the nursery which ones are nontoxic, or call the Blue Ridge Poison Center at 800-222-1222.—Jennifer Pullinger