Real Estate
R _ E High-performance homes Good sense and technology drive smart construction trend
By Trish Gannon
I
n 1939, Rose Dudley Scearce wrote to the Rural Electrification News about her farm’s recent connection to the electric grid: “Aren’t lights grand? I am thoroughly enjoying the many things that electricity has made possible, and I am enjoying life more because I have more time to spend visiting my friends, studying and reading, and doing the things that make life richer and fuller.” In the years since, those “things that make life richer” have multiplied in ways Rose Scearce might find surprising. Heating, cooling and lighting are the major energy end-users in residential housing, but “plug-load” has also become a significant factor in energy use – everything from dishwashers to HD TVs, curling irons to computers. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average U.S. home uses around 958 KWh of energy each and every month. In the 1970s, a short-lived oil embargo focused American attention on what had become a heavy reliance on energy use, and this new focus on energy quickly made its way into 72
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housing. Over the next 30 years, energy efficiency became tied to a growing concern with environment. Techniques from passive solar design, to super insulation, to compact fluorescent light bulbs slowly coalesced into a concept of “green building.” Today, taking energy use and environmental concerns to the cutting edge for home building is highperformance construction. None of that was in Brittany Longden’s mind when she bought a house. An area native, Longden, 32, had a good job at Coldwater Creek and, like most first-time home buyers, she was looking for a good investment and something she could call her own. When she saw The Cottage, the first house in a trio built in Sandpoint by Selle Valley Construction of Ponderay, she knew she had found her dream. The Craftsman-inspired design appealed to her so she made an offer. She loved the design so much, in fact, that when another buyer made a cash offer, she willingly stepped out of the deal and, instead, let Selle Valley
WINTER 2013