Ed Begley Jr.’s
GREEN HOME
MAKEOVER Saving Energy and Cutting Waste is a Family Affair by Brita Belli
E
d Begley, Jr., widely regarded as America’s most environmentally aware actor—the one by which other green celebrities are measured— has never tired of the years of effort he and his family have made in making their home as green as possible. But this past year, his wife, Rachelle Carson-Begley, had had enough. She isn’t fed up with turning off lights or relying on solar power—she’s just grown weary of the home’s tiny closets and sharing one small bathroom between two adults and a soon-to-beteenage daughter, 11-year-old Hayden. While Rachelle played the disgruntled foil to the over-achieving eco-cop Ed on their former television show, Living with Ed—which aired for three seasons, first on HGTV and then on Planet Green— her problems with their modest 1936
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home in Studio City, California, are those to which most homeowners can relate. For example, cramped rooms make entertaining difficult. The home’s 1,600 square feet of main living space (plus an additional 600-square-foot room above the garage) does not easily accommodate the fundraisers the Begleys regularly host; not to mention the camera crews that routinely invaded the family’s day-to-day lives to capture the couple’s good-natured squabbles over everything from composting to conserving water and energy. For seven years, the family even ran a nontoxic cleaning business—Begley’s Best—out of their garage, adding to the mêlée. “Even if it were designed differently, it would be better,” Rachelle explains. “It’s just that it’s a 1936 house. Yes, it’s
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efficient, but it would be great to be able to incorporate everything that’s going on now in eco building and be a recipient of all the latest benefits—why not?” So, the Begleys are moving. After years of documenting how to retrofit an older house to maximize use of solar energy for electricity, heating, cooling and hot water, family recycling and rainwater catchment, they are planning to sell their modest abode and build a modern, 3,000-square-foot home a mile away. Ed emphasizes that the move is a major concession on his part. “I made it crystal clear when Rachelle and I were dating: ‘This is the home I plan to be buried in. I will never move.’ And I said it repeatedly from 1993 until about a year and a half ago; now I’m going against that.”