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Snoqualmie Valley Record • June 27, 2012 • 7
Snoqualmie Valley
Home & Garden Roof revolution Carnation couple turns lifeless space into natural resource By Carol Ladwig Staff Reporter
It’s not quite finished yet, but the new front porch on Toby Maloy’s Carnation home is a great source of pride to him. Someday, he hopes, it will also be a sort of advertisement. Maloy, with the help of his wife, Jennifer Resler, and many friends and colleagues, recently built, filled and planted what may be Carnation’s first-ever green roof. It’s the first one permitted, anyway, and Maloy’s first, despite years of trying to convince clients to build one. “I’ve always been interested in green roofs,” said Maloy, a contractor and owner-operator of Seamus Woodworks. As a contractor, though, he couldn’t persuade people to, essentially, landscape their roofs. Maintenance concerns, he said, outweighed all the benefits, even though “green roofs do not cause leaks,” he said. See GREEN ROOF, 8 CarolLadwig/Staff Photo
Toby Maloy and his wife Jennifer Resler, survey their 270 square-foot green roof, the project of many weekends and work parties this summer. Toby, a self-employed contractor, convinced Jennifer to try this experiment when they began rebuilding the porch on their Carnation home. An assortment of sedums and other drought-tolerant succulents were left over from June 16, when Toby and Jennifer, with the help of their 3 year-old son Arrow, planted their new green roof. About 150 plants went onto the roof, including an almost-black type of clover, and, just for fun, chives. Arrow’s contribution was that “he slept through the entire planting,” Toby said, “—and that really helped us get it done!” added Jennifer.
To boldly go Green living on the blue when Snoqualmie’s Travis Boothe creates a minimized, floating hi-tech home By Seth Truscott Editor
Twenty years ago, Travis Boothe’s home was his sailboat. He never forgot the freedom and adventure of that lifestyle. Now, with life at a crossroads, the Snoqualmie resident is taking stock of what’s really important. For him, that’s an interesting, meaningful existence. He’s about to bring his home evironment into line with that ideal, in a dramatic way. Recalling his boating days, he’s about to set sail, trading his home and much of his belongings for a houseboat on Lake Washington. Boothe, a nine-year Valley and longtime trainer at Mount Si Sports + Fitness, watched his daughter Journie Kirdain graduate from Mount Si High School earlier this month. Now, with a house to himself, more than he can handle, he knew it was time for a change. “I’m on my own,” he said. “I can choose what I want to do.” See BOLDLY GO, 15
Above, Travis Boothe’s remodeled houseboat, with glass and wood paneling in plenty. Far left, fitness-oriented Boothe is a familiar sight biking in Snoqualmie.
8 • June 27, 2012 • Snoqualmie Valley Record
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GREEN ROOF FROM 7 However, he admits, “If you have a leak, you’ve just buried it in six inches of soil.” Green roofs must be built to be more sturdy than a typical roof —Maloy estimates his added another 35 to 40 pounds per square foot to the overall roof weight—but a properly-built green roof is actually less likely to leak. The roofing membrane installed to prevent leaks in any roof is, in a green roof, entirely protected from exposure to sunlight, Maloy said. It also should be a thicker material than typical membranes. That’s only one small benefit of a green roof, though. It also lets you incorporate nature into your home, cool the area beneath it in the summer and keep it warmer in the winter, while still upping the environmentally friendly factors, Maloy says. A green roof will help absorb rainwater and reduce stormwater runoff, while effectively reducing the impermeable surface area on your property. “That area is no longer productive in the ecosystem, once you plop your house down on it,” Maloy said. Officially, a green roof does not count toward reducing impermeable surface area, but Maloy is hopeful that changes as technology improves and green roofs become more popular. Green roofs aren’t a passing trend, he notes. “They go way back,” centuries in fact. Sod roofs and sod houses have been built for countless years in Scandinavian countries, and settlers from those countries brought them to the midwest, as well. “That’s kind of where it came from,” he said.
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Looking over what’s left of about $400 in plants for his green roof, Toby Maloy holds a bowl of some plant pieces that broke off during the planting. Many of the remnants can still grow, he said, and some large green roof projects are actually planted entirely with scraps like these. A special soil mix, 80 percent highly absorbent but lightweight materials like pumice and lava rock, 10 percent compost and 10 percent peat moss is the growth medium of choice for green roofs today, says Maloy. It also makes the roof easier to weed, which is a necessary part of the maintenance. For his own green roof, Maloy bought three yards of the blend from a commercial supplier, and used a lift to haul it up to his roof, bucket by bucket.
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BOLDLY GO FROM 7
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Reading the book “At Home: A Short History of Private Life” by Bill Bryson, Boothe realized that “What you need is heat, light, a place to restore yourself. A place to have a little bit of privacy.” Enter “The Enterprise,” a 270-square-foot boat moored near Seattle’s Seward Park. Boothe has been working on an extensive remodel since February. He’s nearly finished, and is ready to move in. Boothe found that with today’s technology, and a slimmed-down way of thinking, he can make a fine home on the waves. “I don’t have to use any more resources than are necessary,” he said. “I saw freedom in terms of not just being able to go wherever I want, but also the amount of possessions I have to carry with me.”
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about pirates, Star Trek,” he said. “I just wanted to get on that ship, whether it was a spaceship or a sailboat, and go to that place where you didn’t know what was going to happen. Where you made your own way.” His new home gives him the chance to try new things. He’s also interested in offering it as an interesting place for a global vacation home-trading network. When he found the 1974 KingsCraft boat, Boothe knew he’d have some work to do to reach his vision. “Everything had to go,” including the 1970s-era wood panelling everywhere and the purple-tinted windows. He gutted the craft. “It was basically an aluminum hull. There was nothing in it but glass and metal.” Working every weekend, Boothe replaced the old wood with marine-grade plywood covered with cedar for the walls and laminate flooring, insulating everything with modern materials. The appliances were replaced with modern, lowenergy units. The water heater is a green, instant model. A solar panel the size of a dinner table generates power. Light comes
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Snoqualmie Valley Record • June 27, 2012 • 17
engine, the craft draws only four inches of water, unloaded.
The essentials Stripping down his belongings to fit aboard the boat has been a bittersweet process. “I’m going through everything from old bank statements to artwork my daughter did,” he said. “It makes you remember how things were and the hopes and dreams you had at that point. Some played out and some didn’t. This is an opportunity to reconsider my life. “I realize that I want to offer something to people,” Boothe added. “What I can offer Journie right now is an opportunity to look at how we live differently instead of assuming you have to live in a house and have a typical lifestyle. You can make your day-to-day life more interesting. You can make it an adventure. You can have an interesting, full life without a lot of possessions.” Boothe emphasizes a more efficient lifestyle because he’s realized that today’s easy resources, like power or water, may not always last forever. “We live in a window of time when resources are very easy to come by,” he said. “I don’t think people really appreciate that.”
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