Shelter Winter 20202

W I N T E R 2 02 0 PUBLISHED BY

Telluride Local Media

From ‘Flintstones’ to Fabulous A Miner Miracle Place of Well-Being Poppers, Perfected Building by Example

SUN N Y FA MILY H O M E

P R I VAC Y & VIE WS

L UXURY RE TREAT

Remodeled / 3 Beds / 1.64 Acres 191 Trunk Road - Fall Creek $697,000

38 Acres / Wilson Views / Private Setting Lot 21 - Little Cone Ranch $299,000

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QUIE T EN CL AV E

P R I VATE RE TRE AT

D RAMATIC VIEWS

.08 Acres / Walk to Downtown / Views Lot 19 Le Ranch - Ridgway $90,000

36 Acres / 180 s.f. w/ Loft & Living Area Little Lake 3 - Hastings Mesa $258,000

50 Acres / 300ยบ Views / End-of-Road Lot 13 - Hastings Mesa $625,000

Polly. S e a r ch Tellurid eRealEstate. co m

HEART. INSTINCT. PRINCIPLES Find it in Telluride. Choose it in your Broker.

T O P -O F - T H E - W O R L D

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IN DU S T R I A L C H I C

P E AC E FUL SE TTI NG

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Owner / Broker

plychee@tellurideproperties.com | 970.369.5333 237 South Oak Street @ the Telluride Gondola

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A

full-time dedicated real estate broker since 1998 and a Telluride resident since 1990, Ken Grodberg provides his clients with the highest level of service and expertise. He represents all types of properties for both buyers and sellers.

345 WEST PACIFIC AVE, UNIT B—MLS# 37666, $6,500,000

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114 VICTORIA DRIVE—MLS# 33420, $6,500,000

114 AUTUMN LANE—MLS# 35578, $7,650,000

CONTENTS

shelter FROM ‘FLI NTS TONES’ TO FABULOUS

By Samantha Tisdel Wright A log home gets a new look in Mountain Village.

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DROPP I NG I N

B U IL D IN G BY E XAMP L E

By Tanya Ishikawa Designing and constructing super-insulated structures one home at a time.

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By Leslie Vreeland Bears take shelter for winter in the best places they can. Sometimes, the humans find them.

40

A PL ACE OF WELL-BEI NG

By Leslie Vreeland

A ‘M IN E R’ M IR ACL E

By Leslie Vreeland A small miner’s cabin on Telluride’s main street is just the beginning of a spacious, luminous abode.

44

The Virginia Placer project is more than an affordable place to live. It also promotes good health.

54

T H E E CO - LO G CO N U N D RU M

By Samantha Tisdel Wright

A MORE PERF EC T POP PER

By Ari LeVaux Turn up the heat: A preferred peppery treat gets even better.

72

It’s not easy building green. Our writer navigates the complexities.

64

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EDITOR’S LETTER

e’re under no illusion at Shelter: People pick up this magazine to look at splashy homes, and naturally, you will find them in this issue.

The biggest of all is right on the cover; it’s also the first story in the magazine. You barely have to search through these pages to find it.

I hope you will take the time to peruse the rest of Shelter, though, because this issue is about more than big homes. It’s about big ideas. For example, we have not one, but two takes on building green in these pages (one story wasn’t nearly enough for all our writers had to say). In “Building by Example,” Tanya Ishikawa conducts a Q&A with local contractor Brad Wallis, whose specialty is super-insulated, energyefficient ‘passive’ houses. Wallis is a convert to the concept — he had another career before he became a builder. His approach is anything but passive when it comes to the importance of conserving energy and saving the planet. We all believe in that, right? Yet people worry that building this way will cost more money, or be more of a hassle. In his interview with Tanya, Wallis lays it out there: Yes, ‘passive’ homes cost about 10-12 percent more to construct than conventional houses, “but you can recapture that in about seven to seven-and-a-half years.”

Wallis takes the long view; he is building for future generations. “When I think about the future, and I try to anticipate what oil or gas might cost 50 or 75 years from now, these homes are going to do what they’ve been designed to do no matter what energy prices occur,” he says.

Samantha Tisdel Wright offers an in-depth look at another aspect of ecologically-conscientious construction.

In “The Eco-Log Conundrum” (page 64), she explores the world of “certified” lumber — building materials from sustainably managed forests. Alas, such materials aren’t so easy to procure (and that is putting it mildly). Samantha’s story, which originally appeared online in the San Juan

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Independent, has been updated and considerably expanded for our pages. It is a real tear-out-and-keep piece for anyone navigating the world of eco-building, and concludes with expert advice on how to build as energy-efficient a home as possible.

Samantha’s also the author of a tale about a big log house in Mountain Village that got a radical redesign, in “From ‘Flintstones’ to Fabulous.” Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find a story about another big idea: increasingly, scientific studies are showing that the built environment influences human health.

The architects (and town planning commissions) who understand this are incorporating such “wellness” concepts into their building projects. One example is right here in Telluride: Charles Cunnifee Architects just won a Design of Distinction Award from the American Institute of Architecture/Colorado for its Virginia Placer affordablehousing project, which prioritizes the health and well-being of residents. “A Place of Health,” the story about that project, is on page 54. Local architect Luke Trujillo of Trulinea had a big idea: to expand a tiny miner’s cabin on Telluride’s main street into a spacious, airy, light-filled abode with surrounding views of the box canyon in “A ‘Miner’ Miracle” (page 44).

Finally, we turn from big ideas to big cold, and how to warm up this time of year. Humans aren’t the only ones doing that. Bears are famous for tucking into cozy dens, and for her work with Colorado Parks & Wildlife, wildlife biologist Heather Johnson toured hundreds of them. We tell the story on page 40.

When it comes to turning up the heat, turn to Ari LeVaux, who’s perfected his recipe for stuffed jalapenos. “Hot peppers and cheese is a winning combination,” he says. “The fat in the cheese embraces the violence of the capsaicin, absorbing the heat with its creaminess.” Ari’s take on the jalapeno popper, a thinly veiled, diminuitive version of the much-loved chile relleno, is on page 72.

Here’s to the chilly season — and to chiles.

Leslie

shelter PUBLISHER Andrew Mirrington ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Maureen Pelisson EDITOR Leslie Vreeland COPY EDITOR Leslie Vreeland CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rick Bickhart

OPEN NIGHTLY 5 – 10 CONTRIBUTORS Ralph Barnie, Aubree Dallas, Ruth Harris, Tanya Ishikawa, Jim Kehoe, Ari LeVaux, Eric Ming, Whit Richardson, J.T. Thomas, Leslie Vreeland, Samantha Tisdel Wright

Telluride,, Colorado

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER Dusty Atherton ADVERTISING SALES Lea Battey, Aspen Coleman, Jenny Klein CIRCULATION Telluride Delivers ON THE COVER 101 Autumn Lane, Mountain Village (Photo by Ralph Barnie Photography) Shelter is published twice a year by Telluride Local Media LLC, 307 E. Colorado Avenue, Telluride, Colorado 81435.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

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CONTRIBUTORS

shelter Tanya

Ari’s representative

TANYA ISHIKAWA has been sharing stories through print, online media and video throughout her career, starting at a public relations firm in Tokyo, Japan.

Her longest client relationships are with the Colorado Nursery & Greenhouse Association, Denver Urban Spectrum, and Boulder Magazine. In addition to writing for Telluride Newspapers and its special publications, her work time is mostly consumed by the Uncompahgre Watershed Partnership and Ridgway Area Chamber of Commerce.

JIM KEHOE is an artist as well as an architect, whose calligraphy-inspired paintings are represented by a gallery in Taos. His most recent focus is on the biological and cognitive effects of the built environment “with an emphasis on design approaches which have positive, lasting effects on our health and well-being.”

ARI LEVAUX lives in Missoula, Montana, where he writes a column on all things food called “Flash in the Pan.” When he isn’t penning pieces about pomegranates, perfecting recipes for jalapeno poppers or addressing piecrust paranoia, he is probably out hunting an elk, which he prefers to do on skis in winter.

Leslie

Jim

Eric

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Contributing photographer ERIC MING lives in Ridgway and frequents the Four Corners backcountry as much as possible through his love of climbing, skiing, writing and photography.

LESLIE VREELAND pivots for a living, switching between roles as a writer for Telluride Newspapers most of the year and the editor of Shelter twice annually.

She divides her time between Ridgway and Telluride as well, ever captivated by the shifting light, shadows and colors that define and redefine the landscape.

SAMANTHA TISDEL WRIGHT lives and writes in Silverton, Colo., from a house whose wallpaper is apparently trendy again. Updating and re-working the interstitial tissue of a previously published story for this issue of Shelter magazine (“The Eco-Log Conundrum,” page 64) gave her new appreciation for the challenges that interior designers and architects face on big remodeling jobs (“From ‘Flintstones’ to Fabulous,” page 18).

Samantha

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FROM

‘Flintstones’ TO

Fabulous

>>>

PHOTOS BY RALPH BARNIE PHOTOGRAPHY

A Log Home Gets a New Look in Mountain Village

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At a rambling log home in Mountain Village that was built in 1995, architect-and-interior-designer duo Peter Lundeen and Trevor James of FUSE Architecture + Interior leaned into the log and ditched the outdated elements, fusing rustic and modern into a new realm of design.

BY SAMANTHA TISDEL WRIGHT

T

he year was 1995.

Monica Lewinsky became a White House intern. Grateful Dead singer Jerry Garcia died. Kendall Jenner and the public version of the World Wide Web were born.

And in the newly incorporated Town of Mountain Village near Telluride, a brand new house was built at 101 Autumn Lane.

Like many of its counterparts in the neighborhood, this rambling, L-shaped house was made of logs. Lots and lots of logs. Big ones. Stained pinkish-orange with grayish chinking.

There was nothing subtle about this house. It had location, location, location.

A wall-sized fireplace clad in smooth, round river rock. Antler chandeliers, and a

white buffalo trophy above the front door.

A cavernous kitchen with a heavy black hibachi hood. A party hot tub on the deck outside. Ski-in, ski-out access right on Telski’s Double Cabin run. Enormous picture windows. And views. Truly colossal, in-your-face, bodacious mountain views of Dallas Peak, Mill Creek Basin and the wildly lovely San Sophia Ridge.

Views like that never go out of style.

Houses like that do.

So when Don and Amy Smith came along to look at this house in 2015, the first thing they thought was: “Dated.”

“It had some things we vehemently disliked, like the old river stone and the lovely shade of pinkish,” said Don. “But when we opened the front door and saw the views and the ski access, I was instantly hooked.”

It took Amy a little longer to come around to the idea that they could turn the house into what they wanted. But they loved the location, and they loved the views. So they bought the house — logs and all.

Based in Pennsylvania, the Smiths frequented Telluride over the next year, to get to know their new mountain retreat.

It had its quirks, for sure.

“You’d get half a mile of walking in before you’d get breakfast made because the kitchen was laid out so bad,” said Don. “It was a horrible layout,” Amy agreed.

“And it was very dark.”

The outdated energy of the house even followed them outside. The back deck had these old log railings with chunky pillars. “We would sit on the lawn behind the deck because you >>>

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The living room features colossal picture windows framing views of the San Sophia Ridge across the valley.

The fireplace in the living room was tamed by introducing blackened steel design elements and replacing a riot of river cobbles with soothing Telluride Gold stone veneer. Dark-stained logs with lighter chinking throughout the house evoke the cozy feeling of a historic log cabin.

>>>

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“But when we opened the front door and saw the views and the ski access, I was instantly hooked.�

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couldn’t see through the railings,” Don said. “Then the sprinklers would come on, and things like that. It was almost like camping out.”

Living in the house for that first year was awkward, but it helped the Smiths figure out what they liked, and what they wanted to change. For the most part, they realized, they appreciated its mountain look. They just wanted it to be refreshed and modernized, but not to the point where it became sterile.

To achieve this tricky balance, they

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In the kitchen and dining room, the original stone floor remains in place. The ceiling height was dropped by a foot to cozy and brighten the space. Pumpkin-shaped corbels on the massive log pillars were trimmed away. A tea-green finish on the cabinets creates a pleasing counterpoint to the log and evokes a farmhouse ambience, reflecting the Smiths’ Pennsylvania roots.

turned to architect Peter Lundeen and interior designer Trevor James at FUSE Architecture + Interior.

BRINGING OUT THE BONES Many of the choicest lots in Mountain Village, like 101 Autumn Lane, were constructed upon in the 1990s, at a time when traditional log was all the rage.

Today, this rustic look has fallen out of favor — hard. And there is a backlog of outsized cabins on the market.

“It’s sort of like geology,” said Town of Mountain Village planner Sam Starr. “There is a stratification that will tell you the different eras. You can drive down Adams Ranch Road and get a real sense of the history of Mountain Village just by the architecture. The large-lot, large log homes, the smaller homes with that brick base we started requiring as part of the 2013 land use ordinance, and the even smaller and more modern homes that represent the current architectural demand.”

The family enjoys spending time in the bar and gameroom in the evenings.

Bathrooms throughout the house received a sophisticated update.

Over the past few years, Lundeen and James have made a name for themselves breathing new life into the log abodes that represent the Precambrian level of Mountain Village’s architectural strata.

When it comes to log, they know their stuff. And their first rule of thumb is to work with what you’ve got.

Many of these early log structures got their start as kit homes. Builders would then reconfigure them on site to make the most of a particular view or other aspect of the lot. This tended to work

well for some parts of the house, but created a logjam out of others.

“They weren’t typically laid out in the best possible way,” Lundeen allowed.

“They’ve got weird shapes and weird, almost leftover spaces. You really have to know what to change and what you can’t change to improve what is there.”

And the one thing that you really can’t change? The log.

“It’s there, whether you like it or not,” James pointed out. “You can’t hide from it. It’s got a strong character. It can be

really sort of fabulous when it does play nicely with modern materials or textural materials that are there to complement, rather than fight or hide.”

Their second rule of thumb is to look for the opportunities that lurk within the drafty spaces. “Some of these homes have special features that you won’t get again,” said James, like choice slope-side lots and giant windows that wouldn’t be allowed under Mountain Village’s current building regulations. >>>

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And the one thing that you really can’t change? The log.

“It’s there, whether you like it or not. You can’t hide from it. It’s got a strong character.”

The original log stairs were replaced by sleek wooden treads on a blackened steel frame.

Their third rule of thumb is to listen to their clients.

“You have to figure out what they are wanting,” Lundeen said. “We are very particular about what we key in on. We try to listen and best present our ideas, versus being egomaniacs and saying, ‘It has to be this way.’”

“Humor helps,” James added. “You can describe something as Jimmy Durante’s nose, or Frankenstein’s forehead. It gets the point across, but it’s not so serious they can’t chuckle and go, ‘Oh yeah. I see that.’”

LOGS AND ENDS

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As far as James and Lundeen are concerned, it’s not so much the log that is the problem with these houses. It’s the whole ’90s aesthetic that goes along with it.

“With a lot of these houses, the joke is ‘lipstick on a pig,’” Lundeen said. “But it’s more, ‘How can you really distill it down?’”

At 101 Autumn Lane, there was an awful lot of stuff that needed distilling.

All that river rock, for starters. The Barney- Rubble-era entryway. The chunky log railings and heavy stairs. The antler chandeliers. The pumpkin-like corbels atop the wooden pillars in the kitchen, the scalloped window frames, the odd “knuckle spaces” created where log joints came together, and all the other the funny, fussy bits of superfluous decoration, for lack of a better word, adding up to the architectural equivalent of Jennifer Aniston’s “Rachel” haircut: Perfect for the 90s, but unsettling to the millennial aesthetic.

Or to use a metaphor from an even earlier era of television, “It sort of felt very ‘Flintstones,’” James said. “When you are thinking about the river rock and the giant logs.”

There was also the matter of scale.

“When everyone was thinking about the log cabin in the woods, they were thinking of something that is about 2,000 square feet,” Lundeen said. “That’s the structural sense that got translated into these ‘Mountain Lodge’ estates. They are up around 8,000 square feet, and the vernacular used to build them was almost at odds with what they became.”

Rather than apologizing for the logs and the scale, Lundeen and James worked with general contractor Allan Ranta and Circa Interiors designer Cindy Eckman to

In the loft/bridge area overlooking the living room, diaphanous metal railings let in the light and the views. Antler chandeliers gave way to more artful and sophisticated contemporary counterparts.

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strip the Smiths’ house back to its bones.

They made the logs darker, to evoke the cozy feeling of a historic log cabin, sandblasted out the icky putty-gray chinking, and replaced it with new chinking that had a cleaner ivory hue.

And all of a sudden, the logs came to life, because they were closer to the original vernacular.

“Instead of fighting the log home, we were celebrating it and looking at where it came from,” James explained. “That then allowed us to bring more modern materials in places like bathrooms, that were a counterpoint to the rusticity.”

When it came to cabinetry, the Smiths opted for smooth tea-green and taupe painted farmhouse finishes, creating a cleaner, brighter foil for the heavy texture of the logs, a recurring “story” that was told throughout the house.

“It was finding a balance of not too sharp and modern, not covering up the log, working one with the other so you’ve got a comfortable mix,” James said.

In some places, Lundeen and James made no changes at all, other than updating the materials. And in other places, they prescribed log surgery to clean up the lines, dramatically opening up the volume and the space.

Some of the changes they made were counter-intuitive, like dropping the ceiling by about a foot in the cavernous kitchen, “which you never do,” said James. “Those sort of moves can be a little terrifying.”

But in this case, the dropped drywall ceiling and new pendant light fixtures cozied things up. They also had raised the ambient light level and chased away the drafty, light-swallowing, oppressive feeling that had previously pervaded the space.

The entire fireplace was re-designed to make it seem less massive, replacing the dated river cobbles with a Telluride Goldstone veneer and modern, contrasting blackened steel. “It was this tiny fireplace and huge chimney before. So we changed the size of the fireplace to be in keep-

ing with the size of the chimney, and reduced the size of the chimney to make the loft and the living room feel better,” Lundeen said.

The massive, primordial log lintel above the fireplace was repurposed as a bench outside and replaced by a slimmer contemporary counterpart. The jetted, party-sized hot tub was jettisoned, replaced by a clean, inviting terrace with a fire pit that seamlessly integrates with the wild back yard.

Extremely dated, arched windows got “rationalized”, as James put it, to let in more light. “Instead of having these petals at the top, you’ve just got a straight line that is clean,” he explained. “You’ve got more light that comes in, because it isn’t cut off at the corners.”

(All arch elements throughout the house were removed, a simple modification that had a huge impact — like trimming a bad haircut.)

The log stairs rising ponderously from the lofty great room to a bridge/sitting >>>

In the master bedroom, an accent wall is decorated with a repurposed fur rug.

room area above were replaced by sleek wooden treads on a blackened steel metal frame.

All of these updates were impactful.

But a surprisingly large part of changing the feeling of the house came from swapping out interior and exterior log railings for diaphanous metal slats, allowing the space to breathe, and letting through the views and the light.

In architecture, as in fashion, things come and go. And sometimes, they come back again (like the great wallpaper comeback of 2019). But as for those log railings, “I don’t see this sort of thing ever coming back as a trend again,” James groaned. “It’s sort of like the bellbottoms of architecture.”

Finally, the house received a new roof, new appliances, new light fixtures and furniture and new, state-of-the-art mechanical systems to see it well into the 21st century.

The cumulative effect of all these updates: a refreshingly elegant, spacious yet cozy mountain retreat where the

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A guest room that used to be clad entirely in faux denim has been transformed into a serene and welcoming space. Fine art landscape photography by Kane Scheidegger adorns walls throughout the house.

Smiths, their three grown children and daughter-in-law, and their many houseguests enjoy spending time together.

There’s plenty of space for everyone to have their privacy, and plenty of space to gather in.

“The TV is never on,” Don said. And the views are always dialed in.

The river rock and antler chandeliers have been banished forever. But the white buffalo trophy still looms above the front door (at the kids’ insistence) like a guardian spirit from another era, watching over the people who shelter here now.

Lundeen and James have made several presentations to local realtors about the project, which was showcased in a recent issue of the glossy real estate trade magazine Truly Telluride. The house at 101 Autumn Lane has become the Mountain Village poster child for “loving log again.”

FROM HOUSE TO HOME The year was 2019.

At the White House, President Trump was on a Tweeting tear. Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter died. Kendall Jenner was famous for no reason at all. And in Mountain Village, the Smiths’ newly remodeled house was a featured venue during the prestigious Telluride Art + Architecture Weekend, a movable feast of art, performance, architecture and design, paired with delectable bites, craft cocktails and fine wine.

Although buildings have been reused and remodeled throughout time, the process of doing so has rarely been treated as an art form. But on the summery day that the Art + Architecture tour descended on 101 Autumn Lane, the art form of the remodel was honored.

At the appointed hour, guests took their seats in the back yard, craft cocktails in hand, as four barefoot dancers with the Telluride Dance Collective performed on four different decks — as if on ministages — on the back side of the house.

Finally the dancers descended and danced together on the new terrace below. One of them read a poem aloud that they had written about the house.

The title of the poem was, “What is Home?”

Cozy amongst the logs, the Smiths think they’ve got that figured out.

“What is Home?”

Written and performed at Telluride Art + Architecutre Weekend 2019

by Erika Curry-Elrod, Emily Osan, Stephanie Osan, Kelsey Trottier Home is the space you retreat into, curl up in, bury yourself under covers, hide, relax, then unfurl.

Home is for dancing naked alone.

Home is the stillness and love, deeply felt, comfort.

Home is knowing you belong.

Home is wrapped up in the embrace of your dears.

Home is the launching point.

The safe space you’re pulled to, then depart from for adventures.

Home is where your plants grow.

Home is where your heart grows.

Home is where you become brave.

Home is where you plant the seeds of your dreams, home is where you allow your roots to ground, the soil you return to and the nest you leave from.

Home is a sense of groundedness that drifts with every move undertaken.

Home is an ever-evolving thing that exists within, a stillness of feeling completely in the moment, in the right place at the right time.

Home is feeling connected, feeling known, feeling seen.

Home is familiar faces while moving with community.

Home can only be created from your own soul, heart, hands.

Home can never be taken.

Home can only be lived, not built.

Is a house a home?

What happens if the walls crumble?

Can you find home without and within?

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Building by Example 32

A Passive House in Hudson, New York

by BarlisWedlick Architects of New York City. (Photo by Peter Aaron, copyright Peter Aaron/Esto)

A N I N T E R V I E W B Y TA N YA I S H I K AWA

Designing and constructing super-insulated structures one home at a time

S

itting in an unfinished second floor room with hammers pounding and saws buzzing below us, the early fall sunshine streaming through the tall windows, Brad Wallis of BTB Construction shared why he is so passionate about his late-life vocation — the first blue-collar job he has ever held. He admits he doesn’t make as much money as he used to, because now the focus is on health and well-being, problem solving, and to paraphrase Wallace Stegner “to build a society to match its scenery,” which is a pretty tall order when we live in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Wallis gets a lot of phone calls from people who want homes built in Ouray and

Houses with high ceilings and almost any design can meet Passive House standards as long as every surface that connects to the outside — walls, windows, doors and roof — are built with high thermal efficiency that limits heat and air flow.

(Photo by Joseph Sohm)

San Miguel counties. He has to explain that his three-person crew specializes in a very specific type of building called Passive House. He tells the prospective clients that the building method is a good option not only for them as individuals but also for the broader community and the planet.

He doesn’t try to convince them; he just lets them decide if it matches their dreams for their future abodes.

WHAT IS PASSIVE HOUSE? It is kind of a misnomer, because in America a passive house was a specific type of solar design in the early to mid ‘90s, and this is not that at all. Passive House is a super-insulated design criteria developed in Germany. It’s been very popular in that area of Europe for

probably 15-20 years, but it has not really caught on here in the States because the windows and doors that meet its guidelines were not made here.

You had to import windows and doors all the way from Europe, which is problematic cost-wise as well as from a logistics standpoint. If you get the wrong size of window, it takes months to get the right one and that’s our whole building season in Ridgway.

When I found out about Passive House, the website was just rudimentarily translated from German. Now the Passive House Institute of America has been established, and they provide online resources and official forms to have a home certified as Passive House.

Also, in the last five years, the necessary >>>

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windows and doors have become available from several major manufacturers, one of which is Alpen in Boulder.

HOW EFFICIENT IS THE SUPER INSULATION AT KEEPING HOUSES AT A COMFORTABLE TEMPERATURE? When Passive House first came to the United States, it was able to offer a thermal efficiency that was a 95% reduction in energy use compared to a typical stick-built house. The good news from a societal standpoint is that now our building codes have increased enough that this method now offers a 75% reduction.

So, it’s not as amazing as it used to be, but it’s still pretty amazing. When you talk about cars being maybe 10% more efficient, well, we’re talking about 75%.

That’s a big difference.

WHAT MAKES THE HOUSE SUPER INSULATED?

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If you look at a double-pane window from Home Depot, off the shelf, or at one of the local suppliers, the U-factor — which is a combination of resistance to heat flow and air flow — is in the range of .32-.35. Meanwhile, I am building

Above, FoxHall Barn and, on the right, FoxHall, a pair of Passive House projects designed by BarlisWedlick Architects. The barn and house are located on the same property (though a good distance away from each other) in Ancram, New York. (Copyrighted photos by Reto Guntli)

“It’s the right thing to do because it reduces the demand for oil and gas on a global level and that has such a large impact.” houses with windows where the average is .19 and the lower the number, the more efficient the window, so it’s more than double the insulation value of standard windows. They’re actually not that much more expensive than good, high quality windows from another source, but they are a lot more efficient.

Then in terms of the criteria, the rule of thumb is that basically you have to have a minimum of R50 in the walls, R60 in ceilings, and R40 in floors. There are lots of ways to accomplish that, in terms of building design, products and so forth.

This is one of my points: we know how to be energy efficient. This is not smoke and mirrors. This is not cold fusion.

There’s nothing that I do that is really out of the ordinary, but it’s just a systematic approach to improving and having thermal efficiency be a primary goal. From the ground up, we design the house

specifically to do what we want it to do.

The house that we are sitting in right now far exceeds the guidelines. The ceiling is R65, the walls are R54, and the floor system is probably closer to R50. As we built several of these in western Colorado, we have refined our process to dial it in and make it as efficient as we can.

ARE HOMES BUILT WITH PASSIVE HOUSE MORE EXPENSIVE? Basically, in the houses that we’ve built here, the cost to build a super-insulated structure is about 10% to 12% above average costs. You can recapture that in about seven to seven and a half years. Obviously, that depends on what the energy prices do in that time frame. If the prices go up, it would reduce the ROI period.

Economically, even if you are a bean counter, it does make sense, as long as you are going to live in the home seven years or longer. Besides that, it’s the right thing to do because it reduces the demand for oil and gas on a global level, and that has such a large impact. My understanding is that space heating and cooling is the number one demand for oil and gas throughout the world, not just for the United States but everywhere. So,

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if we were able to reduce that by 75%, what that means to me is our existing reserves and known reserves then suddenly, instead of running out in 15 or 20 years, may last a hundred years or more.

DON’T THE COST SAVINGS INCREASE OVER TIME AS ENERGY PRICES INEVITABLY GO UP? From my perspective, when you plant a tree, you don’t go in the house and get your lemonade and sunglasses. You plant a tree because you know not only you will enjoy it but that generations of people will enjoy it. These houses we build will continue to function as designed for at least another 93 years, which is four or five generations. When I think about the future, and I try to anticipate what oil or gas might cost 50 or 75 years from now, these homes are going to do what they’ve been designed to do no matter what energy prices occur.

Maybe somebody will find a magic, glowing rock that will meet all of our energy demands and this will all be irrelevant, but I don’t think that’s very likely.

Right now, is it worth it to spend the extra money in order to save $100 or >>> Two local homes built with Passive House design: above, a 1,250-square-foot home in Ridgway, and below, a 3,500-square-foot house on Log Hill, outside town.

(Photos by Eric Ming)

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$150 a month on your heating in the winter? I don’t know that it is, but realistically if the codes were adjusted upwards and it was required, it would make a tremendous difference in terms of the demand for oil and gas. Basically, it really makes a difference when it’s taken in the context of what our demands are on our limited resources. From a big picture perspective, we know how to do it but we just don’t have the will.

DO YOU THINK INSULATION REQUIREMENTS NEED TO BE INCREASED IN BUILDING CODES?

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Yes, because I think ultimately the only thing that really motivates us is the money. I think that’s why it’s been so popular in Europe, because they have been paying higher prices for their electricity and gas for a long time, so it became more of an economic necessity for them. Here, we have a lot of government subsidy in our energy sources.

I don’t know that we’ll ever have codes that would meet this criteria until such time as either energy prices go up high enough or it becomes clear that the other hidden costs of oil and gas should be taken into account. But as long as

energy is cheap, I don’t think you are going to get people to accept codes that are this strict.

I’m not aware of any state or city that requires this level of insulation and performance. Many of them encourage it, and they have increased their codes especially in the last 10 years. Belgium is the only place that I am aware of that has adopted this criteria as their minimum building code. If the United States or China were to do that, it would have a tremendous impact on the world.

I look at things in terms of supply and demand, economics 101, basically. All I hear about oil and gas is it’s all about supply: we want more. We need more and more. Why don’t we talk about demand? If we know how to build a house and it’s going to use 3/4 less energy at a relatively low front-end cost, why don’t we talk about that instead of more and more fracking, more and more extraction?

WHAT IS THE SIZE RANGE OF THE HOUSES YOU BUILD? The smallest was in Solar Ranch (in Ridgway) at 1,250 square feet, and the largest was 3,500 square feet last fall on

Log Hill Mesa (above Ridgway). I encourage my clients to read the “Not So Big House” series by Sarah Susanka, published by Taunton Press.

There’s no limitation on the size of structure that can be built to the guidelines, but I have asked myself the question: when the time comes, what will I answer when someone asks for a larger home? Just a little while back, I found out the answer is: no. Someone wanted a 6,000-square-foot home, and I had to say this is not what we really want to do. Realistically, people come here to retire so this is their dream house, but we are looking at it more from a societal standpoint. Large homes seem counterintuitive to what we are encouraging people to do, especially when there would be only two people living in it.

I’ve only got three guys on my crew (me, Barry Merkel, and Chris Goplerud) plus our subs. Could I upsize? Sure, but it’s almost impossible to find good, quality carpenters right now because everybody’s busy. I don’t want to promise a client that I could do a giant house and then not get enough people to do it. Another reason is that I like to be involved in it personally, hands on. I

Left: A super-insulated house on Hastings Mesa, built with Passive House design standards by BTB Construction. (Photo by Joseph Sohm) Above, BTB Construction orders roof frames specifically designed to hold insulation at the top, rather than just above the ceiling.

Opposite page: The facade of a ‘passive’ apartment building. (Courtesy photos)

have a vested interest in the quality of my product. I want to make sure that the framing and specifically the insulation is done correctly. When you get too big, when you’re building 20 houses at a time, for example, like they were doing down in Montrose prior to the crash, then you outsource too much of it and you don’t have control over the quality.

IS ANY OTHER BUILDER IN THIS AREA DOING PASSIVE HOUSE? The closest that I’ve heard is a guy from Durango. He searched me out and came on to the job site one day. He’s very much like me: he’s a small custom builder that focuses on Passive House certifiable structures. Besides him, I don’t know anyone else in western Colorado that meets this criteria. There is one builder on Log Hill who comes close, but he usually builds really large homes.

We’re booked about two to three years in advance generally. My business is construction and consulting but if we could share design elements that we use with any builder, I’d love to do it. It’s not proprietary.

Basically, the real core of what we are trying to do is influence the building of

“There’s nothing that I do that is really out of the ordinary, but it’s just a systematic approach to improving and having thermal efficiency be a primary goal.” better homes. To me, our business philosophy is to build examples of what a home should be like. That is why our profit margin is lower than normal. If people are willing to invest in the better design and better thermal efficiency, we’re willing to work for less. I’m asking them to put the money that they are saving into a better home.

HOW DO YOU REMAIN SO OPTIMISTIC ABOUT YOUR GOALS THESE DAYS WHEN SO MANY U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES ARE BEING THROWN OUT? I can only be responsible for the things that I have control over. Can I build great houses in my community? Yes. Can

I force the nation to do this? No. So, I spend my time focusing on things that I can do rather than on things that are outside the circle of my influence. So, in that sense, I feel pretty good because I’m doing what I can.

My son says I’m tilting at windmills.

I may seem like Sisyphus from Greek mythology who was eternally pushing the boulder up the hill, but it’s not because I’m a martyr. It’s just because I think it’s the right thing to do.

Can we change the world? I don’t know that any individual house is going to change the world. But, if we can put out great examples of comfortable, high- efficiency homes then perhaps in the bigger markets and even here with the bigger builders, people will begin to ask better questions. ‘Wait a minute, if Brad can do an R60+ ceiling, how can we think that R45 or R50 is OK?’ Probably the biggest compliment I’ve received in this process of my latelife career is when people will come up to me later and say, ‘We love our house. It’s well built and beautiful.

It’s the right scale, not pretentious. It’s always warm and comfortable, and it feels like home.’ And that, I feel really good about.

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The American black bear, Ursus americanus.

BY LESLIE VREELAND

Dropping in or a moment this winter, as you tuck yourself in while the snow howls, pause and imagine life for a black bear in the San Juans.

Consider the effort it took for them to get where they are.

All over this country, black bears are sound asleep deep in their dens. “People imagine them in caves,” said Brad Weinmeister, a wildlife biologist for Colorado Parks & Wildlife. But real life “is not ‘Yogi Bear,’ and they’ll hole up in places a lot more confined than what you might imagine.”

And unusual: in the southeastern U.S., for example, “I’ve heard they’ll find a bunch of shrubs and branches and kind of bury themselves underneath. They look like a big pile of leaves,” Weinmeister said.

“Or they’ll climb a tree,” curl up, and go to sleep right there amongst the branches.

But in the San Juans, bears must have someplace cozier.

“You think about it,” Weinmeister said.

“Our temperatures are just too cold here in winter. A bear needs a place to survive.

Around our part of the country, they’re typically under a rock or in a crevice, in someplace covered where they can find good shelter. A lot of times, this is between a couple of boulders. It can be an entrance through a crevice that leads to a hidden cavern with a space in back the size of a desk.”

Wherever they went, it was once Heather Johnson’s job to find them: for six winters, she shimmied and groveled on hands and knees, feet tied behind her, down inky-black corridors, dirt and sand raining down, to come face to face with a bear that was invariably awake.

Bears shelter for winter in the best places they can.

Sometimes, the humans find them

A peak in the La Plata Mountains, one of many places wildlife biologist Dr. Heather Johnson and her team found sleeping bears in winter. (Courtesy photo)

“They were always waiting,” she said.

Johnson was leading a study on black bear ecology for Colorado Parks & Wildlife that required her to track them to their dens in winter. The bears were caught in box traps in summer, and collared. Then Johnson and her colleagues used GPS coordinates and telemetry signals from their collars to track them down in order to collect valuable data — body size and condition, reproductive success, blood and hair samples, etc. — while they were in their dens.

This required reaching the bears. You’d think this might be easy — after all, Johnson had tracking collars on them. Black bears’ lairs are surprisingly widespread.

The American black bear, or Ursus americanus, is wide-ranging, from the warmest climes — such as torrid Florida, Georgia, and Alabama — to the mountains of Alaska and Canada.

In the San Juans, the bear’s dens were in surprisingly diverse spots. Johnson and her team tracked them down from the pinyon-and-juniper desert south of Durango to 11,000-foot-snow caves high in the La Plata Mountains (where the crew would have to pinpoint the den with telemetry signals and then dig sixto-eight feet below the snow in order to locate it).

Once you reached the general locale, there was the matter of getting to them specifically.

And after you did, what it would look like?

And smell like?

The answer to that second question is almost always, ‘Not bad!”

Surprisingly, in their dens, bears are extremely tidy. They don’t eat, and thus, they don’t defecate. In all her years of investigating dens, Johnson found just one exception. “Naturally, I was with a TV reporter,” she said ruefully. “We >>>

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“In some cases we could crawl in, but in other cases we had to drop down, head first.” occasionally took reporters along, to show them what bear dens were like.

I’d gone on and on about how clean the dens were, and this one had a decaying elk carcass in it.”

The stench was unforgettable.

But in general, bear dens are spartan in winter, and their occupants are asleep in them. They’re the warmest, safest places a bear can be: tightly enclosed spaces with an animal inside, covered in warm fur (and, perhaps, with a cub or two or three snuggled in next to it, to cozy things up even more).

At the beginning of her research, Johnson, who was both the team leader and small enough to navigate closed spaces, was often the first to access the bear den.

The plan was to dart the bear, and then quickly retreat and seal the entrance with backpacks, so the sedative could take complete effect, the animal could be extracted from its lair, and valuable data could be collected.

“In some cases we could crawl in, but in other cases we had to drop down,

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head first,” Johnson recalled.

“The person jabbing the bear would often have ropes tied around their feet, so the rest of the crew could quickly pull them out after the bear had been jabbed.”

Typically, it was obvious once this happened. “Usually, the rest of the staff would hear the jab stick ‘pop,’ and the person in the den would get pulled out. Otherwise, the person would kick their legs and then they’d get pulled out. Most dens are pretty small, particularly the ones which the bear had excavated, so once most of your body was in, you could reach the bear with the jab pole.”

Other forays involved more effort, shimmying down a pitch-black corridor with the sand and gravel you disrupted raining down along the way. Such routes “were more committing,” as Johnson put it in the droll language of a scientist (or an alpinist). “That first year, it was an intimidating place to work. I’d have the jab-pole in my hand, you are crawling into a dark space, or not knowing how big it is, how many bears are in the den” — one year,

Johnson discovered two adult females,, both with yearlings. “For the first year, I had a lot of nightmares about being buried alive in one of these dens,” frantically flailing away, out of reach of her compadres on the surface. “I’m claustrophobic by nature,” Johnson said. “A lot of times, the dens are excavated underneath a big rock or boulder. I’d think, ‘I hope this bear was a good architect. I hope it really knew what it was doing. I don’t want the roof to cave in.’”

As for what she found when she reached the bear, at least it would be asleep, you might assume.

But no: they were invariably awake.

It helps to understand that bears don’t ever fall truly, deeply, asleep. “We often refer to bears as hibernators,” Weinmeister said. “It’s more a winter dormancy, or torpor. An animal that hibernates, you can disturb it and it won’t wake up.

Whereas, a bear will wake up, and occasionally they do.”

“We tried to be so quiet,” Johnson recalled. “We’d stop at 100 yards out and

“Our favorite days were when there were newborns in the dens.

They’re like living teddy bears. They have no fear of humans yet.” get our immobilization drugs together.

You’d go as silently as you could, but you’re crunching on snow. Sometimes, you’re wallowing in thigh-deep snow, hands full, carrying awkward equipment.

By the time we’d get to the den, and dig it out, and you’d put your head in, usually the bear would be awake.”

And what would it do?

“There’s a range of reactions,” Johnson said. “Some are super-sleepy. A few are getting ready to bolt.”

All are shivering, trying to bring their body temperature up so they can react quickly, and escape.

“There were a few who were aggressive, and try to bat your jab pole away and huff at you,” Johnson said. “But the vast majority are just super-surprised.

They look at you in disbelief, as if to say, ‘What are you doing here?’

“Our favorite days were when there were newborns in the dens,” she said.

“They’re like living teddy bears. They have no fear of humans yet. The sows were almost always the most amazing mothers.

When you went into a den where there was a sow with newborn cubs, she’d put her arms around her babies and she wouldn’t move. They just protect their babies. After the sow was immobilized, we’d put the cubs in our jackets to keep them warm while we collected data. Often, they’d just cuddle up and fall asleep, but occasionally they’d cry, just like human babies. I typically had a lot of burly guys on my field crews.

You put a baby bear in their arms and suddenly they’re rocking, and singing to them. They’d rock and bounce the baby bear, just like a human baby. And the cub would go back to sleep.”

Accessing a den could take many hours of bushwhacking, and tracking across frigid terrain. Today Johnson resides in Alaska, and researches caribou for the U.S. Geological Survey (“when you’re a wildlife biologist, you’re often a nomad,” she says). She looks back at her years studying San Juan bears, and broaching their lairs, with fondness. Their occupants were fascinating: “I came to

admire them,” Johnson said. “They’re so smart, and they all had such different personalities.” She says that the human residents of Southwest Colorado also admire bears. “We’ve done surveys of residents in Durango, and found that people generally like having bears around, and knowing that these wild animals are their neighbors,” she said.

“It’s one of the reasons people live here.”

And bears’ spaces were some of the snuggest places she has spent time in winter.

“You’re cold and wet, and you’ve worked so hard to get there,” Johnson said. “The den was warm and dry, and the bear had been putting off a lot of heat. It was the best place to be.”

A documentary has been made about the six-year study Dr. Johnson led for Colorado Parks & Wildlife entitled “The Bears of Durango.” The movie premiered at the 41st Annual International Wildlife Film Festival in the spring of 2018. For a peek inside a bear den, go to tinyurl. com/sere23u.

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Opposite page: A bear den with sow and cub (photo by Heather Johnson). Above, Dr. Johnson with an anesthetized subject (photo by Dusty Hulet) and a portrait of a trio of cubs (photo by Lucy Call), both from the documentary “Bears of Durango.”

Learn more at the Bears of Durango Facebook page or at bearsofdurango.com.

A ‘miner’ miracle On Telluride’s main street, a historic cabin conceals a spacious and luminous abode

BY LESLIE VREELAND PHOTOS BY WHIT RICHARDSON >>>

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Architect Luke Trujillo’s conception of the historic miner’s cabin project (above) and, below, the way it appears today.

A

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s a child growing up in California’s Bay Area, Ethan Miller had a dream, and it wasn’t to stay near the ocean.

“Literally since I was seven years old, I dreamed of being a forest ranger,” Miller said. “I wanted to live in a cabin in the mountains.”

Miller is not a forest ranger: he grew up to become an attorney. Yet his childhood vision got Ethan and his high-school sweetheart, Karen Miller, to Telluride, where they would build a house.

“We’d honeymooned in Taos, and took a road trip over the Million Dollar Highway,” Ethan recalled. “We found ourselves in Telluride.

We looked at each other and said, ‘Someday, someday.’”

Fast-forward a dozen years or so, and the Millers, who by now had raised three children, were skiing in the box canyon.

“It was a blizzard, and Karen was cold.

Sure as hell, the first place we walked into to get warm was a real estate office.

Which is like blood in the water to an agent,” Miller joked.

The couple struck up a rapport with Realtor Eric Saunders, and the dream of living in Telluride began to take shape: “We wanted to be downtown,” Miller said, “close to skiing, bars and restaurants and shopping. We looked all over.”

The Millers nearly closed on one place downtown (it fell through) and a house in Mountain Village that “didn’t have much charm.”

“I do a fair amount of residential real estate, and I like to rehab super-old places,” Miller said. “And Eric said, ‘Well, there’s this old miner’s cabin for sale on main street. It’s a real dump, but you said you wanted a fixer-upper!”

“He turned me on to (architect) Luke, who was enthusiastic immediately. He saw the potential.”

What Luke Trujillo, the owner of Truelinea Architects in Telluride, saw, nobody else did: he imagined this “dump,” a historic cabin on West Colorado Ave., as just the beginning of a larger space.

Trujillo’s vision was to link the smaller house abutting Main Street to a brandnew, three-story building directly behind it, with soaring views of the surrounding box canyon.

Of course the cabin, which dates to about 1890 — a boom time in Telluride, with work in the surrounding gold and silver mines drawing numerous new residents to town — would have to pass muster with Telluride’s Historic Architectural Review Commission, known as HARC. So much of good design comes down to inches: how tight spaces are utilized, conserved, or in the case of this project, earned. In order for Trujillo’s

vision to be implemented — and for the Miller’s to get their dream home — the historic cabin would need to be relocated 16 inches to the east.

The question was whether HARC would approve the (slight) move, and ultimately, the answer was yes. “Once we got that approval, we were able to save the house,” Trujillo said.

From the front, the small house is one of the most unassuming buildings in all of downtown, so spare and innocuous there’s not even a front door on the place (there are two entrances, located on either side). Step inside, though, and the place immediately opens up, to a TV room, a two-tiered office (Ethan’s is in a loft, and Karen’s is directly below), a hidden sleeping nook, tucked away behind an elegant, sliding barnwood door, and an illuminated hallway that zig-zags to the larger part of the home out back. The shape of the hallway was designed “to >>> suggest a ski run,” Trujillo said.

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Above the living room in the historic cabin is Ethan Miller’s light-filled office (note the ladder he uses to ascend there). Karen Miller’s work space, replete with big windows, is behind the wall where the television is, almost directly below her husband’s office.

A view of the living room in the historic cabin. Telluride’s main street lies just outside the windows. In the photo below, directly behind the chimney, the new, larger building attached to the cabin. The two conjoined structures add up to one spectacular space.

HARC, AND GEOGRAPHY

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HARC proscribes a visible delineation between historic and new structures, so “all four corners of both the old and the new buildings had to be visible,” Trujillo said. The new design “is all code-compliant, down to the inch.”

Local geography posed its own constraints. The fact that the building is on a floodplain necessitated that the washer and dryer be suspended off the basement floor. The same goes for the boiler (“Because, again, the floodplain,” Trujillo explained).

When possible, the architect preserved what he could of the original structure.

“We saved the historic, hipped roof,” he said, gesturing to the cabin’s high, angled ceiling. He matched the new windows in front to windows on the Rio Grande Southern Depot, which is located right around the corner, was constructed at nearly exactly the same time in Telluride — 1891 — and connected Otto Mears’ railroad with the Denver and Rio Grande in Ridgway. Trujillo even managed to save part of the original brick chimney, a visible reminder of the only source of warmth for working men and women who resided in these spare, small spaces a century ago (the northern, sun-splashed side of town is where the historic mansions and grand, government buildings are).

Overall, Trujilllo managed to pack four bedrooms and 3,000 feet of living space into the Miller’s new place, and 18 livable feet of space into the 19-foot-wide historic structure abutting Main Street.

The zig-zagging hallway leads back and up a flight of stairs to the place everyone always gathers: a luminous kitchen, with gaping views of the ski runs — and the gondola — in one direction, and the box canyon to the left, directly east.

Every possible place you can get a view, you do here. Though the north side of the back building faces Main Street (and is located directly behind the historic, smaller house), it didn’t stop Trujillo from placing a deck just outside, which has turned out to be one of the most popular hang out spots in the entire house.

You can easily see around and past the smaller building for big views of Cornet Creek. “You’re not hemmed in,” Trujillo pointed out. “You still have a connection

to the mountains and Main Street, and the peaks farther north. It’s almost two ways of living,” tucked in downstairs for an afternoon of TV viewing or visiting with friends, for example, or above it all in the airy kitchen where there are high ceilings, and a feeling of both privacy and a sensation of floating, with friends and family, above it all. (The master bedroom, set far back from Main Street on the first floor, offers a sense of peace.

Two more bedrooms, and a spacious TV and game room, are in the basement.) >>>

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Upstairs in the new building, the commodious kitchen/living area offers a feeling of airiness (and a look back through big windows at the miner’s cabin). In the opposite direction lies a deck overlooking the ski hill, where the Millers entertain guests.

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The Millers moved in in 2015. They entertain frequently, and host a Fourth of July gathering each year on their back deck, with a view of Town Park fireworks.

In 2016, their new home was featured on the annual Art + Architecture tour of Telluride. It won two awards: the Audience Choice Team Prize went to Trulinea along with chef Patrick Laguens and guest artist Kevin Box. And the $1000 Individual Juried Prize was given to Trujillo himself “for the same outstanding project.”

Much praise on the A+A tour went to the stonework in the house, marble downstairs and quartzite in the kitchen. In fact, they were procured by Trujillo, who often works with clients on interiors. “I flew to Denver and picked up the marble slabs, and the quartzite in the kitchen,” Trujillo said. “A lot of times, I’ll end up doing the interior myself. It streamlines the process, and saves on costs.”

For example, the lighting in the home is from the Denver firm AE Design. “I’m friends with the principal,” Trujillo said.

The extensive ironwork in the home, which can be found on the stairs and banisters and imparts both a sense of rusticity and a feeling of airiness, is by Todd Herman. Tie-rods in the historic cabin are both decorative and functional: “They literally hold the walls together so they don’t splay,” Trujillo explained. “The steel detailing has taken on its own language. I try to incorporate it in all my projects. It’s a nice, Telluride aesthetic that you don’t see everywhere.” And it recalls the metal ores being mined in the mountains above, during the cabin’s first iteration. Today, Telluride’s economy is embodied by what goes on directly behind the Miller’s home — at the ski resort — and just up the street, at the historic Sheridan Opera House, which has functioned as an artistic repository from everything to opera back in the day to Telluride NightGrass and Jazz After Dark. The cabin, and its twin, directly next door, are the only buildings on main street with no “setback” from the sidewalk. This means people often stop to peer in the window (the Millers don’t mind). A couple years ago, Karen Miller stepped outside to offer assistance to several bedraggled Bluegrass Festival musicians struggling to keep their instruments from getting soaked in a summer thunderstorm. She invited the players in — they were on the way to an evening gig

just up the street. The musicians were so grateful, they returned later that night to perform an impromptu concert in the TV room just off Colorado Ave. for the Millers and their friends.

Trujillo recalled a conversation years ago with Ethan Miller, when they were first discussing the appeal — and the hurdles they would have to take on — to build here. “Why would I ever want to do a construction project up and behind” the little house? Miller wondered.

“Because,” the architect replied, “one day you’ll be sitting up on your deck with your friends, looking over at the ski hill.

And it will all be happily ever after.”

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Clockwise from opposite page, upper left, Ethan Miller’s aerie work space; the hallway that zig-zags (the way a ski trail might) between buildings; ironwork offers an open feeling and continuity between levels; and a bathroom spacious enough to accommodate a roomy (and elegant) shower.

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PHOTOS BY DALLAS & HARRIS PHOTOGRAPHY

A Place of Health 54

On a communal deck at the Virginia Placer affordable-housing project, built by Allison Construction of Ridgway: priceless views of surrounding peaks.

At Virginia Placer, the housing is more than ‘affordable.’

It promotes well-being

>>>

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Community health, collective credit: “Lance McDonald and the Telluride Housing Subcommittee desired a project with diverse types of units, which we worked on together,” project architect Jim Kehoe said.

“Planner Amy Levek was involved from the earliest stages.”

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Big windows offer continuous views of nature, and bring in needed light.

Opposite page: Project Architect/ Design Lead Jim Kehoe of Charles Cunnifee Architects incorporated tall ceilings and big views in in private apartments (above) and shared spaces such as communal dining rooms.

J

im Kehoe is an unusual architect.

When he contemplates a project, he imagines not only how it will look from the outside, but how it will feel like to be inside it.

He wants it to feel good — which means it is probably good for you.

“Architects sometimes miss the point,” Kehoe said. “A building isn’t designed for the cover of a magazine, or to win an award. It’s for the people who live in it.”

When Kehoe first laid eyes on a potential building site a few blocks from downtown Telluride several years ago, his initial response was, “It’s dark.”

This was not good, but it was a challenge.

Located west of the Shandoka Apartment complex along the San Miguel River, >>>

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the strip of land called Virginia Placer was to be the setting for the Town of Telluride’s newest affordable-housing project.

There was much potential there: it was nestled against a steep mountainside, with old-growth forest on one side and the sprawling Valley Floor on the other.

Still, it faced north, which meant it would lose sun earlier each day (and even earlier in winter) than the rest of town.

For Kehoe, the fact that the site was dark resonated in a way that it might not have for other architects: He knew about the growing body of scientific research that suggests that the effects of an evironment on our bodies and brains is profound —

and that designers can use this information to make our spaces healthier.

“Environments with variety and features distracting the eye activate curiosity,” as Kehoe says.

Conversely — as the neuroscientist Colin Ellard and others have discovered — “dull, unimaginative environments increase heart rates and raise cortisol levels, the main component of stress.”

AVERTING A ‘CRISIS’ When the firm Kehoe works for, Charles Cunniffee Architects of Aspen, was awarded the Virginia Placer project, the

HEALTH + WELLNESS 58

NATURE º Substantial evidence supports views and connections to nature contribute significantly to cognitive stress restoration and residents’ sense of well-being. º Living space orientation, decks, and windows integrate with nature views and access to maximize cognitive benefits. º Limiting construction disturbance outside the building envelope retained the existing old growth vegetations for maximizing benefits of nature and preserving much of the greenfield site.

D AY L I G H T º Town historic code limits glazing and window sizes building orientations and site topography limited daylight access. º Team used evidence-based data of daylighting and health to gain approval for maximizing windows into all the living areas.

CONNECTIONS º A key component of well-being is connection to neighborhood, community, having access to social spaces, and to nature. º Site and building design focused on an ease of these connections for residents. º Critical to the new expanded neighborhood was direct pedestrian access to trails, transit and Town. º Tiny Homes located adjacent from the Boarding House allows occupants access to social spaces and to share laundry facility.

Courtesy of Jim Kehoe

goal was not only to construct a gorgeous place, but a healthy one: to maximize available light, and space, and to foster a feeling of community.

In short, the aim was to make life better for the people who lived there.

“Today there’s an understanding that the design of our environment — based on what we’ve learned through neuroscience and biology — can have more of a positive effect on our cognitive states,” Kehoe said. “We can make spaces healthier.”

Affordable housing in Telluride has been described as having reached ‘crisis’ level, and what CCA designed is envisioned as the first phase of what will become a larger

neighborhood. It is a ‘neighborhood’ that seems to spring naturally from the geologic landscape, creating both drama and a sense of belonging in the way that, say, the Flat Irons embrace the Rocky Mountains in the foothills outside Boulder. The project consists of three parts: a 9,376-foot, 43-unit Boarding House, designed for seasonal workers; a 12,427-foot, 18-unit apartment building intended for families, and a trio of 280-square-foot tiny homes, with a downstairs kitchen and a loft.

The buildings employ metal siding and timber trim, which is both affordable and echoes, but does not mimic, the hues of the surrounding landscape. There

is in-floor heat, to help mitigate noises between floors and for added comfort (as a young Boarding House resident remarked of his abode, “It’s great. It’s so much warmer than a tent”). There is also a spacious communal kitchen/living room, and an adjoining deck with gaping views of surrounding peaks (yet another resident slept in a hammock on the deck every evening last summer, to take in the stars and cool air).

Clinical Aesthetician Meredith Muller, who both lives in and works from her place in the apartment building, appreciates the high ceilings and adroit use of space (such as the stacked washer/dryer,

which takes up no room because it’s built onto the wall).

Kehoe addressed the issue of natural light — or lack of it — by making the windows as large as he could while still complying with the Town of Telluride’s concern about light spill.

“The neuroscientific data was one of our bullet points to enlighten the town that there’s a health matter here regarding how much daylight is coming into the living spaces,” Kehoe said. “That was a turning point, when I could pull this information out and highlight it. It’s readily available data, not just speculation.”

He also made the most of the darkness, >>>

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Even in snow, the project harmonizes with natural surroundings, blending with the forest instead of fighting it.

(Photo by Eric Ming)

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One of three tiny houses at the Virginia Placer project, designed to coordinate with the project’s adjoining buildings and featuring similarly-large windows.

“We also tried to conserve the planet.” by situating sleeping areas “in the back, where the trees are. Having a sky view and a view of nature has a calming effect on the senses,” he said. “Views are important, and we were able to bring more light in and to develop the design from the very beginning with these parameters in mind. The town was key in responding, and accepting these parameters.”

One distinguishing factor of Virginia Placer, Kehoe adds, which makes it different from most other affordable housing developments, “is the mix: the boardinghouse, apartments and tiny homes create a neighborhood. Such diverse occupancy creates liveliness, which the Town of Telluride wanted, and we worked together to achieve.”

The design also attempts to emphasize the natural environment. The Valley

Floor is just a short walk away, offering a chance to watch local wildlife and get some exercise. “Leaving your moment of frustration and going for a walk is a restorative process and relaxes your prefrontal cortex,” Kehoe pointed out. “We also tried to conserve the planet.” (One example of that: instead of building a new bridge, the design team turned an old railroad car into one.) Situating the buildings as close as possible to the oldgrowth forest “meant we didn’t have to go through a lengthy planting and growing process,” Keho pointed out. “We had ‘no-cost’ landscaping. It not only keeps overall costs down but offered an immediate benefit — the buildings fit seamlessly into the landscape, and look like they’ve been there for a long time.”

Charles Cunniffe Architects won a 2019

Award of Distinction from the American Institute of Architects/Colorado for the Virginia Placer project. “We loved it because it met a community need in a beautiful way, by providing affordable housing while still exhibiting high design and beautiful architecture,” AIA programs management director Megan Kincannon said. “We thought this was important to recognize.”

“Ninety percent of people’s experience is in the built environment,” Kehoe observed. “I think intuitively, good architects know the things that drive a better, healthier environment, but we don’t necessarily put them on the table and make them part of the design.” At the Virginia Placer project, they have, and those who reside there are reaping the benefits.

As Kehoe has put it, “The welldesigned space is a gift.”

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Both Boarding House (left) and apartment building appear to emerge from the forest naturally. Views face outward, toward surrounding peaks and sunshine. Sleeping areas are in back.

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It’s Not Easy Being Green

The Eco-Lumber Conundrum

A 64

few years ago, a globetrotting couple decided to build a new home for their family in rural, southwestern Colorado. It was a big decision, a big investment. They wanted to do it right.

They chose an idyllic setting on a country road near the little town of Ridgway, surrounded by lush, irrigated ranch land, with the Uncompahgre River flowing nearby and gorgeous mountain views in all directions. Then, they engaged a family friend who happened to be a noted architect to help them design their house.

The three of them got together to discuss the project, and the couple described their vision for their new home. They wanted something beautifully located, and beautifully designed, of course. But it was also important to them for their new home to be as environmentally friendly as possible — energy efficient, small carbon footprint, and built from sustainable, responsibly sourced materials.

Surely there must be someplace where they could get FSC certified lumber at a reasonable cost.

Their architect encouraged them to look into using certified lumber — lumber that has earned a seal of approval from a thirdparty organization certifying that it comes from responsibly managed forests.

That sounded like a great idea. So the couple did a little research about the Forest Stewardship Council, one of the best-known and most widely respected organizations that certifies lumber and other wood products. Then they called a large lumberyard in nearby Montrose to see if it stocked FSC certified lumber.

The guy they talked to didn’t know what they were talking about.

The next lumberyard they tried didn’t stock FSC certified lumber, but could truck it in from an affiliate store in Durango…at three-and-a-half times the cost as the uncertified equivalent.

“Um, no thanks,” said the couple.

By now, they were obsessed with solving this problem. Surely there must be someplace where they could get FSC certified lumber at a reasonable cost. They expanded their search to the Front Range.

It was the same story everywhere they looked: the lumberyards they checked with used to stock FSC lumber, but had stopped carrying it because it was too expensive and nobody was buying it.

The whole experience left this well-intentioned couple, who has asked to remain anonymous for this story, with more questions than answers about the Forest Stewardship Council.

“Who are they, and did they really create this standard with business in mind?” they wondered. “Has the system become irrelevant for all but the wealthiest home-builders?” And, perhaps most importantly, “What other avenues are available to homeowners who want to build a house in an environmentally responsible way?”

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE The Forest Stewardship Council coalesced 25 years ago in the wake of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Alarmed by the Summit’s failure to deal with the escalating rate of global deforestation, a group of environmentalists, indigenous groups, human rights organizations and timber users and traders gathered in 1993 to set ambitious global ecological standards for the timber industry

with the goal of advancing responsible forest management.

Together, they pioneered the FSC certification program and product label to assure consumers those standards were being met. Originally headquartered in the forested region of Oaxaca, Mexico, the organization is now headquartered in Bonn, Germany, but has offices in the U.S. Rather than taking a regulatory approach like the Clean Water Act or Endangered Species Act, the FSC is a voluntary, market-based system that tries to use demand to create an incentive for land managers to adopt a higher environmental standard.

The whole system hinges on the assumption that conscientious consumers will be willing to pay a premium for more sustainable wood products while boycotting others.

FSC has three certification systems that accomplish its mission: Forest Management certification, Chain-of-Custody certification and Product Label certification. Together, these three systems work together to trace the journey of a tree from stump to shelf.

Forest Management certification dissects what it means to manage a forest well: protecting habitat for rare and endangered species; leaving buffers of trees at the forest’s edges to keep waterways from being destroyed by logging activities; restricting the use of herbicides that the timber industry sometimes uses on tree plantations to kill off species that compete with their trees of choice. FSC also seeks to change the way logging companies work with communities living in and around forests in resource-rich developing countries to prevent human rights violations.

A variety of auditors, such as the Rainforest Alliance, carefully examine the work of FSC forestry members, and make the call about whether landowners are meeting FSC standards.

If the landowners make the grade, the wood they produce receives FSC’s Forest Management certification.

ABLE TO LABEL As soon as the harvested wood changes hands, it goes into FSC’s Chain-of-Custody certification standard. That’s where things start getting complicated.

The paperwork-heavy CoC standard

traces the path of wood products step by step from forests through the entire supply chain, verifying that FSC-certified material is identified and quarantined from non-certified wood every step of the way. Any company along the journey, from harvesters to retailers, needs to be FSC-certified itself in order to label or promote their products as FSC-certified.

If all of the steps have been properly followed, and all the paperwork has been properly filed, the end product — from a dining table to a box of tissues to a plank of lumber — then wins the FSC stamp of approval.

The FSC logo — a green checkmark and tree — lets the consumer know that a wood-derived product has been tracked throughout its entire supply chain, guaranteeing that it comes from a responsibly managed forest that has been independently monitored by credible third party auditors.

As of January 2019, FSC reported that 84 countries across the world had FSC-certified forestland, with approximately 484 million acres certified in total. This represents some 10 percent of the working forestland on the planet. In the US and Canada, almost 160 million acres of forest are FSC-certified: 124 million acres in Canada, and the remaining 35 million or so in the U.S. In addition to wood, a vast swath of pulp and paper products bear the FSC label, from Patagonia’s first FSC-certified wetsuit (made from latex that comes from FSC-certified forests) to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cartons, and much more. Huge companies like Unilever, Proctor & Gamble and Ikea all use FSC certification for at least some of their products.

“In the U.S. the pulp and paper sector is growing more dramatically than the solid wood sector, but we are working hard to grow the solid wood side,” said Brad Kahn, communications director for Forest Stewardship Council US. “FSC has reached the point now where it is in every major store. You can find FSC products wherever you are shopping.”

Well, maybe not everywhere — especially when it comes to lumber.

LOST ITS PIZZAZZ? Strait Lumber was the first FSC-certified lumber yard in the Denver Metro area, >>>

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but dropped its certification and stopped carrying the product in 2016.

“The value is just not there, and it is kind of a headache, to be honest with you,” said Strait Lumber general manager Tyler Korbe.

The FSC Chain of Custody certification is work-intensive to obtain and expensive to maintain, Korbe explained, because FSC inventory can’t be co-mingled with non-FSC-certified products. This leads to price markups that many consumers find untenable, especially when it comes to big purchases such as the lumber package for a new house.

While Korbe says there is still is a local market in the commercial construction sector in the Denver Metro area driven by the U.S. Green Building Council’s “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” (LEED) point system, he believes FSC-certified lumber could go by the wayside in the future.

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JT Thomas’s house in Ridgway was framed with salvaged timber from beetle killed spruce, logged in southwestern Colorado and milled into dimensional lumber in Montrose, but transported to Ridgway from a lumber yard in Durango. The house is clad in cedar siding from a sustainable cedar company in the Pacific Northwest. Thomas, his architect John Baskfield and his contractor Clint Estes worked with Kim Wheels of Lotus Energy Solutions to do an energy audit on the house in its design phase to make the house as energy-efficient as possible. Solar panels on the roof reduce the house’s longterm carbon footprint.

(Photo by JT Thomas)

“All indications I witness point in that direction,” he said. “It is something that has definitely lost its pizzazz. I used to do two or three orders a week and now I don’t even get an inquiry all year.”

Ridgway-based building contractor Clint Estes used to make a point of offering the option of FSC-certified lumber to his clients, but has recently phased it out due to lack of demand and difficulty finding local sources for the product.

“The most driving factor is the Chainof-Custody documentation,” he said.

“Five years ago, my main lumber supplier was selling 10 percent FSC, and now that has gone down to zero because of the headaches (caused by) Chain-ofCustody paperwork. Any break within the Chain-of-Custody paperwork causes the product to lose its certification. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare.”

Estes confesses he’s become a little bit cynical about the whole eco-certification

thing. “These systems are well intended, and they give the final consumer some concrete piece of mind, but bureaucracy ends up muddying the waters,” he said.

Alpine Lumber Telluride manager Karl Wagner said he has a random selection of boards from FSC-certified forests and mills that have found their way into the mix in his lumberyard, even though Alpine Lumber Telluride is not Chain-ofCustody certified. But his customers don’t ask for it.

These days, he’s seeing more local demand for Laminated Strand Lumber, or LSL, a new engineered wood product that is part of the so-called mass timber craze sweeping the nation. LSL is made by shredding wood from fast-growing, lowvalue trees such as aspen, birch and poplar into thin strands and compressing it with adhesive to produce a variety of wood components for construction.

“Forest management is a whole other

“The problem is that there simply isn’t enough demand for FSC-certified products.” issue, but for us, I would happily go to all engineered wood products,” Wagner said. “They’re straight, there’s less cull, there’s less waste. It’s very efficient and produces tight houses and buildings because it’s perfectly square and level and straight. I’m seeing the future in that.”

COVERED IN COBWEBS Indroneil Ganguly has seen up close how FSC certification works, from the timber plantations of the Pacific Northwest to the jungles of southeast Asia.

An assistant professor at the University of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and associate director of the school’s Center for International Trade in Forest Products, Ganguly says that the FSC system is viable only if there is consumer demand.

When it comes to Chain-of-Custody certification, he said, most facilities such

as sawmills or furniture factories in the developing world process both certified and uncertified timber on the same machinery. They tend to run separate lines and maintain physical separation between certified and uncertified wood by keeping the certified wood in a shed until a special order comes in.

“If people in the developed world demand FSC, then the guy with the sawmill in Vietnam will run an FSC line,” Ganguly said. “The problem is that there simply isn’t enough demand for FSC-certified products. They have the shed, and it’s covered in cobwebs.”

Ganguly points to lack of awareness among consumers as a fundamental problem.

“I teach this class of undergrads who have some environmental interest,” he said. “And when I ask ‘How many of you have heard of FSC?’ perhaps only ten percent of them raise their hands. If that’s

the awareness level of the ‘environmentally aware’ population, what would be the awareness of the general population who don’t think about the environment so much?”

Generally speaking, Ganguly said, consumers who do know about FSC focus more on products they buy every day, like toilet paper, facial tissue and office paper, than on lumber.

A CLEAR-CUT ALTERNATIVE Perhaps the biggest challenge FSC has faced in North America is the commercial timber industry’s own more lenient certification system, allowing its forest products to bear the rival Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) label.

While SFI requires forest management plans to include conservation principals, it has few specific requirements (and no third-party oversight), essentially allowing the industry to regulate itself. With less bureaucratic overhead, SFI lumber tends to be cheaper and more abundant in North America than its FSC counterpart.

Many environmentalists have denounced SFI as a fake eco-label that greenwashes forest-degrading timber-cutting practices such as larger clear cuts, monocultures/plantations, and the application of hazardous chemicals such as the endocrine-disrupting herbicide Atrazine.

SFI supporters, meanwhile, counter that the program is a more practical way to support the continued use of forests to produce timber. Timber companies must earn profits, they say, to keep the industry thriving, and in order to do so, they need to rely on practices such as clear-cutting and herbicide application, in order to produce ongoing jobs in the woods and revenues from timber-cutting while thwarting pressure to convert forest lands into subdivisions or other developments.

“There has been a lot of infighting.

The politics is brutal. It’s a full-on turf war between certification lobbies,” said Ganguly, though the battle has settled to a simmer in recent years. “If you ask an environmentalist, ‘Is FSC better than SFI?’ they will probably say yes. But, the difference in how much good they are doing for the environment is minimal here in the US, and more significant in >>> the tropics.”

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“That’s where most of the environmental damage comes from — trucking and moving stuff around.”

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In spite of its drawbacks, even some opponents acknowledge that the timber industry’s SFI system has improved over time and is at least a step in the right direction, promoting the overall benefits of sustainable forest products compared to their nonrenewable alternatives. SFI-certified lumber has gained a broad market share in the U.S. and an international seal of approval from the industry-friendly umbrella program, Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

SFI has also won the seal of approval over FSC from more and more budgetconscious and environmentally conscientious homeowners, as Tyler Korbe of Strait Lumber can attest.

“A board is a board is a board, and once you put it on paper, people ask themselves, ‘Should I pay 30 percent more for the exact same thing?’ Most people aren’t going to do that,” he said.

In a further blow, FSC has recently lost its coveted status as the only certification that is fully accepted by the prestigious and lucrative LEED program. In its latest revision, LEED is allowing not only FSC but SFI and PEFC-certified lumber as incentives to earn points toward certification.

GOING LOCAL-ISH Of course, eco-certified lumber isn’t the only consideration when it comes to building an environmentally friendly house. In some cases, the greenest choice

(with the smallest carbon footprint) might be to opt for lumber that has been locally or regionally harvested and processed, if you can get it.

One potential source of local lumber in southwestern Colorado would be Montrose Forest Products, a lumber manufacturing facility owned by parent company Neiman Enterprises Inc. which logs both beetle-killed and healthy forests throughout southwestern Colorado and manufactures dimensional lumber at its stud mill in Montrose.

Ironically, due to a strange loop of corporate pre-sale agreements and supply chain vagaries, much of Montrose Forest Products’ lumber ends up in Texas and Kentucky, while lumber from wholesalers in the Pacific Northwest travels by train to Colorado’s Western Slope and stocks the shelves of lumber stores in Montrose and Telluride.

Estes found this out the hard way when he was building a house for his friend JT Thomas in Ridgway a few years ago.

Thomas was highly motivated by environmental concerns. Initially he wanted his house to be constructed out of a recycled building product called Earth Block, but says he ran into a barrier when the Town of Ridgway’s building inspector refused to certify it. Thomas’s “Plan B” was to go with a traditional stick-built home, using local lumber from the Uncompahgre Plateau, even if it meant paying a little extra.

Estes set about trying to get his hands

on some. His first stop was the mill in Montrose, which wouldn’t sell its product to him directly. He couldn’t find any of the locally milled product in lumberyards in Montrose, either. Finally, after working his contacts, Estes found a lumberyard in Durango that stocked some lumber from the Montrose mill.

“It just seemed so weird to go through Durango to get locally harvested wood milled in Montrose,” Estes said. The lumber then had to be trucked over three mountain passes for delivery to Thomas’s building site in Ridgway, driving up its cost both dollar-wise, and in terms of its carbon footprint.

Montrose Forest Products General Manager Mike Kusar said that a small percentage of his sawmill’s product is currently sold at local lumberyards. “We produce 12 tractor-loads a day, and our lumber goes all over,” Kusar said. “Probably less than one percent is sold locally.

We would love for people to request local, but we do not sell directly to the public.”

Going local is also possible on a micro scale, for certain timber products. For example, a small saw mill in Colona processes beetle killed white fir from the Ouray area and turns it into decorative wood materials like siding.

And in Ridgway, Phil Gould has carved out a specialty niche logging and milling local beetle-killed trees and turning them into custom timber-framed homes and cabins.

Q&A with Home Depot Home Depot was the first national retailer to carry FSC-certified wood, and claims on its website to sell more FSC certified wood than any retailer in America, but a cold-call to the Pro Desk at the Montrose Home Depot outlet got a “never heard of it” response. So this author followed up with Home Depot corporate communications manager Amy Bennet: Q: Does Home Depot stock FSC and/or SFI certified lumber?

A: We stock FSC and SFI wood in various markets.

The combination of the woods that are harvested to the two standards accounts for over 80% of our wood purchases.

Q: Does there seem to be much of a demand for certified lumber? And, what is the price difference to go with FSC or SFI versus uncertified lumber?

A: The main demand for these types of lumber is when someone is completing a LEED-certified project. The FSC and SFI wood in our stores is sold pretty close to the average market cost of uncertified wood.

Q: Where does the lumber that is stocked at the Home Depot in Montrose, Colo. come from?

A: The pressure treated wood at that store comes from the southeast U.S. The dimensional lumber is from Idaho and Washington. The redwood is from California.

Phil Gould and his crew at Handcrafted Log and Timber in Ridgway built this custom timber-framed home on Dallas Divide using locally salvaged Douglas Fir. (Photo by Phil Gould)

69 While his clients aren’t necessarily driven by environmental motives, “I do think they prefer kind of the whole package, both wood and craftsmanship, being local,” Gould said. He argues that this is better for the environment than trucking in a load of eco-certified lumber from far-away forests in Canada or the Pacific Northwest.

“The best analogy would be organic food,” Gould said. “You can get a lot of stuff that is labeled organic, but it’s not the same as going down to the farmers market and buying fruits and vegetables that were grown right in this area.”

Gould points to transportation as a significant environmental culprit in today’s timber market.

“That’s where most of the environmental damage comes from — trucking and moving stuff around,” he said. “It seems like the closer to the source, the better.

People did that for hundreds of years until huge mills opened up in the Northwest and that became a standard.”

Another, lesser-known benefit Gould has found in harvesting local beetle kill for lumber is that it is already quite dry, so it doesn’t have to be dry-kilned prior to the milling process. “That’s a huge

savings in resources,” Gould pointed out. “All that stuff in the Northwest is incredibly wet and has to be kiln-dried using millions of gallons of propane or wood burners.”

THE CARBON QUESTION For many green-minded prospective homeowners, their new home’s carbon footprint and energy efficiency are more important considerations than where their lumber came from. And those considerations can be just as complex and bewildering as the certified wood conundrum.

No matter which way you slice it, building a house is a resource-intensive process that is going to have a lasting impact on the skin of the planet.

“When I have a client driving a Prius and they say they want their house to be environmentally neutral, it is not feasible,” said Ridgway contractor Brad Wallis, a proponent of a high-efficiency superinsulated European design criteria known as Passive House. (See related article on Page 32.)

“Cement, polystyrene foam and wood, they are all products of a consuming pro-

cess, not a neutral process,” Wallis said.

“But if it’s done well, and it conserves energy and doesn’t need to be replaced in 30 years, you are doing the best you can in a generally consumptive process.”

Estes, who used to maintain LEED accreditation, prefers these days to approach a building project from an embodied energy carbon footprint standpoint rather than pure efficiency.

“If you are building to a high efficiency standard, that doesn’t mean you are lowering your carbon footprint,” Estes pointed out. “Instead of using two inches of foam board, you have four to five inches under the slab — more and more foam and petroleum products. It would be interesting to do a carbon calculation of a LEED certified home. How many years would it take to offset?”

Then there’s the opposite end of the spectrum — building with recycled concrete blocks, for example, or straw bales.

“All of those products have limitations, but they are 100 percent post consumer byproducts or recycled products,” Estes said. “There is a lot to it, a lot of facets to consider.”

In order to reduce his own business’s carbon footprint, Estes recently decided to >>>

“Things are evolving and moving in the right direction.” only accept construction projects within a five-mile radius of his home in Ridgway.

But in the end, it has become a zero-sum game. Most of his former local employees now commute to more lucrative construction jobs in Telluride so that they can continue to afford to live in Ridgway (where housing costs have recently soared) while his current employees commute to Ridgway from Montrose where the cost of living is lower.

“If I really wanted to reduce my carbon footprint,” Estes sighed, “I’d be building in Montrose.”

FULL CIRCLE

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On a macro scale, the growing urgency of the global climate crisis has sparked new interest from the commercial construction sector in finding ways to reduce embodied carbon in construction materials, and a new appreciation for the carbon (and branding) benefits of FSC-certified forestry.

In response, FSC has recently launched its Climate Smart Wood Group to support architects, contractors and developers looking to use climate-smart wood. High-profile corporate projects

are driving this new demand, said FSC spokesman Kahn.

“Microsoft and Google, for example, are key advocates of using wood from responsibly managed forests as a way to reduce embodied carbon in construction over concrete and steel,” he said. “There has been a huge amount of media coverage of tall wood buildings, so perhaps consumer awareness is growing.”

As an industry expert, the University of Washington’s Ganguly has been observing this new emphasis on embodied carbon with interest. He thinks it’s a big step in the right direction.

Ganguly is also closely tracking the LEED program’s new Life Cycle Assessment, which gives credits to construction projects that document their carbon and other environmental impacts of building materials over the entire lifespan of the building. The program may ultimately give a boost to locally sourced wood, he said, “since local sourcing contributes significantly to lowering a project’s environmental footprint.”

While he still sees some serious weaknesses in FSC’s eco-certification system, “Things are evolving and moving in the right direction,” he said.

In the meantime, what is a budgetconscious homeowner who just wants to build an environmentally friendly house supposed to do?

To help balance their own cost-versusenvironment equation, the Ouray County couple featured in the beginning of this story decided to put solar panels on their house — expensive, yes, but over the long term they anticipate the panels will pay for themselves in saved energy costs.

They also looked into using reclaimed wood from midwestern barns, which was super environmentally conscious, but aesthetically unsuitable for the clean, modern look of the house that they were building.

In the end, they decided to go with SFI-certified lumber instead of the more expensive FSC. “It’s a much lower standard,” they acknowledged. “But we thought it was still better than nothing. The guy at the local lumberyard told us all their stuff is SFI-certified. Maybe that is a common standard now. It seemed very reasonably priced.”

All in all, they said, they’re very happy with the way their house turned out. As they put it, “We have done a good job of balancing things we care about, without going way over budget.”

Ask an Expert Telluride-based energy efficiency expert Kim Wheels of Eco Action Partners and Lotus Energy Solutions offers the following advice to prospective homeowners who want to build a house that is as energy-efficient as possible. (Much of her advice resonates with Passive House standards).

SMART GLAZING In general, Wheels says, reducing the overall glazing (windows/glass doors) area with respect to the house floor area and wall area, will help the home be energy efficient. Smart glazing design, i.e. orienting and shading windows and choosing solar heat gain values for the windows that’s appropriate for the direction of the windows, is very important, in addition to energy efficient windows with low U-values.

CONTINUOUS INSULATION Beyond windows, continuous insulation on the walls and ceiling, in addition to optimizing the

R-value of insulation within the framing cavities, is key. Alternatively, Structural Insulated Panels (SIP panels) reduce thermal bridging of framing, and help create a tighter home.

ENERGY-EFFICIENT LIGHTING & APPLIANCES Other energy efficiency items are also important: LED lighting, Energy Star certified appliances, waterefficient plumbing and efficient mechanical system design all impact overall energy use of the home.

Providing appropriate, controlled outdoor air through an HRV (which exchanges heat between incoming and outgoing air) is very helpful, as well as being critical to a healthy indoor environment.

THINK HOLISTICALLY There is no “biggest bang for the buck,” Wheels says. “The house works as a system, and one aspect isn’t independent of another.”

BRINGING NATURE INTO THE HOME WITH LARGE FORMAT IMAGES OF THE MOUNTAINS & BEYOND

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Are you self-employed and have been turned down by a commercial “big box bank”? “We can help! We offer a number of mortgage programs for self-employed borrowers so when they say “no” we say “yes”!

DEBRA MARKOVICH Give us a call (970) 615-0363 or email us for a confidential evaluation so we can help you finance your dream home, be it a Cabin or a Castle!

Your direct connection to an authentic Telluride Lifestyle.

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A more perfect popper

BY A R I L E VAU X

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Behold the tweaked, stuffed jalapeĂąo

ot peppers and cheese is a winning combination. Whether it’s red flakes on a slice of pizza, a spicy tray of cheese-drenched nachos or a serving of ema datshi (a Himalayan dish of hot chile and molten cheese), the result is the same: The fat in the cheese embraces the violence of the capsaicin, absorbing the heat with its creaminess. Even in meals where the heat level doesn’t warrant protection, the pungent flavor of chile remains a perfect match for a rich bite of cheese.

Today we dive deep into an example of a happy marriage between chile and cheese: the jalapeño popper.

It sounds cliché, but many people meet their first jalapeño poppers in a bar, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Although “bar food” is too often a euphemism for pre-prepared, cheap ingredients, frozen and resuscitated with microwaves or boiling oil, the conceptual bones of a jalapeño popper are solid. Given half a chance, a jalapeño popper could aspire to greater things than craft-brew absorption.

The potential for greatness starts with the fleshy, versatile jalapeño itself. Even raw, it has the musk of a roast green chile, and the enhanced flavor that comes with it.

I stuff my roasted jalapeños with cheese and roast again, and when advisable (see below), I wrap the whole thing with bacon. These days, there are all kinds of jalapeños available, including large ones great for stuffing. Some are mild, like the Senorita, which is a great option for spice-averse pepper lovers. At the other end of the spectrum, the hottest jalapeño can slay even the most heat tolerant.

The jalapeño popper is a thinly veiled, Tex-Mex version of a chile relleno, in which a large roasted chile is stuffed with cheese and fried in an egg batter. A popper, meanwhile, is stuffed raw, unroasted. The packed popper, breaded and deep-fried, lacks the flavor of roasted chile.

But roasting takes time, as anyone knows who has attempted to roast chile at home. And one of the most tedious parts of the process is the constant turning of the peppers, so that all surfaces are evenly blistered.

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Jalapeños Rellenos Serves 6

Luckily, a toaster oven can roast two sides of a chile pod at once, cutting the labor in half. One turn, at most, is all it takes, and the home chef can effortlessly roast five to 10 chiles at once.

A roasted jalapeño, like any roasted green chile, will collapse into a 2D version of its uncooked self. But if you stuff it carefully it will plump out again like a Botox injection.

Mexican-style queso fresco is the best stuffer, because it stays stiff even when melted, and won’t seep out and become a burnt puddle around your chile. The flavor does what you want cheese to do, without grabbing the spotlight.

Salty, creamy and soft, it’s exactly what you should seek inside a roasted green jalapeño. Caribbean-style queso blanco works great too, but can be harder to find, so I searched for something with which to hold it all together. Alas, sometimes the peppers break as you stuff them. Wishing for some kind of food-grade duct tape, I happened upon a thin slice of bacon as the obvious solution.

Be advised, it’s a popular beer food for a reason, if used that way — a dangerous feedback loop can develop, especially if the jalapeños are spicy. You drink some cold beer to quench the flames, but it also dulls your nerves. And it tastes so good with the popper you want to drink more. And as soon as the pain subsides you want to eat more, and around and around we go.

After a night like that, the morning walk of shame will be back and forth to the bathroom.

So if the enchantments of these cheesy, greasy green spice bombs get your mouth into trouble, we recommend a glass of milk instead.

12 large jalapeños 1 10-oz block of queso fresco, or farmer style, cheese, cut into 2-inch spears 12 strips of thin-sliced bacon (or vegan version) 1 fresh lime 3 tablespoons soy sauce Place the chiles in the center of a toaster oven, far enough apart that they don’t touch one another.

Set it to toast, and toast as many times, or for as long as necessary — about 15 minutes — so that the peels begin to blister. Turn each pepper 90 degrees, and toast again until the up and down sides are again blistered, about another 15 minutes. Place the roasted chile into a covered container for 20 minutes to cool and “sweat,” a process that loosens the skins.

After they cool, carefully peel the skins.

Slice halfway through the stem end of the pepper, enough to pull back a still-attached cap and scoop out the seeds and spicy membranes inside. Rinse the cleaned pods if you’re afraid of spice.

Gently stuff about two spears into each jalapeño, and fold the caps back into position. If you wish, or deem it necessary, wrap some or all jalapeños in a slice of bacon each. Around and around, tightly.

Place the stuffed, wrapped jalapeños on the toaster oven tray. Roast, without turning for about 15 minutes, or until bacon is crispy. Make sure they cool completely before eating. Season with soy sauce and lime.

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