Report on local economy conference The Grow Community, Bainbridge Island (GC)
Notes taken by a friend
The Grow Community, Bainbridge Island (GC)
Architect is Jonathan Davis (JD) – He and his wife will be moving in with their two young kids.
He’s originally from England – moved here with his family when he was a teenager. His family had Davis Builders in England for many years.
The first development is on 3 acres. The next one will be on 8 acres.
They’ve sold 85-90% of the homes in the first development already. Models are open and you can get a tour of the community. There will be rental homes as well – basically apartments. It’s a challenge to get enough solar energy for these since there’s only one roof space of solar arrays to supply the energy for all the units in the building.
They’re building homes but also want to do modular homes (“piece homes”) which are more affordable and more sustainable.
They had space limitations. But still, the largest home has 3 bedrooms, 2-1/2 baths.
They’ve pre-leased 10 apartments before any of them have been built.
They developed and are constructing the homes using the 10 One Planet Principles – they are addressing each principle and doing the best they can to balance sustainability and cost. I was impressed with how they’ve been endeavoring to do that, for example, getting the most energy efficient windows and insulation they can and still be able to sell the house at a reasonable market rate. A tremendous amount of thought and planning has gone into this.
They wanted to do better than the LEED standards. They’re using the NEEA standards (Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance).
One car per family will be allowed. Remote Parking - all parking will be on the perimeter of the development, and each home will have a shed to store bicycles and whatever else. The sheds will light up at night.
They have a Nissan Leaf now at the site, and an electric car-charging station. (There may be more than one – not sure.)
Each home has a solar panel roof.
It’s 0.44 miles (a 5-10 minute walk) to the ferry from Bainbridge to Seattle.
Downtown Winslow is right next to the development, so everything you need is in walking distance.
The community has to be monitored over the next 8 years.
• Micro-hoods (this is what they call the housing areas)
• Parks (4)
• Community Gardens – 6 x 6 urban farms – harvest food like local CSAs would and the rest would go to the food bank. (I think he said you’d have your own plot, but I’m not sure.)
• Native and edible plantings
• Community Center with art studio and wood shop
• Net Zero now - plan is to be zero carbon by 2020 – photovoltaic (pv)(solar) panels are the offset (I made a note that Net Zero is 35% energy efficiency – I’m not sure what that means.)
• With the solar energy produced from your roof, your electric meter will run backwards. There isn’t a way to store the energy produced by the PV arrays on the roofs, except that, if you have an electric car, you can charge it using that energy.
• Stormwater runoff will be dealt with using rain gardens and bioswales
I didn’t complete understand this, and I don’t think I got all the details right, but I’ll get clarification on it: An array of PV panels costs $40,000. But with the WA State Production Rebate (panels made in WA State), the rebate is $5,000 (for 8 years). Then there’s a 30% federal tax credit of $12,000.
Energy use/household is between 5,900-7,400 kWh/year (depending on the size of the unit)
(A typical house on Bainbridge uses 18,260 kWh/year!)
They use cabinetry instead of closets – more efficient space.
Front porch on each house
Walls are a foot thick. They have 8” of fiberglass insulation, 1/2” rigid insulation, double-studded framing, sheathing.
Outside of buildings have breathable waterproof “skin” – “Gortex”
There’s no vinyl in the windows – they wanted to stay away from vinyl since it’s not a sustainable material. They used the extra insulation in the walls to make up for not having the most energy efficient windows, which were too expensive.
Ductless heat pumps
Hot water heat pumps (66 gallon)
Blower door test – 2 air changes/hour vs. 5 in a typical conventionally-built house or 0.5 in a “passive” house (those are apparently the most efficient houses)
Homes are selling for between $300-475,000 (market rate)
There were about 25 people at the luncheon. (It turned out to be a luncheon, not a breakfast, and the food was wonderful – really high quality.) Most of the people who came were doing sustainable design, consulting and energy efficiency retrofitting. One man, Darren Gray, works for Merrill Lynch, but he’s also on the board of WEC (WA Environmental Council). He’s interested in green investing, and I’m going to call him about that.
One woman who attended is originally from China and lives in Eastern WA. She wants to export U.S. green building technology to China! (Way better than coal, eh?!)