East of Boulder, solar “Earthlodge” sits in harmony with prairie setting
WHERE: Solar home, 4-bedroom plus study in Native American motif, 265 Skylane, Erie Airpark, refreshments.
PRICE: $749,900
PHONE: 720-270-5068 WEB: http://www.tourfactory.com/368590
In 1993 when gasoline was a buck-a-gallon, architect Doug Beall was inking drawings for a 2,800-foot house plan that had been rattling around in his head since grad school at Berkeley…solar heated, partially earth-bermed, and visually matched to the prairie topography east of Boulder. What he didn’t have was a site, or more importantly in days when energy prices were still pretty low, was any financing.
Today that house, which found both a lot (Erie Air Park) and a construction loan in 1997, is on the market. Beall and wife Julie have raised two teenagers there, are now off to Steamboat Springs (he works for Intrawest, son Kevan is an alpine snowboarding champ) and have the place on the market, 2-acre site included, at $749,900.
The home looks amazingly close to Beall’s vision of 15 years ago: 12-sided architecture with an outside ring of solar atriums around the south, kids bedrooms with cool loft spaces overhead around the north, and a kitchen-center lodge that follows Plains Indian inspiration with a four-sided “spirit post” frame, with firepit below and “oculus” skylight overhead. The coved roof spans 32 feet, entirely supported by tension-compression. (You can see a mini-version of the framing in the adjacent 3-car garage, with loads of shop space).
Energy-wise, Beall learned the hard way what other passive-solar builders have, that the sun likely will deliver too much heat, not too little. Within years of moving in, Beall had to replace the glass solarium roof with smaller skylights, automatically operable both for closing the blinds and for venting unwanted heat. His year-round average monthly XCEL bill for 2,800 feet is $90, including the back-up radiant heated floors (he says it stays comfy in summer due to its heavy massing, partial earth walls, and some spirited looking canvas shade-sails he rigs off the log posts every June.
The right buyer could take this design to a more efficient level with a rooftop photovoltaic system…something that ten years ago was way too expensive, but now is pretty reasonable (visit the Colorado Renewable Energy Society for more info, www.cres-energy.org or www.coseia.org).
Tags: Boulder, passive solar, Renewable Energy, solar
