Earth’s Best Place

Tom Elliott and Barbara Scott say their Bend home is unlike any other place in which they’ve lived. In fact, it’s like no other house on earth. Called Desert Rain House, it is poised to be declared the world’s greenest home. The ultimate sustainable abode is designed to generate as much energy as it consumes. Snow and rain are the sole sources of water. The high desert sun powers everything for the residential compound’s five buildings, including the home’s water treatment systems, with enough energy to power two electric vehicles year-round. Lovingly crafted with local, regional and reclaimed and organic materials, it is devoid of the construction industry’s leading worst-in-class chemicals and substances. It is aesthetically pleasing, too. Desert Rain is the first residential project built to the standards of the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most rigorous green building certification program. It is the culmination of a six-year effort of the owners and dozens of designers, builders, and water-systems engineers.

The 174-page book”Desert Rain House: Resilient Building, Sustainable Living in the High Desert” was released in March. It follows the team’s trials, frustrations, innovations, and triumphs as it navigates and pioneers technical and regulatory codes near the heart of historic downtown Bend. For Elliott and Scott, the journey was worth it entirely. “We can’t continue to try to build a better world by merely doing less bad,” said Elliott. “Part of the challenge is creating a new paradigm from the ground up, making sure every decision you make is in alignment with your values.” Scott added, “We are always talking about the negative carbon footprint – what about the handprint? It’s what our handprints are that is so exciting.”

After a one-year energy audit of the home is complete, it is expected to achieve Living Building Challenge certification. Elliott and Scott hadn’t started out as trailblazers, though. The couple had set their sights on a LEED certified home using the latest green technologies. Several months into the design process, while driving across the desert of the Southwest to go backpacking in Arizona, they were listening to National Public Radio and picked up coverage of the Bioneers Conference. One of the most influential leaders in the green building movement, Jason F. McLennan, was talking about something he called living buildings. McLennan compared two unlikely things: buildings and flowers, saying both are literally and figuratively rooted in place, but unfortunately, that’s where the parallel ends. Seeking to change that, he created the Living Building Challenge, which outlines how a building, like a flower, gets all of its energy from the sun, all of its water from the precipitation right around it, doesn’t pollute, creates habitat and is beautiful. After listening to McLennan, Elliott and Scott felt the gauntlet had been thrown. They picked it up with a passion that would sustain them throughout a design and redesign process to satisfy the requirements of the Living Building Challenge. A Desert Rain website (desertrainhouse.com), weekly blog, forum, press coverage and worldwide attention followed. The focal point of the project is the building called Desert Rain, a 2,236-square-foot, single-story home with a stucco exterior, modern roof lines and a striking curved wall at the entrance. A 489-square-foot accessory dwelling is called Desert Sol. A 512-square-foot detached garage supports additional solar panels and houses the rainwater collection cistern. Desert Lookout, an 815-square-foot dwelling is above a garage and the central composting system. For the couple who created Desert Rain, their vision of living buildings doesn’t end at their property line. Now that they have paved the way, others can build to the same standards on a larger, faster, cost-efficient scale, they said. The Desert Rain multi-residence compound cost about $3.5 million, however, Elliott said the “soft” costs of pioneering new interpretations of state environmental and building codes (see sidebar) exceeded “hard” construction costs. The custom home also has many superfluous details. “For the next person, it will be easier and less expensive,” Elliott said.

Source: Cascade Sotheby’s Realty