Green Homes, Real Estate Listings, Architecture, & Design in Portland, OR
Looking for an eco-friendly home for you and your family? I have a tool that can help make your search easier.
For a list of certified green homes in the Portland metro area, please visit Portland Green Homes.
If you are interested in touring any of these great homes, please contact Amber Turner at (503) 804-1261, or amber@livingroomrealtors.com.
Posted July 19th, 2011 in Blog, Featured, Green Listings, Green Resources | Comments Off
Photos from October’s tour of The Commons, plus a write-up on Jeffrey Tufenkian’s Shared World Blog.
It’s my belief that too many people pass up new construction for the “charm” of an older home. However, it’s also my hunch that 99% of those people have never given a new home WITH character a chance. This architect-designed custom home on full size lot (5,000 sf) is smack in the middle of old bungalow heaven, yet you get the benefit of energy efficiency only today’s standards can provide. Love the built-ins from older era homes? This one has floor-to-ceiling bookshelves right in the midst of a wonderfully open kitchen-to-dining room-to-living room floorplan. Master suite, 2nd floor laundry (nice feature!), exposed beams, set back from street for privacy, AND a detached garage. Fall in love with the ease and comfort of a lovely green infill project.
Energy Efficiency Features Include: 90% high efficiency furnace, 75% of home installed with energy efficient lighting, dual flush toilets and low flow faucets, low VOC paint, water heater 93% efficiency rating, and windows with 30U or better ratings.
Location: Located on a private dead end street one block from hip Division Street shopping, dining, and boutique neighborhood, Sunnyside School District, walk to popular Clinton and Hawthorne shopping, arts and dining neighborhood, access to several city parks including Laurelhurst and Mt. Tabor parks, convenient TriMet transportation access.
3572 SE Caruthers (Division/Clinton Neighborhood) | $499,000 | ML# 10086669
Interested in a look? Call Amber at 503-804-1261 for your private tour.
Posted November 11th, 2010 in Blog, Featured, Green Listings | Comments Off
Sustainable building practices must continue to move into the mainstream. What are the benchmarks that enable us to evaluate progress and impacts? Green Day Forum 2010 takes a critical look at how we measure the momentum of building sustainably and the resulting market transformation, while exploring innovative strategies that seek to bridge industry gaps and scale up efforts to mitigate climate change.
One of the keynote speakers will be Edward Mazria, Founder Architecture 2030. Edward Mazria is an internationally recognized architect, author, educator and visionary with a long and distinguished career. His award-winning architecture and planning projects span 35 years and each employs a cutting-edge environmental approach to design. He is the author of numerous published works, including the ‘bible’ of solar design, “The Passive Solar Energy Book,” which is currently in use worldwide.
Most recently, Mr. Mazria has reshaped the national and international dialogue on climate change to incorporate building design and the building sector. He is the founder of Architecture 2030, an innovative and flexible research organization focused on protecting our global environment. He developed and issued the 2030 Challenge, a measured and achievable strategy to dramatically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and fossil-fuel consumption by the year 2030.
Date:November 4th, 2010
Location: Gerding Theater
128 NW Eleventh Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209
Cost: $125
Register at www.greendayforum.org, or contact ahenige@earthadvantage.org, 503-968-7160 x 20
Living in Oregon means valuing a home with year-round abundance of natural light. You’ll find it in this two-story corner Penthouse suite with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall Smartglass, low-E windows on both levels.
The main level offers stunning dining, gas fireplace, full bathroom, and kitchen with a balcony large enough for a dinner party. The lower level is all master suite space with the same great views, including a bedroom, sitting room, office area, a second gas fireplace, and another full bathroom with stackable washer and dryer. The building has a cooling eco-roof, separate storage just for bicycles, central efficient hot water, and dual flush toilets. PLUS, unit has updated mini-split ductless AC units on both floors including 2 brand new heat pumps!
Come view this hot condo in person and you won’t believe the $269,900 pricetag. A great investment steps to PSU, Portland Art Museum, the street car, the Park Blocks, and Farmer’s Markets.
1410 SW 11th Ave. #806 | 894 sf | ML#10072916
Call Amber Turner for a special showing: 503-804-1261
Posted September 29th, 2010 in Blog, Featured, Green Listings | Comments Off
Love modern asymmetry and appreciate anything that can save you up to 90% on your heating and cooling costs? The Corehaus is the only home designed to the ultra efficient Passive House Standard that is currently for sale in Portland! This ultra cool home lets you live with a small footprint, plenty of light, and central to everything we love about the east side. Architect Robert Hawthorne and builder Bart Bergquist put hundreds of hours of perfectionist thought, study, and sweat into this one-of-a-kind home. To see footage of the blower door test they did to test the air tight envelope, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1XEpXKbT5c
The Basics:
Passive House Features:
Other Sustainable Features:
(And just steps to my favorite cafe, Seven Virtues)
The members of GreenPDX were given a private tour of this house a few weeks ago to learn more about the Passive House standard requirements and what it took Rob and Bart to achieve the standard on the Corehaus. (See the full scoop and photos from the tour here.)
This home is For Sale for $330,000, so please call me for a showing today: Amber Turner 503-804-1261
Posted August 13th, 2010 in Blog, Featured, Green Listings | Comments Off
I’ll admit it, the word “green” sometimes feels passe. It’s been used and over-abused to a point where it’s almost unreliable. The Passive House standard that’s becoming more prevalent in Portland, however, doesn’t mention green anywhere. It’s strictly about cutting energy consumption to next to nothing, making a home Net Zero, and saving enough on your energy bills to afford an electric bike, or even an electric car! It is reliable, it’s about getting our priorities straight – and I’m fascinated.
First, however, let’s be clear that Passive House Standard and Passive Solar design, while they work well together, have two different definitions. Passive Solar design places the majority of its windows on south facing walls to maximize heat gain. It also incorporates elements such as tile flooring to absorb and slowly distribute that heat, or seasonal foliage to protect from too much sun.
PassiveHaus incorporates passive solar design, but is also calls for an unbelievably air tight and super insulated envelope. To achieve this usually requires several important changes above and beyond standard building codes. Some of the main components that make up a PassiveHaus include thicker walls and doors for added insulation, higher quality (lower U-value) windows to prevent heat loss, and advanced framing techniques that reduce thermal bridging. Add to this an efficient heat pump and HRV (heat recovery ventilator) and you have yourself a “passive”, contained machines that breathes controlled volumes of air with near perfect efficiency.
Here are a few excerpts defining the Passive House standard from the Passive House Institute US:
“The Passive House concept represents today’s highest energy standard with the promise of slashing the heating energy consumption of buildings by an amazing 90%. Widespread application of the Passive House design would have a dramatic impact on energy conservation. These homes are primarily heated by passive solar gain and by internal gains from people, electrical equipment, etc. Energy losses are minimized. Any remaining heat demand is provided by an extremely small source. Avoidance of heat gain through shading and window orientation also helps to limit any cooling load, which is similarly minimized. An energy recovery ventilator provides a constant, balanced fresh air supply. The result is an impressive system that not only saves up to 90% of space heating costs, but also provides a uniquely terrific indoor air quality.”
So far, Portland only has a hand-full of PassivHaus homes, and all of them are privately owned or being custom built. To experience some of these super homes in person, I recommend the upcoming 2010 Build it Green home tour.
For more local articles and resources, check out these links:
http://djcoregon.com/news/2010/05/14/passive-house-popular-in-portland/
This one is a recipe for success – cute through and through, but with green tricks up its sleeve to boot. First, you have soothing plaster walls, a cleanly updated kitchen, a charming, covered wrap around porch overlooking garden beds, and then you couple it with lovely green features and you have yourself one a dandy gem. Radiant heat, new wood windows, reclaimed materials throughout, paperstone counters, marmoleum floors, and system upgrades. This 3 bedroom, 2 bath home is listed with Karim Alaeddine of ReMax.
Call me for a showing before this one is gone, baby, gone. Amber Turner 503-804-1261
832 N. Emerson Street | 2,068 sf | ML# 10063243
Posted August 5th, 2010 in Blog, Green Listings | Comments Off
If energy efficiency and healthy surfaces are important to you, consider this LEED Platinum home in the Collins View neighborhood – near Lewis and Clark College and Tryon Creek State Park. With radiant heat sourced from a geothermal heat pump, heat recovery ventilator, high efficiency appliances, sustainable materials, an unfinished ADU (accessory dwelling space), and access to great schools, this home is priced right. You’ll get 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, plus the option of additional living quarters, and yet you’ll save big time on energy bills.
541 SW Maplecrest Ct. | 2,592 sf | ML#10038782
Posted July 29th, 2010 in Blog, Green Listings | Comments Off
For those of you who missed the Omey House tour last weekend, faithful GreenPDX member John Veneruso for his visually beautiful report. Thank you, John! Read all about it here:
The Omey House, located in the Overlook neighborhood, just a few minutes from University of Portland and downtown Portland, is a warm, highly-livable modern house built on the structure of a 1925 house. It’s made of 90% recycled materials that are integrated into the original structure. By combining the skills of numerous artists, structural experts, hard-working craftsmen (who own genuine work-aged, pick-up trucks), re-use prowess, and the labor of many friends and neighbors, this old house was reborn within the same footprint as a tremendously energy efficient home, with significantly more square footage, and a flowing open floor plan that is so comfortable that as the owner you’ll be eager to entertain up to 30 people, and as a guest, you’ll never want to leave.
Upon setting sights on the house, you’ll quickly spot a sizeable, beautiful living roof, brimming with diversity, that is part of a site-wide system of water collection. The sweeping porch is built with large, exposed timbers that are reminiscent of Skamania or Timberline lodge, promising to shelter you even during the harshest of winter storms. Art work, made of shaped metal and an urbanite (recycled concrete) retention planter, combine to funnel the water during even the harshest of gully-washers into the large backyard that can easily absorb the water. As you look closer at the house siding, with its dark, almost mahogany colored horizontal planks, you’ll see glimmers of a weather an insulation system. It begins with horizontal wood that was deemed too inferior for commercial use, yet given the care and attention it’s received prior to installation, it works to shield the house from direct rain and sun. Behind the siding is a mesh that keeps bugs and debris out of vertical channels that enable drying air to move from the ground upward. Behind the channels is a thick layer of foam insulation, some of which was reclaimed, saving it from being dumped in Eastern Oregon. Unlike fiberglass insulation that is placed between 2×4’s, this insulation wraps solidly around the house’s frame, providing excellent energy performance and dramatically reducing airflow into the household envelope.
As you glance up at the roof, you’ll see something unusual for the neighborhood, a sunny, classic metal roof that was carefully designed to be the host to a large photovoltaic solar power array. The plan is to not just break-even, but to actually use it to print money after 10 to 15 years. As part of the roof upgrade, wood beams and plywood sheeting were chosen for their green-local availability and assembled to contain more than R-50 worth of insulation.
Indoors, the 3 stories of space beckons to be explored. The main floor, which has a radiant heating system beneath its rich hard-wood floors, finds a new use for a recycled bowling alley floor as a rectilinear kitchen island. A wood burning stove, with 360 degrees of sightlines, can keep the house extra cozy. The dining room wall was pushed out and cantilevered to provide extra space for a welcoming, reclaimed wooden, cut-to-fit quadrilateral table. The landing at the bottom of first set of stairs to the bottom level is covered with a colorful mosaic that artfully blends the concepts of flowing water, and other natural imagery. Lighted nooks show off the historic lap-plaster walls as sunlight pours through a skylight that moves light through all three floors. On the 3rd floor, the Master bedroom’s strategically placed windows create a soft light that suffuses the space, which includes a ¾ height wall that separates the main bedroom from the walk through closet area. A balcony sports metal work that is easily mistaken for something truly organic as reclaimed metal tools and other objects that were warped and shaped find a new lease on an inspiring life.
The Omey house demonstrates that you can take something old that would otherwise be bulldozed, scrapped, or forgotten on Craigslist, and transformed into something that is inviting, and fills you with light and inner-energy, while at the same time doing wonderful things with the rain and sunlight that arrive throughout the year.
After the tour and potluck, we also enjoyed a tour of Mike Suri’s Iron Studio. Mike uses his talented metal smith skills to produce public art around Portland and commission pieces for private collectors. He has done numerous creative projects for the Omey House, such as rainwater catchment art and banister railings and screens. He also uses old school equipment you wouldn’t want pets or small children to go near. Check out his work at Suri Iron, Inc.
Amber Turner, Broker
503-804-1261
