Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between visionary and crazy. Chris Prelitz has certainly been called both. In 1983, when he threw everything into environmentally-friendly building, plenty of people questioned his sanity. But he kept on. Ten years later, he built Orange County’s first solar electric house, and now as a bona fide sustainability expert, he consults for international companies such as Tesco and Mercedes Benz and has even been featured on the Discovery Channel. Waking the world up to how much our homes impact the environment has become his mission. Did you know our homes produce more CO2 than our cars?
“You may drive a Prius,” says Prelitz. “But if your electric bill is $500 a month, your house is a gas-guzzling SUV, make that several gas-guzzling SUVs.”
To prove his point, he always knew he would someday build a self-sustaining green home for himself. Then in 1997, a lot in Bluebird Canyon came up for sale, and where others saw a drainage ditch, he saw a dream home. Literally.
“When I walked up to the empty lot, an image came to me – a strong color, 3D vision of this house. I thought, ‘OK, that’s a sign,’” says Prelitz, who immediately put in an offer and began designing an environmentally-sound
house.
Eschewing the typical So Cal bulldozing mentality, Prelitz worked the house around the land, not the other way around. Is this a fundamental tenet of green building? Yes, but there was another reason behind the decision – the city gave him no choice. Remember that drainage ditch? A water course and easement meant only half of the property was buildable.
But when a powerful vision comes with a few proverbial lemons, the best you can do is plant some literal ones, so the first thing Prelitz did was plant lemon trees, and orange trees, and apple tress, and Asian pear trees, and of course a kumquat tree. During rainstorms, he watched the water flow from the hills through his property and created and attractive streambed following the water’s natural path. Eventually, he planted an extensive organic, native garden, terraced for easy watering, that the Audubon Society has certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat.
The program encourages homeowners to restore the ecosystem by replacing grass lawns with natural wildlife refuges. While the garden is aesthetically pleasing, it is also functional – those lush trees provide serious shade. Planting them early on meant that by the time construction started, the lot was naturally cooler: a key quality for a home that would never see an air conditioner.
Ocean breezes flowing up the canyon also help cool the property, and the south-facing lot plays a significant factor in an efficient, or passive solar home. An active solar home uses technology to harness energy from the
sun (more on that later), but a passive solar home is built in order to work with the earth – attracting heat in the winter, reflecting it in summer and maximizing light in the day. The fundamentals are south-facing windows, optimized overhangs and natural ventilation. New technology is great, says Prelitz, but the basics are even more important.
“You can put a sail on a power boat,” he says. “But if you don’t first make it streamlined and efficient, you won’t
see much benefit.”
Once the house was oriented to the south, designed to maximize breezes and capture light, it was time to bring in the right materials. Surprisingly, that doesn’t mean the latest technology. Before people started using fossil fuels to power, heat and cool their homes, green building was a requirement, not a trend: The adobe pueblos in Taos date back over 1,000 years. California and Arizona are dotted with historic adobes and Nebraska still has surviving straw bale buildings from the 19th century. Both materials offer outstanding insulating qualities. Prelitz chose a hybrid design using wooden framing with some straw bale walls.
Straw is plentiful. It’s affordable. It’s annually renewable, as opposed to timber which can take 10 years to
regenerate. And it needs to be used. In the 1990s, before there was a market for it, the burning of rice straw waste in California fields was the state’s number one source of pollution.
Keeping waste materials out of our air is important, and so is keeping it out of our landfills. Prelitz chose wood recycled from Hollywood sets for the home’s frame and its outdoor deck; cut telephone poles and bamboo rungs
make up the deck’s rails. The stairs from the front door to the driveway are made from urbanite, or reused concrete, scavenged from construction sites. And when it comes to landfills, asphalt roofing is among the worst offenders. Rarely recycled, they’re simply dumped when they wear out.
Once again, Prelitz looked back in time for a solution and chose an old reliable and efficient design element – the corrugated metal roof. It’s recycled and recyclable. Most importantly, it reflects the sun, once again keeping the house cool. Those asphalt, tile and concrete roofs absorb so much heat that they actually change the micro-climate around them through something called the heat island effect. Towns heavy in asphalt parking lots, streets and Mediterranean-style tract homes are generally two to 10 degrees warmer than their rural counterparts.
Fortunately, in Southern California, we have cool nights, which can be used to regulate a home’s temperature without using electric or gas energy. Skylights let light in during the day to reduce electricity costs, but they also open up at night to let hot air out and cool air in through a process called nighttime flushing. To keep that cool from escaping again, mass is important. Heavy materials in the home, like concrete and stone will absorb the nighttime air and keep the temperature down in the day.
“If you have one beer in the fridge and you open the door, a lot of cold air comes out. But if the fridge is filled with beers, you lose a whole lot less,” he says. Even in a heat wave, thanks to stained concrete floors, a stone
fireplace and countertops, Prelitz says his house stays at 70 degrees inside without air conditioning. And as far as the landfills, he rests easy knowing the floor will stay for the life of the home.
With more than 300 days of sun per year, our local environment is also great for natural, and free, day lighting.
“If you want to easily cut back on energy use, lighting is your low-hanging fruit,” he says.
He and his wife, Becky, whom he met shortly after moving into the house, use skylights and windows in the day and compact fluorescents and LED lights at night.
“If you have 20 ceiling cans with old-style incandescent bulbs, you’re putting out a lot of heat, so then you
have to use more energy to cool things down,” he says.
He also suggests that 10% or more of the average home’s energy bill may be coming from Power Vampires: like leaky faucets and appliances that remain plugged in – they suck energy even when they’re turned off. Smart Strip power strips are a simple solution. They sense when an appliance has been turned off and take things one step further to total shutoff.
Then of course, there is the icing – the active solar technology. When the Prelitzes added solar panels to their roof in 1999, they went from getting energy bills in the single figures to getting a credit from their power company most months. The electricity the panels produce spins their electric meter backwards during the daytime,
offsetting whatever power they need to run their home and to charge their fully-electric GEM car. They simply plug it in then tool around town. Soon, they hope to add solar water heating panels in order to heat their water, which is also their source of heat for the whole house. (A hydronic radiant heating system pipes hot water through the floors, which then radiates up through the rooms.)
Although they have a traditional oven, they also have a solar oven outside on the patio. The box has mirror-like metallic panels that direct sunlight to a small cooking area. In about 30 minutes, the box reaches 375 degrees. It sounds and looks high-tech – and this model is – but people have been using mirrors and solar boxes to cook outdoors for hundreds of years.
To move forward, we have to look back. “Burning fossil fuels for energy and production has been a 150-year experiment that I predict will appear archaic in the near future,” he says. “We’ll soon live elegantly and more in harmony with nature. It makes the most sense environmentally and economically.”
Sound crazy? Check out his track record. This man sees the future.
For more on transforming your home, check out Chris Prelitz’s NewLeafAmerica.com.
Selling Green
Even the most hardened green movement naysayers might come around if they knew one thing – it will help them sell their house.
Although it’s easier when you start from the ground up, Prelitz wanted to demonstrate what homeowners can to do transform their energy needs, no matter what they’re starting with.
So what he started with was an all-electric 1960s condo in Leisure World. A challenge indeed. Plus, he thought, who needs to stabilize their energy bills more than a retiree on a fixed income?
To start, Prelitz tore off the drywall and put up a radiant barrier (looks like aluminum foil, works like a NASA heat shield), which immediately brought the rooms’ temperature down 10 degrees.
“It’s an inexpensive way to reduce 97% of a home’s radiant heat. I think it cost $400 for the whole home,” he says. He then installed solar tubes and opening skylights for day lighting and ventilation, LED lights for night lighting and two solar systems – solar electricity and solar water heating.
Next came stone floors, energy-efficient windows and a call to the National Tour of Solar Homes, which added the condo to its list.
“I’ve been going to these tours for 20 years. It used to be about 20 nerdy people, but that year we had over 500,” he says.
Eighty-nine degree outdoor temperatures on a day when 500 people were tramping through a 600-square foot condo, could have posed a challenge. Instead it proved his point.
“The room never got above 73 degrees,” he says.
That was enough for him to get three verbal offers to buy the place at the open house. And at a time when all of Orange County was fretting over the real estate market (October 2007), he sold it in 13 days for $150,000 more than any comparable model in the neighborhood had ever gone for.
