Recycled Residence : Environmental Dream House Saves Energy, Wood, Water
John Picard stands in the middle of his spacious living room admiring the view. Wherever he looks, it pleases him.
“These are the cars we drove in the 1960s,” he exclaimed, gesturing at the soaring white walls, the oversize front window with its 16 steel-framed panes and the loft bedroom tucked high under an open gridwork ceiling interlaced with heating and cooling ducts.
“These are the auto heaps we relegated to the junk yards in the 1970s. They are now my house!”
Picard, 34, is a building contractor who, after 10 years of working on “other people’s designs and specifications” has built his own dream house. The use of recycled steel--which he praises as the ultimate recyclable building material--instead of wood, is only part of its new look.
Picard wanted to build the ultimate environmental house, using not only recycled materials but also all the products and systems that are most thrifty with natural resources. And if “environmental living” in the 1960s meant a retreat to the piney woods of Vermont for rustic life in a cabin with a wood-burning stove and compost toilet, Picard, who is not only a builder but also a computer expert, has redefined the concept.
“I decided to take it all the way to the wall,” he said of the two-story galvanized metal box that sits like a serene outer-space visitor on Greene Avenue, a modest West Los Angeles neighborhood of pastel bungalows, palms and pepper trees. Last week’s installation of a rooftop array of solar panels was the finishing touch on the hybrid high-tech-environmental project that he steamed through in four months, marveling at its efficiency.
“There’s a savings you can’t believe with steel,” he said. “It was pre-cut at the manufacturer--we saved money and we saved waste.”
Although steel has long been used in heavy construction, the idea of a recycled steel house is definitely experimental. Picard, who sold his own house to finance the unconventional project because “I didn’t think the bank would be behind me on this,” shows it off with the pride of a new parent.
“I’ve got something unique here,” he told a visitor, leading the way into an open living room where scattered Santa Fe rugs soften the charcoal poured-concrete floor. “The steel is 70% recycled. We didn’t destroy any forests. Are there recycled wood studs? No, they’re called trees. On the other hand, there are tons of automobile carcasses lying around.” And that’s just the start.
His recital continues: “This house is solar powered--it’s gonna be 100% off the grid. I’m still connected to DWP (the Department of Water & Power) but I’ll run on solar as much as possible. And there are bells and whistles--I’ve got every water conservation device possible, I’ve got super insulation, I’ve got an air purification system that filters down to one micron--that’s 100 times smaller than a strand of hair--and I’ve got a computer with a Ph.D. running the whole house.”
He has taken environmental living literally to its roots: Beds of drought-tolerant landscaping border his front lawn of slow-growing Bonsai “dwarf” grass and it’s all kept green by a drip irrigation system.
Propelling a visitor inside and out, Picard kept up an exuberant chatter, pointing out environmental gems like a museum tour guide:
“Have you heard about the new polymers to conserve water? They’re all buried in the soil,” he explained, ruffling through a little xeriscape bush to expose the wires and valves of his computer watering system. “This whole bed uses just 38 gallons of water a month.”
And though he confessed that non-toxic paints were just not practical for the kitchen, he shopped for energy-efficient appliances.
“Refrigerators really kick up the electrical bill,” he observed, opening the door of his Sunfrost, which cuts energy use by 75%. “If you don’t do anything else for the environment, buy an energy-efficient refrigerator.”
Picard’s new house may look like an upstart today but experts predict it’s likely to be commonplace by the 21st Century as the idea of using secondary materials for building and re-building increasingly makes economic sense.
“His ideas really aren’t off the wall at all,” said Lee Fisher of the National Assn. of Home Builders Research Center. The NAHB is preparing to build their first prototype “resource conservation” house using as many recycled materials as possible.
“It’s a viable approach, no doubt about it,” Fisher said. “Some builders and buyers are just getting interested in environmental homes--it’s possible that the critical mass isn’t too far around the corner.”
And at Real Goods Trading Corp., where technicians designed a compatible solar inverter for the Picard house’s sophisticated computer sensors, President John Schaeffer thinks the Picard house can be a model for the rest of the state.
“A lot of people talk and fantasize about some amazing 21st Century project combining high tech and solar, but I’ve never met anyone who’s gone as far,” Schaeffer said. “He has inspired us to set up a five-year feasibility plan for urban solar homes.”
For Picard, who grew up in Newport Beach and attended Orange Coast College and Pierce College, without getting a degree, the recycled house symbolizes a career shift from a world of large-scale projects to the individual level. “I’ve found my niche,” he said. “It’s energy-efficient houses.”
“I’ve always built efficiently, but I have a history of working for very expensive clients,” added Picard, who has been involved in such lavish residential projects as refurbishing the Harold Lloyd mansion for department store magnate Ted Field, as well as commercial remodeling projects.
Working with top engineers on mega-buildings that consumed huge volumes of water and power, he learned to think in big-building terms of facilities management efficiency, an approach that dove-tailed with his interest in computer building management.
However, watching the exploding demographics of Los Angeles, he was becoming aware that the demand on the region’s water and air was approaching crisis dimensions, no matter how efficiently the buildings were run.
The turning point, he said, was Gary Petersen’s house. Petersen, an environmental pioneer, started Santa Monica’s Ecolo-Haul in 1972 with one Volkswagen van, introduced a myriad of curbside, buyback and dropoff innovations, and was acquired by giant Waste Management, Inc., two years ago.
Petersen had long wanted to build a conventional house that was environmentally correct and “wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.” After four years of designing and researching everything from photovoltaic panels to insulation, caulking and glues, he looked for someone to do the work.
“I went to 16 contractors,” Petersen said. “They didn’t know anything about environmental building, nor did they care. Finally I came across John who had the energy and the interest. So I gave him five environmental books to read, and my list of stuff, and we built a two-story Tudor house in the Pacific Palisades. I didn’t want to blow away the neighborhood with solar panels on the roof, so we used conventional electricity, but he came up with a lot of solar details.”
Petersen was very happy with his house. But Picard, having cut his teeth on a high-grade, environmentally concerned building, kept reading. He got concerned about the ozone conditions and the marine mammal depletion and the rain forest destruction. He lost interest in jet skis and car stereos. He went to the Environmental Film Festival in Colorado and met eco-heroes like Sam La Budde, who risked his life to film the destruction of dolphins caught in tuna-boat nets.
With Petersen’s encouragement, Picard decided to design and build a house that would “push the envelope” environmentally and still be accessible to ordinary people. “Gary’s house was wood, but I’d been exposed to the rain-forest movement and wood was not the ticket. I wanted to set an example early on.
“I looked at concrete, but it has no thermal value. Then I looked at steel--all those old cars and appliances and beams piled in the scrap metal yards. Nobody wants it.”
Then he made the bonus discovery that steel is recycled. “I SAW cars getted shredded in Fontana, to be melted into rolled steel. Steel has a minimum of 70% recycled content and a maximum of 95%. I was on it like a groundhog--my head was swimming! My dad’s an engineer and I called him and said ‘I’m going for it!’ ”
Picard moved in about a month ago. He’s already getting calls from people who want to come and look, including his neighbors who are beginning to accept the presence of a steel box in the middle of their tidy block. There were so many questions initially that he posted a huge sign explaining that an “Environmental House” was going up, and spent some time talking to people on the block.
“It was a real shock at first,” says neighbor Katherine Brosman, a retired nurse who has walked her two dogs daily past the project. “I’ve lived here since 1960 and this is a well-kept neighborhood. At first everybody complained because it looked like an industrial plant building, not a home. But after I found out it’s an environmental thing, I thought we really can’t complain. I’d go all the way out for anybody who uses recycled materials like that.”
Lots of neighborhood kids have visited, and one eighth grader has done a science project on the recycled house.
“I really dig it,” said Picard happily. “I drive home at night and say ‘I did it--I built it! It’s everything I want it to be.’ ”
More About New Products for Home
For more information about the products mentioned in this article, or to find the distributor nearest you, contact the manufacturers listed below.
HessCo Industries Inc., 160 Foundation Ave., La Habra, Calif. 90631; (714) 871-7448.
HWE Inc., 11145 Vanowen St., North Hollywood, Calif. 91605; (800) 742-5493.
Kohler Co., 444 Highland Drive, Kohler, Wisc. 53044;
(414) 457-4411.
Infloor Heating Systems, 920 Hamel Road, P.O. Box 253, Hamel, Minn. 55340; (612) 478-6477.
Jacuzzi Whirlpool Bath, 100 N. Wiget Lane, P.O. Drawer J, Walnut Creek, Calif. 94596; (415) 938-7070.
Parking Solutions, 2663 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach, Calif. 90278; (800) 359-5021.
Pioneer Electronics, 1800 W. Holt Ave., Pomona, Calif. 91768; (714) 623-3271.
Ruegg Fireplaces, Valley Park, Suite 12, 216 U.S. Highway 206, Somerville, N.J. 08876; (908) 281-9555.
