THE GREEN PARADE: BUILDING "DRAMATICALLY MORE COMFORTABLE" HOMES
GREEN MOVEMENT NOTHING NEW TO SETH SADLER
By Cindy Kleh / Photos by Carter Photographics

The latest trends in building green are nothing new to Seth Sadler, owner of EnviroSense Design Build of Fraser. He has been preaching the common sense of designing and constructing homes and businesses to use less of the earth’s nonrenewable resources long before energy costs soared and terms such as “tight thermal envelope” and “carbon footprint” became chic.

Sadler admits that the “feel good” side of building green is great, but he believes that his style of building is appealing to the homebuyer for several other reasons. His houses last longer and cost less to heat and maintain and the dwellers are cozier, with tons of natural light and fresh air to breathe.

“It’s not a marketing thing for me; it’s what I do,” says Sadler, who has been at the forefront of the green building movement for almost two decades. With all that experience, an engineering degree and architectural and general contracting licenses, he is able to help the prospective homebuyer from the stages of desiring a home in Grand County to handing them the keys.

Because Sadler is there through all the planning, designing and building stages, and only tackles a couple custom homes (designing up to six) per year, he really gets to know his customers over the course of working closely together.

“Less than 25 percent of clients are coming to me for a green home, and most don’t know really what green means. They contact me because of the things I can do to make a house more comfortable … for better quality. We are never going to stop people from building large houses, but if they are built green, they will have much less impact on the planet.”

“It doesn’t cost me any more to build green,” Sadler continues. “It is a BIG misconception that green cost more. Green items used to be specialty orders. Now they are mainstream, helping the price of building green come down with better warranties and better product evolution.”

“Each home I build has a very different appearance both inside and out because I do what my customers want, within their budget and what the site dictates - anywhere from rustic mountain to very modern/contemporary.”

Passive solar is a keystone of an EnviroSense home. Ideally, Sadler is there from the very start to help the homeowner find the perfect lot and site the home so that the sun can satisfy most of the heating load. This way, a home’s energy needs are less from the beginning. Strategically placed eave overhangs keep direct solar heat from penetrating rooms during “high noon” in the summer months, thereby eliminating the possibility of overheating, glare and a need for any air conditioning.

In designing a home, Sadler places the mechanical room in the center of the home with no exterior wall if possible so the concentrated heat from this room goes into heating the inside of the house, not the outdoors. This room location also allows for the shortest water supply runs to each plumbing fixture through the manifolded, dedicated domestic water supply system. With the small size piping this system allows, hot water can be had almost instantly even from the furthest room in the house.

Instead of copper and soldered joints, he uses PEX (polyethylene tubing) for getting around tight corners without elbow fittings. PEX is more resilient to freeze breakage, doesn’t corrode and delivers clean tasting water with many advantages over copper. In fact, Sadler was the first general contractor to use it in Grand County.

Every plumbing fixture in the house is a home run to the utility room where each fixture can be shut off while the rest of the house operates normally. These systems make it possible to use multiple plumbing fixtures at the same time with no change in temperature or pressure felt by any user, while being very quiet.

The spray foam insulation, triplepane low-E windows, E-Star appliances and efficient heating systems that Sadler uses could render a home so tightly sealed against the elements that there is no exchange of fresh air from the outside. This is both good, and, of course, bad. The mission is to keep the cold air out and prevent any drafts, which Sadler’s houses do very well, but fresh air is needed in any building for occupant health.

The homes “breathe” with a heat recovery ventilator that provides several complete air changes per day inside the home. The ventilator re-captures a good part of the heat from the outgoing stale air to warm the incoming fresh air.

To further insure that the inside air is above average quality, Sadler chooses low-VOC paint, no particle board and commercial-grade low-pile carpet with one-piece foam padding that has no off gassing binders like traditional carpet pads. All fireplaces, boilers, furnaces and hot water heaters are sealed combustion, eliminating the concerns over back drafting and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Instead of dimensional lumber, Sadler uses only engineered lumber throughout his homes. Even the studs are perfectly straight engineered lumber. Engineered lumber is made from recycled/ reconstituted wood chips or strands, not only to avoid feeding the demand for cutting live trees, but also because it is stronger, lighter and structurally more consistent; it will not twist or split, spanning longer distances.

But despite all these sensible, greenleaning features, an EnviroSense home doesn’t seem different from any other custom home. “My houses feel like other homes, not like one of those ‘wacky green homes.’ They are built green from beginning to end, but owners can still choose what they wish for finishes to make the home exactly what they want, even though some of those choices may not be the greenest selection available.”

And when he is not designing and building green homes and businesses, Sadler is walking the walk in his everyday lifestyle. His own home is an 850-squarefoot wonder of low energy use. He contributed the original design of Second Creek Hut to Grand Huts Association, and his Fraser office, soon to be renovated, was built in the 1950s. “The biggest way to be green is to recycle and reuse.”


READ MORE STORIES ON THE GREEN PARADE IN:
• Introduction to Green Building Certification
• Building Dramatically More Comfortable Homes: Green movement nothing new to Seth Sadler
• This Small House: Smaller homes take their place among the elite
• Green Asthetics and Efficiency in the Ideal Mountain Cabin