Cool House Tour to beat the heat

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Faced with the constant drum beat of dire warnings about climate change, many of us are making changes.

We combine errands into one trip. We turn off lights we're not using. Some of us even take the big step of buying a hybrid car. But when it comes to building a new home or remodeling an existing one, there is the gulp factor.

People fear a green approach will be too expensive. Rick Dowden begs to differ. Dowden is a Certified Green Professional Builder from Masterpiece Remodeling and Design in Austin. He's also on a list of green contractors Austin Energy refers to citizens who want to take the plunge into a green life .

"It's a complete new way of thinking," said Dowden. "I mean, you frame with less material but you make it stronger. And it's not real conventional. Insulation, it takes a little more time the first time to do something right."

In North Austin, Calvin Williams and his partner, Matt Bennison, took the plunge, quite literally. Now their home is one of twelve featured in the 2009 Cool House Tour . Five years ago, they installed a swimming pool in the backyard of their small bungalow in the Crestview neighborhood of North Austin. Williams immediately got a sort of sinking feeling.

"You know, I think that for, you know, living here in Austin, you're definitely, you know, surrounded by all these green choices," said Williams. "You hear green, green, green, this. Felt a little guilty having a pool and sucking a lot of electricity."

About the same time, Williams began thinking of a bigger house.

"The house was right at 800 square feet," he said. "Two bedroom, two bath, two people, a dog and a cat. Got crowded. Started, you know, thinking about adding on."

Through Dowden, Williams found an architect who drew up some plans for adding onto the back of the house and attaching a separate wing that would run along the side of the pool. The roof of the addition would play host to an array of solar panels that would assuage much of Williams' guilt about his pool. And speaking of the pool, the design left plenty of room for a rainwater collection tank.

"The rainwater collection, for me, has like, opened my eyes.," said Williams. "It's like, why doesn't everybody collect rainwater?"

Williams watches when rain fills his pool and when the water evaporates, he opens a valve from the tank to replenish the level.

There is no grass lawn. Fine gravel, populated with native plants takes its place and water from the tank keeps them alive.

"I don't want to mow," Williams said.

The homeowner feels good about all these choices.

"We added 50 percent more to the house, yet our electric bill has decreased by about fifty per cent from what it was to begin with," said Williams. "We're saving money every month on our electric bill, but I think more so than anything is we're, we're saving the environment. I mean, as corny as it sounds, you are."

Williams and Bennison are not alone and green building is not restricted to small bungalows. A few miles away, in the small city of Rollingwood, which borders Austin, Katherine Blois and her husband, Scott, tore down their crumbling ranch-style house and started over, employing every green technique they could think of. The new house spreads over 3600 square feet.

"That's been pretty extraordinary," said Katherine Blois. "We've doubled the size of our house and literally more than halved our electric bill. Our electric bills were phenomenal before."

All of this rests easy in Natalie Marquis' ears. She's the executive director of Texas Solar Energy Society, which is partnering with Austin Energy to host the thirteenth annual Cool House Tour.

"Where we're going with it is every year to raise the bar," Marquis said. "Every year what we’re looking for is not just green built, not just energy efficient, not just comfortable, what’s the next step?"

Next year, Marquis predicts, back yard gardens will be part of almost all the stops on the tour. For now, though, tour organizers have their hands full. An estimated 3,500 people will file through each home during the tour Sunday. They will take pictures, ask questions and wonder, "Maybe we could do this, too."