‘Green’ Metzger house on Remodelers Home Tour

Oregon Remodelers Association readies 23 houses for public review this weekend

By Mikel Kelly

The Times, Oct 16, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Mikel Kelly / Times Newspapers

Homeowner Gary DeCarrico stands at the edge of one of his house’s new features, a bioswale desguised as a rock garden that will prevent virtually all rain runoff from the home’s driveway from spilling into Ash Creek. The house, at 8020 S.W. Elmwood St., is among the 23 homes included in the 2008 Remodeled Home Tour set for this Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Homeowner Gary DeCarrico and builder Stephen Aiguier are both betting the farm on the future of earth-friendly construction practices — even with an unhealthy real estate market and an economy that’s in intensive care.

Aiguier, owner of Green Hammer Building Contractors, already has a five-year track record of sustainable building, and DeCarrico is on the front end of a new career of “green restoration and development.”

You can see an example of their handiwork this weekend, at the 2008 Remodelers Home Tour, when they throw open DeCarrico’s remodeled 1959 home at 8020 S.W. Elmwood for public scrutiny. It’s one of 23 remodeling projects throughout the metro area and Salem (see sidebar).

The 2,750-square-foot Metzger house won’t be completely finished for a few more days, admits DeCarrico, but you’ll get the idea of what they set out to accomplish — and they’ve accomplished plenty.

The drastically remodeled home features an “advanced envelope,” says Aiguier.

“Traditionally, in a remodel, what you’d do is just expose those walls, run your wiring and your plumbing, insulate those walls and cover everything back up.”

But they expanded the envelope by building a second, inside 2-by-4 stud wall, staggered so the studs don’t match up.

“It basically more than doubled the insulation value,” says Aiguier. “What we did was sacrifice some square footage for that increased insulation value.”

For heating and cooling, they installed a ground source heat pump to take the place of the old gas furnace. That entailed drilling three 200-foot-deep holes in the back yard which were filled with more than 600 feet of pipe to tap the stored energy of the earth.

“This is 400 percent efficient,” or a little more than four times more efficient than the natural gas furnace that preceded it, Aiguier explains.

They added solar power in the form of photovoltaic cells to supplement the ground source heat pump system.

“It’s so efficient to operate, it generally saves you 51 percent” on an average home’s heat bills, says DeCarrico, but because of the expanded thermal envelope, the builders expect much more.

“We’re actually excited to get a power bill because we don’t know what it’s going to be,” he adds. One clue, he says, is that during those couple of 100-degree days this summer, the house stayed at a comfortable 72 degrees.

“We’re looking at a 15- to 20-percent payback on energy costs, with the increased envelope,” says Aiguier.

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