Wall Street funds manager George Callas used to stare out the window in his high-rise office overlooking Park Avenue, long for the life he is living now. Callas had achieved the American Dream, but then discovered it just wasn't his dream.
Callas spent days at a job that paid well into six figures. He went home each evening to his brownstone in Jersey City, to his beautiful wife and a gorgeous baby.
"I remember thinking there's something more important we're supposed to be doing," Callas said.
The more pressing duty, it turns out, was in the rural Maine town of Brooks, where Callas and his wife, Kimberly, built a 2,100-square-foot underground home that produces almost as much energy as it consumes. Here, Callas is free to pursue his passion for creating a home that is the model of sustainability and helping others reach the same goal.
An adjunct instructor at Unity College, Callas has found his outlet, a place to be with others who share his calling and to teach what he has learned.
"I now have a second career," Callas said. "Wall Street is behind me."
Callas spent 20 years as an asset manager after working his way up from window washer. During his run on Wall Street, he worked for two of the three largest asset management companies in the world, including Deutsche Bank. Callas was working with clients worth from $5 million to $500 million and was himself pulling down $225,000 every year.
Callas always had an interest in ecology and sustainability, but he traces his desire for a quieter, more remote existence to Helen and Scott Nearing's book, "Living the Good Life." Ironically, Scott Nearing was a trained economist and former college professor.
"If you take care of the land, it should take care of you," Callas said. The couple wanted to settle in Waldo County, which was in the 1970s a destination for back-to-the- landers, many of who stayed, Callas said.
"We felt very lucky to end up in a place like this," he said.
The couple heard about the 360-acre parcel, a mile or so off Route 7, from neighbors in Jersey City who owned a home nearby. The land had been cut over and was too remote to make it valuable either as a houselot or woodlot.
"Nobody wanted the land," Callas said. "It wasn't pretty and there wasn't anything valuable on it." After trees were cleared for a rough driveway about a quarter of a mile long, the Callases' home began taking shape in July 2004.
Neither George nor Kimberly had any carpentry experience, but they were determined to build the house with their own hands. Many of the stones were pulled from existing stone walls or from an old cellar hole the couple found on the property. All the rocks were picked and washed before going into the home.
"We did every bit of it," Callas said. "For a guy that had a desk job for 20 years it really was a shock. Then I had to learn framing and carpentry."
The house grew along with their son, Jacob, who is now 5.
"It's hard to build a house with a toddler," Callas said.
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Staff photo by David
Leaming
The home of George
Callas is nestled into
the woods in Brooks.
Callas built the home to be super efficient, using abundant wall insulation and earth pushed up against the foundation, stone to absorb heat from wood, and sun and solar and wind generated power. |
The home is not an underground home in the strictest sense. The house was built into the side of a hill, leaving the front exposed, the back set into the earth. The home has the look of an elongated daylight basement.
A portion of the roof will be covered with soil and seeded for a lawn.
"It will integrate the house with the immediate landscape," Callas said. The home is the model of efficiency, beginning with R60 insulation, including the outside soil covering, in the ceiling. The walls, on the front, open side, have an R30 rating, which is achieved by a combination of stone wall, concrete, insulation and gypsum wallboard.
"There's 180 tons of stone and concrete inside the thermal envelope," Callas said. "Essentially, its an 18-inch-thick wall."
The radiant heat emanating from the concrete floor is fed by an ultra- efficient wood furnace. The Callases burned only four cords of wood this winter.
Two large solar panels, which Callas found in Uncle Henry's, feed a bank of 24-volt batteries that provide electricity for the home. An inverter turns that direct current into common 120-volt alternating current. Roughly one third of the $120,000 the Callases have in the home was spent on the battery and solar system, but he sees that as an investment.
"We've purchased our electricity for the next 30 years," Callas said.
The family burned about 30 gallons of gasoline in their generator during the past year, but Callas already is making plans for a windmill that will make the generator all but obsolete.
"I figure by next year we'll be fossil fuel-free," Callas said.
Eventually, he predicts, the family will have to buy an electric vehicle to store all the extra electricity that will be created by the windmill and solar panels.
All cooking is done on an old Needa Fairmount combination wood and propane gas stove. The stove, built in 1903, stands in stark contrast to the modern stainless-steel refrigerator-freezer.
The family moved into the home in January 2006. The house is unfinished -- the counters are still covered in plywood -- but it is not rustic. There are traditional light fixtures, power outlets and even cable outlets that will be hooked to satellite. The bathroom has a luxurious shower.
"We're doing all that without having to burn more oil or send somebody to Iraq," Callas said.
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Staff photo by David
Leaming
George Callas, a
Unity College adjunct
professor, walks through
the stone covered rooms inside his home in the woods in Brooks. The home is off the utility grid and relies on solar and wind power, wood heat and super insulated building construction. |
He believes a zero-net energy home is attainable for anybody.
"If a couple of numbnuts from the city can, from their own hands, make something like this, the people here who have way more skill in this area absolutely can," Callas said.
Indeed, so-called green homes will one day become the norm, predicts Brad Collins, executive director of the Boulder, Colorado-based American Solar Energy Society.
"It's a widely spreading trend," he said. "People are actively taking a role in making a difference in climate change, a difference in air quality, a difference in national security and making a difference to advance these technologies.
"As they become more commonplace, they're going to become cheaper," Collins said.
For Callas, building the most efficient home is both an economic and moral issue.
"People have to think differently about their homes," he said. "It's not a box you fill up, it's a dynamic system. We live within the limits of this house, which is very much how people lived 150 years ago."