Unity President Gets a Sustainable House, and a One-Shower Limit

A sustainable house for Unity College’s president is due to be completed in August. (Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)

Unity, Me.—Unity College, which calls itself “America’s environmental college,” is building its president a house with a small footprint and big ambitions: to earn the highest possible LEED certification and to serve as a model for sustainable homes everywhere.

The 1,900-square-foot house will have solar panels on its roof and is designed for a net-zero lifestyle—sometimes it will draw power from the electric grid, but what it draws will be balanced by power it contributes to the grid at other times. The house has significantly more insulation than traditional homes, and it is being constructed on a concrete pad that will retain heat in the winter and help keep the house cool in the summer.

South-facing windows and sliding doors with screens—all featuring triple-glazed, argon-filled glass for extra insulation—will admit plenty of daylight and, in good weather, fresh air. Low-flow water fixtures, compact fluorescent lights, and high-efficiency appliances and mechanical systems round out the plan. The house is expected to earn platinum-level certification from LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

Unity’s president, Mitchell S. Thomashow, and his wife, Cindy Thomashow—who is executive director of the college’s Center for Environmental Education—have not had a campus residence until now, although Mr. Thomashow has been president for two years. When the house is completed next month, they’ll spend much of their time in a large living area divided from the kitchen by a counter. On one side of the living area, a movable wall will set off a den that can double as a guest room. On the other side of the living area, small offices for both of the Thomashows separate it from a bedroom.

The architect, Hilary B. Harris of Bensonwood Homes, says the house was designed to be as flexible as possible. The Thomashows wanted it to accommodate college events and classes—Mr. Thomashow plans to teach a freshman course there this fall—but not to feel cavernous when just the two of them were at home. Also, the house was designed to show that a comfortable, sustainable home could be built on a fairly tight budget, about $200 per square foot. “We felt that was competitive for the American homeowner,” Mr. Thomashow says.

Although it won’t look like a modular home, the house has been largely manufactured at Bensonwood, which is working with the college and with the Open Prototype Initiative, started by an architecture-research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The kitchen and bathroom modules were built at Bensonwood and trucked to the site, and structural members and wall panels were cut at the company’s facility and brought to the campus ready for assembly. Locating bathrooms and the kitchen together on the north side of the house allowed Ms. Harris to keep all of the structure’s mechanical systems in a single area and to limit excavation to one long, narrow crawl space.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Thomashow say the budget prevented them from adding some features they would have liked. A green roof over the offices and bedroom proved unaffordable, but the roof the house was built with is strong enough that plantings can be added later, if money becomes available. Mr. Thomashow also wanted composting toilets, but they would have required a lot of additional excavation—a costly prospect because the house sits on a rock ledge.

The house is located a few hundred yards from the main part of the 600-student college’s campus. It sits across from a pond and beside a field where the college’s team of woodsmen practices. The landscape plan calls for shade trees, vines on trellises on the south side of the house, and edible landscaping on the north.

Mr. Thomashow, a longtime environmental scholar and author who drives a Prius, says he’s looking forward to living in the house and seeing how close he and his wife actually come to a net-zero life. At Unity, he says, “we describe our approach to sustainability as real-time, frugal sustainability“—and he’s about to become a poster president for that frugality himself. Ms. Harris has warned him that even though he’s a serious athlete, he won’t be able to take two showers a day.

What he’s really worried about, though, is how much power his two synthesizers will need—he doesn’t want to pit interest in music against his commitment to sustainability. But finding answers to questions like that is part of living in a house that’s also a demonstration project. “We really aspire to broaden the constituency for conservation” at Unity, Mr. Thomashow says. “We want to be an exemplary sustainable college.” —Lawrence Biemiller

The house as it appeared Monday from the other side of the pond. (Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)

A rendering shows the house with its solar panels installed, giving it the appearance of having a traditional roofline. (Unity College image)