Green building open house this weekend

By Michael Prager

The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association is again spearheading a regional green buildings open house this weekend, in conjunction with a national solar tour organized by the American Solar Energy Association.

John Livermore's green Gloucester home (

NESEA has a page on its site that lists Massachusetts venues that are participating, and there are some interesting names on the list. People pay to hear some of these folks at green building conferences, and here they are opening their homes at no charge to anyone interested.

Among them:
Betsy Pettit of Concord is an architect, designer, and president of Building Science Corp. of Westford. I've attended an all-day, intensely informative presentation of her company's techniques at NESEA’s annual conference more than once, and might do it again; it's so full of information that I am certain I could still get plenty more out of it.

John Livermore of Gloucester is a builder and consultant who has deep-energy-retroffited his 1973 Garrison Colonial. He used Larsen trusses and other techniques with a goal of reducing the house's carbon footprint, using off-the-shelf materials with a budget of about $50,000.
Landscape historian Marie Stella's home in Ashfield is an impressive renovation/addition that earned the first LEED platinum rating in Western Mass. Among many features, its oak floors were taken from trees felled for the building's footprint and milled a mile away, and it has a standing-seam metal roof that will harvest rainwater for the gardens. The stonework in the patio is breathtaking, too.

I would love to see the first two homes as well, but the thing is, you could go to any home on the list and be enlightened, enriched, and entertained. It's a great way to spend a day.