By Greg Forester, Staff Writer
The second annual Green Home and Garden Tour on Saturday, organized by the Princeton Environmental Commission, provided tour-goers with visual evidence of the many ways they can pursue green and sustainable living.
Featuring a total of nine stops — three commercial buildings, two gardens, four homes — the tour went off without a hitch, despite a lingering threat of inclement weather.
”I think it was fabulous given that we had rain predicted for the day,” said Anne Neumann, a Princeton Environmental Commission member who was instrumental in organizing the tour, which earned a New Jersey Environmental Achievement Award last year. She said the tour would most likely be held once again next year.
One tour stop featured the Bayard Lane home of local architect and green home designer Leslie Dowling, who lives in a renovated 1950s ranch with her husband, Princeton restaurateur Carlo Momo, and four children.
In the first round of renovations Ms. Dowling added two floors, a bedroom, and an office, after about 10 months of work in 2001. Another round of renovations occurred two years ago.
Part of the green construction and renovation process involved keeping as much of the original house as possible, including an asphalt roof, according to Ms. Dowling, who had printouts for guests detailing the project.
”It’s important not to generate a lot of construction debris,” said Ms. Dowling, whose company can be found on the Web at www.onehousedesign.com.
While entertaining some tour-goers Ms. Dowling stressed the importance of air quality, especially for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. A sign at the entrance to the house instructed visitors to remove their shoes and leave them in a nearby room, in order to prevent introduction of air contaminants from dirty footwear.
She noted her Bayard Lane home featured a detached garage, which keeps fumes and associated pollutants out of the air circulating through the home. Also, the garage is unheated, reducing energy costs.
Outside the house, 29 Leyland cypress evergreens line the property, absorbing up to 690 pounds of carbon and 2,533 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, according to the owners. A roof planted with succulents and a salt-water chlorinated pool round also contribute to the property’s green credentials.
A variety of features continue that trend inside.
The home features energy-efficient, Energy Star appliances, radiant-heated floors, a sunroom to take advantage of solar energy, and a “fire orb.” The fire orb, effectively a hanging wood-burning fire place, can rotate, radiating heat in any direction while exceeding environmental standards for emissions.
”I could get these things for anyone, depending on the cost,” said Ms. Dowling, when asked about the availability of some her home’s features.
The next stop on the tour demonstrated other strategies in pursuing green and sustainable living.
Although some consider making green and sustainable renovations too costly and too much of a burden for most “regular” folks, another stop on the tour, at 160 Meadowbrook Drive, provided evidence that sustainability does not necessarily require a big budget.
The focus for a 1960s ranch being renovated by Princeton Architect Ronald Berlin and Franzoni Builders was “making strategic, commonsense decisions that all add up,” said Mr. Berlin, as visitors strolled around portions of the house, owned by the Wasserman family.
The Wassermans told the architect that “they wanted the project to be done in a realistic and modest way” and within a budget, according to Mr. Berlin. The house, which should be complete in about three weeks, looked that way.
There were few environmental, futuristic-looking features visible, but a checklist provided by Mr. Berlin demonstrated just how effectively sustainable and “green” the project is.
The plans called for expanding upwards — adding an upstairs — instead of outwards, which increases impervious cover and strains the surrounding environment. The approach also reduces unnecessary construction debris, Mr. Berlin said.
Debris were sorted and recycled by a company called Construction Waste Management, and rainwater was gathered in old whiskey barrels for to irrigate surrounding gardens and landscaping.
Construction materials that have zero volatile organic compounds were used, and energy-efficient appliances and systems were installed wherever possible, including kitchen appliances and mechanical and plumbing systems.
On the same side of town as the Meadowbrook Drive house, one more stop on the tour featured a very cost-effective project that nearly anyone can undertake — a “RainGarden.”
Directly off Harrison Street, in front of some Princeton Senior Resource Center dwellings, sits a hollowed out area, roughly 15 feet long and eight feet wide.
It may not look like much, but it does a lot for the surrounding area, according to one of the men who designed and built the garden, Princeton Borough resident Curtis Helm. His creation relies on natural biological processes of soil, and to a lesser degree the plants, to naturally filter out contaminants and pollutants that can accumulate in rainwater.
In developed areas without soil and plant cover, the contaminants and pollutants accumulate and then begin a journey through storm drains and sewers directly into the local and regional water system. But the Senior Resource Center RainGarden prevents that from happening.
It is designed for rain events in New Jersey, where 90 percent of rainstorms drop 1.25 inches of rain or less. The Senior Resource Center RainGarden is designed for that exact capacity. In an average year it will be able to accommodate approximately 90 percent of the rainwater falling on the nearby area, capturing and cleaning around 25,000 gallons of stormwater runoff, according to Mr. Helm, who works with Amy S. Greene Environmental Consultants, out of Flemington.
It is one of the easiest sustainable and green projects to undertake, Mr. Helm said.
”I think anyone can do this,” he said.

