The “Solar Advantage” defines Vantage

Run Date: Winter, 2008

by Scott Tiernan

In mid-2006, Cheryl O’Connor had a dilemma, one she reflected on for weeks. The Warmington Homes Vice President of Sales and Marketing was finalizing the list of features to be offered at Vantage, a new town home community in Palo Alto, Ca. The project had a list of “green” features that were already part of the community, but the City of Palo Alto had requested that the builder offer the homebuyers solar panels as an option.

O’Connor knew that homebuyers consider options to their new home very carefully. She was concerned that buyers would choose not to upgrade their homes with solar panels because of the additional up-front cost. O’Connor knew that this would be a huge benefit to the buyers over the next few years as they would spend fewer dollars on energy costs

O’Connor, a veteran of more than 25 years of homebuilding, knew that “going green” was a movement that was steadily gaining traction and momentum in the homebuilding industry, especially in Northern California. For several years, Warmington Homes had studied the impact of ramping up their efforts in integrating energy efficiency measures in their new home communities.

At an internal Warmington meeting in the fall of 2006, the decision was made and the city of Palo Alto was notified of the builder’s decision:

The builder would not offer the rooftop solar systems as an optional feature for Vantage homebuyers.

“No, we will go all-solar at Vantage,” said O’Connor. “The rooftop photovoltaic systems will be an included feature on every one of the homes here.”

And overnight, the largest solar-powered residential community ever built in Palo Alto (and the San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula for that matter) became a reality.

“We had studied our options and progress in going green for several years,” said O’Connor. “The fact is, going all-solar was an ideal choice for a new community in Palo Alto. There’s a very affluent, educated and environmentally focused pool of homebuyers here. It just came down to the fact that Vantage was the right neighborhood in the right city at the right time.”

Besides solar, Warmington integrated a host of additional energy efficient features at Vantage, including:
• tank less, on-demand water heaters
• dual-flush toilets
• energy efficient dishwasher, windows, air conditioning and heating
• drought resistant landscaping with drip irrigation
• motion sensors and climate control system to monitor lighting
• recycled fly ash in concrete
• engineered lumber
• formaldehyde-free fiberglass insulation
• low- or no-VOC paint and finishes

But the solar photovoltaic system is the most significant of Vantage’s green factors.
Compared against the Green Points rating system developed by Alameda County (www.greenpointrated.org), Vantage scored 110 points, far exceeding the Green Points minimum of 50 points.

Buyer Andrew Yu, a director of engineering at nearby Yahoo, was attracted by both Vantage’s Palo Alto address and its green features. “I definitely like the dual-flush toilet feature to save water,” he said. “I think this is a really smart thing to do.”

The Irvine, Calif.-based KTGY Group designed the 76-unit community in the inspired style of Joseph Eichler. In fact, Vantage is directly adjacent to a classic Eichler-built neighborhood in Palo Alto.

The Warmington Homes staff worked closely with the City of Palo Alto throughout the planning of the project. “Palo Alto was very enthusiastic about working with a homebuilder in putting in place a multi-faceted green building community,” said Lindsay Joye, a solar programs engineer with Palo Alto’s utility division.

“Warmington Homes went above and beyond what the city of Palo Alto suggested be included at Vantage from a solar energy perspective,” continued Joye. “This has really helped to call attention to Palo Alto’s efforts in encouraging our residents to consider going solar.”

O’Connor also recognized that homebuyers are increasingly aware of the impact of building practices on the health of the occupants and the environment. “There were a number of issues that impacted our decisions at Vantage,” said O’Connor. “We factored in health, quality of life, energy costs, building quality and dwindling natural resources.”

A fundamental goal of green building is to create “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development).

One individual who recognizes that is Sam Zhou, a Vantage homeowner and Silicon Valley tech worker. Zhou was interested in the community’s green features – especially after experiencing the rolling blackouts in California during the summers of 2000 and 2001.

He is a big fan of the rooftop solar panel systems at Vantage. Zhou moved to the United States from China nearly twenty years ago. He said living in such an environmentally friendly home makes him feel good, especially after returning from China every year where he visits his parents.

“The pollution over there is so bad. When we were buying our home at Vantage, it’s sort of all related,” Zhou said. “You have to be conscious about the environment you’re in so you can save it for the future generations.”

Green homes are becoming more commonplace as homebuyers begin to recognize and appreciate the added value to the investment and the beneficial impact on the environment. With all the benefits to the homeowner it is easy to overlook the advantages green building offers to the environment.

Every Vantage home has a copy of a “Homeowner Manual of Green Features and Benefits” that helps homeowners to understand and maximize the performance of their new home.

Besides the standard green benefits incorporated into all the homes at Vantage, Warmington has offered an optional “Green Package of Interior Finishes.”
The package includes products with low or no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s), or formaldehyde, helping to improve indoor air quality.

Also featured are products made with recycled content and with materials that are naturally replenished in a shorter time span. Such environmentally friendly products provide superior comfort and performance while reducing stress on natural resources

Even in today’s challenging new home market, Vantage has proven to be very popular with Silicon Valley homebuyers. According to the Ryness Report, since opening in May 2007, Vantage has routinely attracted a large number of visitors, which in turn has translated into new home sales.

That fact has not gone un-noticed by other homebuilders in Silicon Valley who are now integrating similar green and sustainable features in their own new home neighborhoods.

Warmington’s O’Connor said the sales success at Vantage has led to a decision to incorporate green and sustainable elements to more of the builder’s new home communities in Northern California.

“We’re going to evaluate the use of solar and green elements on a community by community basis as we move forward. Vantage has been a tremendous experience for us. We were very pleased at how many homebuyers said going green was an important factor in their home buying decision. We now have great opportunities ahead of us to put into place on a larger scale all the best green building practices and features that are found at Vantage.”

Soul of a new neighborhood: What’s in now that sprawl’s out

Run Date: October 5, 2008

By Lew Sichelman
Special to the Chronicle

Golf courses used to help builders sell homes—now the lures are new schools, access to trails, digital connectivity, even bass lakes

With gas at $4 per gallon and major shifts in demographics, the days of far-flung suburban sprawl are coming to an end, to be replaced by more compact, walkable developments with amenities far different from those of the past

It’s not that acreage-gobbling country club communities with designer golf courses and luxury clubhouses have become passe. They haven’t.

But developers need a lot of expensive land and at least 1,000 dwelling units to sustain a decent golf course, according to Mark Hillier in the Boca Raton, Fla., office of Greenberg Traurig, a development consulting firm. Consequently, he is advising builders to take a pass on golf if they can.

“We tell a lot of our clients to mooch off someone else’s golf course if there’s one nearby,” Hillier said.

Hot features: good schools, wired homes, nearby nature

So, with developers rethinking their amenity packages, here’s a glimpse at some of the hottest features:

SCHOOLS: lf securing a quality education for your children creates the ultimate anxiety, then quality schools are “the ultimate amenity,” says David Ginsberg, chief executive officer of the New Schools Development Co. in Cherry Hills Village, Colo.

Everything else being equal, where would you want to live in a place where the schools are great or somewhere where they are just average? Even if you had to pay somewhat more for a house within a top school district, wouldn’t you pay if it meant your child would have the greatest opportunity to learn?

Offering top-notch educational opportunities isn’t entirely altruistic. After all, good schools enable builders to sell houses faster at higher prices. Moreover, the quality of the local school system has always been a chief factor in where people choose to live.

But for the most part, the real estate industry has taken a fairly passive attitude about education. Builders and developers would give away a few acres for schools, and maybe even put up the buildings, but that was about it.

Now, says Ginsberg, enlightened developers have figured out “they have 3 lot more control over school systems than they ever realized.” His firm works with builders, school districts, policy makers and foundations to create model school systems.

Because most boards of education never seem to plan ahead, the idea now is to “get ahead of them rather than behind them,” the self-proclaimed social entrepreneur said. “Since schools are paid for by the wealth created by development, it’s (the developer’s) business to make sure schools are good. They have a complete right to make it happen.”

“The only group that can have an impact on education is the business community,” said Hank Baker, chief marketing officer of In2 Networks in Denver, who helped coordinate education efforts
at Stapleton, the 12,000home redevelopment of the old Denver airport. “They have the money and the clout.”

As Baker sees it, if a builder can solve the education problem, buyers will line up at his doors, even
if he is selling double-wides.”

When it comes 10 schools, developers have several options. They can demand a say in the curriculum offered in the schools that go up in their developments. Maybe they can establish an educational foundation and adopt a local school, or perhaps they can start a gifted and talented program if the school system can’t afford one of its own.

Whatever they do, Ginsburg says, builders and developers “can’t ever over-saturate the market with good schools.”

TRAILS: If schools are the ultimate amenity, then natural surface trails may just be the least expensive. Unfortunately, moot developers have either missed that fact or failed to deliver the right product.

Biking enthusiast Randy Martin is out to change that.

“Natural surface trails are the highest impact, lowest cost amenity a community developer can provide,” said Martin, president of Trailscape in Costa Mesa (Orange County). Better yet. he reports, there’s a “mass market’” for them. ‘11J.e market is huge and it’s ripe. It’s an amenity 80 percent of buyers say they want”

For the record, we’re not talking here about hard-surface walkways that connect neighborhoods, or even old-time physical fitness courses that wind their way through a community. We’re talking about full blown biking and hiking trails.

According to Martin, an 8-mile trail system costs $500,000 to build. In an 800-house community, that works out to about $650 per unit to build and $1 per house per month to maintain.

For that same BOO-unit project, on the other hand, Martin says a 2-acre ball field would cost $1,100 per unit to build and $8 a month to maintain. A more ambitious one-acre pool complex would cost $750 per unit to build and $21 a month in upkeep, and an 18-hole golf course would run $11,000 per house to build and $52 a month to sustain.

One more thing; Trails don’t have to eat up any valuable, buildable land. According to Martin, they’re best built in areas can’t be used for anything other than landscaping.

CONNECTIVITY: When a builder brings fiber optics to the home’s front door, he has probably in.
increased the price by $600 to $1,000, according to Baker of In2 Networks. But there are other, less expensive technology-related. amenities builders can offer, including an intranet system that allows homeowners to connect, interact and stay informed about the places where they choose to live.

Systems such as the ones Baker’s company creates for developers “accelerate tradition” by allowing
neighbors to get know each other more quickly. The systems “provide the structure for thriving, interactive communities by encouraging conversation and participation,” he said.

A typical intranet system might include message boards where residents can post information about social gatherings or hunt for a babysitter. It could include a community calender about events and club activities, and business and resident directories. There could even be neighborhood alerts, weather forecasts and a message center.

More elaborate, community based systems would allow residents to monitor energy usage, adjust thermostats from afar, keep track of children going to and coming from school, and alert them when the furnace or air conditioning needs to be replaced.

FISHING: Size matters, of course. But it can cost significantly less to build and maintain a lake for bass than a course for golf, especially one of the signature links designed by a famous golfer. Almost twice as many people fish as play golf, according to a report in Land Development, a National Association of Home Builders publication.

A good bass lake can be built on 20 acres or less, and annual upkeep is about $46,000, according
to Ray Scott, founder of the 6OO,OOO-member Bass Anglers Sportsman Society. Compare that to upkeep costs for a typical golf course, and it’s easy to see why developers might find it better to grow bass than grass. Scott is a fishing hole designer who is to fisherman what Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are to duffers.

His company, Legacy lakes of Pintiala, Ala., is one of the first to promote “personal fishing waters” in any locale.

Scott maintains that what be calls “small waters” are the perfect centerpiece for residential developments, especially those which want to call themselves green. ‘The lure of the water is just inborn, and the love of fishing is universal,” he said.

E-mail Lew Sichelman at realestate@sfchronicle.com.

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Solar gets sexy: Clunky roof arrays are long gone; clean designs, lower prices are getting homeowners to open their wallets

Run Date: July 6, 2008

By Richard Paoli
Special to the Chronicle

Solar energy shines during slump: Green products thriving even as builders suffer

There are two shades of green in this new eco-friendly, sustainable world: the business of providing green products and services and the green consumers pay for them.

What are you willing to spend to save? That seems to be the basic question for home buyers and homeowners.

Despite the public debate about environmental matters and energy conservation, studies of consumer attitudes show that if it isn’t affordable it doesn’t get bought – or built. It is a question of price.

And more affordable solar energy systems seem to be opening consumers’ wallets. “Right now, the residential building market is soft,” said Ron Kenedi, an executive with Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group in Huntington Beach, “but we’re seeing instead a tremendous growth in solar panel sales for remodeling projects.” Kenedi was attending PCBC, the California building industry’s annual expo at Moscone Center last month. Sharp Energy was one of more than 20 companies exhibiting solar thermal panels.

“The technology for photovoltaic panels keeps improving the energy efficiency and reducing the cost. This is an industry that has been seeing double-digit growth for the past few years,” he noted, “and that wouldn’t happen if people didn’t see the savings.”

Typically, Kenedi said, it costs $24,000 to put a photovoltaic system on the roof. “That’s before the government and utility incentives kick in and cut the cost by about 30 percent. What does that buy? About 50 to 60 percent of the utility bill.” When you’re not using power, the system can be set to run the home’s electricity meter backward,
he added.

The incentives address a basic green principle: With more households producing electricity, fewer fossil fuel-based generating plants have to be built to meet growing demand.

Also, for many years, a stumbling block for rooftop solar was strictly cosmetic. Homeowners didn’t want a roof that looked like the solar display on a space station. “That has been addressed,” said Kenedi, “with new panel shapes, lighter supporting structures and better design incorporation with roofing material.”

The first spike in photovoltaic research and sales came during the oil crisis in the 1970s. While early photovoltaic panels predated the 1970s, most were for light-sensing or -measuring devices – the light meter in a camera, for example.

But the advance of electronic and semiconductor technology dramatically pushed the power-generating possibilities of photovoltaic cells. In less than a decade, the efficiency of the panels increased more than
fourfold. And you don’t have to live in a sunny climate to take advantage of it. The largest growth in electric generating solar installation the past years has been in Germany.

Photovoltaic systems have two basic components. An array of solar panels that look like flat-screen televisions (in fact, the manufacturing and materials are very similar) mounted on a roof or in a field. The second component is an inverter. The system generates direct current; the inverter switches it to the household’s alternating current.

Solar farms are being incorporated in many planned communities, providing power to the public buildings. A growing number of new homes are including roof arrays. A lack of clear standards for the use and installation of PV may be keeping builders from wider use.

“Solar is still on the menu of options for most builders,” said Raymond Becker, chairman of the California Building Industry Association and a vice president of DMB, a Hollister home builder. ‘There needs to be a building standard. Right now, different jurisdictions have differing standards for what constitutes green and solar.”

Kenedi notes that one problem with rooftop installation is meeting fire department requirements. “We’re working, as an industry, with fire departments to design the rooftop panels so the firefighters can get into the rafters from the roof in the event of a fire.”

‘The newest development is something called thin film. (It) is as thin as a sheet of Mylar. The need for heavier and costly support becomes reduced,” said Kenedi.

The next step is power storage. “Imagine,” said Kenedi, “coming home after work and plugging your car into the system and having it recharged from the electricity generated and stored during the day.”

Solar power and its growth are one part of the two shades of green.

‘This whole issue of green is making us look at a lot of residential building issues,” Becker said. Among those issues:
• Design: Recent trends show buyers want new homes smaller than what has been the norm. They want more efficient use of space and better use of energy. • Vehicle mile: Builders have to think in terms of where they’re building, and how far most of the potential buyers would have to drive.
• Job centers: Large planned communities have to think about what jobs are being created near the sites.

‘The challenge,” Becker said, “is how builders are expected to do all of these and do it in a way that will make new home buyers pay for it.”

It all adds up to builders and buyers suffering from the same problems – higher gasoline and energy prices, tighter credit and hesitancy about any major financial outlay.

Education for builder and buyer can help, Becker said. “A lot of the options for green become limited unless we create a sense of value, a social sense, to buy green.”

New products designed to catch builders’ eyes

The slowdown in residential building hasn’t had a visible impact on wares displayed last month at PCBC, the California building industry’s annual expo. While construction materials, windows and energy saving may have taken most of the space at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, a few new and renewed products were on view:

Sonic bath: Kohler has combined sound vibration, chromatherapy and music into a bathtub “to slow your breathing and heart rate.” The tub comes in and 88-inch lengths with a control panel to set sound, vibration and color. Prices start at $10,000.
(www.kohler.com)

Shower drain: Quick Drain is a less intrusive drain system that gets rid of the round center shower drain. It drains the water along one edge of the shower pan, reducing the need for compound angles required for central drains. The stainless steel system is usually sold to contractors; the estimated price of a standard installation is $300.
(www.quickdrainusa.com)

What goes up: Saniflo looks like a toilet specifically designed for all those nonconforming units stashed in the lower floors of many San Francisco Sunset District homes. Saniflo uses a compact grinder and pump that pumps bathroom waste up 18 feet The grinder-pump can be tucked into the wall. A wall-hung version of the toilet is priced at $999.
(www.saniflo.com)

Call home: Lagotek’s cell phone application allows you to phone home and turn on lights, raise or lower the shades, start the coffee, neat or cool the house, or link to d security camera. Wireless Home Intelligence connects supported home systems to cell phones over the Internet. Basic installation for a 2,500-square foot, three-bedroom home would be around $25,000.
(www.lagotek.com).

Walls of glass: Want a hand-painted picture of the grandchildren on glass to hang in the family room? Four Seasons Glass, working with artists in China, specializes in custom-glass wall art, door inserts, shower enclosures, glass partitions and room dividers. The pricing, depending on the glass texture or theme, starts at $60 a square foot
(www.fourseasonsglass.com)

Up in smoke: The Greenwood Hydronic Wood Furnace burns not only the wood but the smoke. The squat boiler accelerates the internal temperature to about 1,100 degrees by burning the gases from the wood fire. Greenwood claims the wood burner saves up to 70 percent on heating bills. It’s priced at $7,250.
(www.greenwoodfurnace.com)

Lite lights: The LR6-230V uses LED technology to produce a recessed lighting fixture comparable to a 75-watt incandescent bulb. The fixture uses approximately 12 watts of electricity, 85 percent less than the incandescent. The fixtures prices start at $130, without installation.
(www.creeLLS.com)

Palm-boo: Ever wonder what happens to worn-out coconut palms? The folks who brought you bamboo flooring have introduced Durapalm, made from plantation-grown coconut palms. Palms produce nuts for up to 80 years, then nonproducing palms become flooring. Palmwood plywood is made from multiple layers of palm and contains no added urea formaldehyde. Without installation, the palm flooring is $8 a square foot
(www.durapalm.com)

Extra inch: The 12-inch dinner plate rules at Broco, an Indonesian cabinet manufacturer. Broco designed its upper cabinets 13 inches deep. The high-end manufacturer uses European systems of hinges and tracking for its hardwood faced cabinets. Prices not available because Broco sells directly to builders.
(www.brocousa.com)

Up on the roof: SunGrabber’s newest product, Solar Domestic Hot Water heating system, is an all-polymer, hot water system designed to collect solar energy, reduce water-heating bills up to 50 percent and qualify for tax credits. The price is about $4,000.
(www.sungrabber.net)

Green reading

You could probably build a well-insulated home using books about going green. Design, materials used in construction, solar power, green remodeling and the organic maintenance of homes are among the titles jamming the eco shelves in bookstores. Here are some titles that address going green:

Your Green Home
by Alex Wilson
(MOTHER EARTH NEWS, $17.95)
This is intended for homeowners planning a new home and for designers and builders seeking to meet that demand. It answers questions about where to build, energy-efficient systems, building materials and living in a green world.

It’s Easy Being Green
by Crissy Trask
(GIBBS SMITH, $12.95)
Most of us agree with the goals of the environmental movement, but we don’t do much more than recycle household waste. Environmental consultantTrask seeks to address this questionand solve the disparity – with a book that makes it easy to be an environmentalist, no matter how busy or hectic your lifestyle.

Solar Power for Dummies
by Rik DeGunther
(FOR DUMMIES, $19.99)
This book has 10 do-it-yourself solar projects. DeGunther guides you through a household energy efficiency survey and evaluation of how solar power benefits you.

Organic Housekeeping
by Ellen Sandbeck
(SCRIBNER, $30)
Sandbeck provides a guide to maintaining every part of your home – from sink to septic tank – using safe, simple cleansers and preventive measures that save time, money and the planet.

Eco Design: The Sourcebook
by Alastair Fuad-Luke
(CHRONICLE BOOKS, $35)
This is the shopping source for eco products. There is a great deal of information on the new and hybrid materials and lists of manufacturers, design studios and green organizations.

Go Green, Live Rich
by David Bach and Hillary Rosner
(BROADWAY BOOKS, $14.95)
Financial expert Bach offers 50 ways to make money while putting gre’en into life, home, shopping. He also has suggestions on profiting from investments in green businesses.

Richard Paoli is a former Chronicle real estate editor. Comment at realestate@sfchronicle.com.

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Idea House’s time has come – again

Run Date: June 22, 2008

Visitors to Sunset magazine’s latest Idea House will see more than the latest whiz-bang ideas for home design and decor.

They’ll also see a house that’s part of a new-home development rich in the magazine’s and Menlo Park’s history.

The Idea House, called Residence Six, is part of Lane Woods, 32 single-family detached houses that SummerHill Homes is building along Willow Road just west of Sunset’s headquarters.

While the Idea House is about 2,998 square feet, the other two-story houses range from 1,719 to 2,429 square feet. Their prices start at about $1.5 million and go up to more than $2 million.

The Idea House opens Friday. Although designed by the same architect, its floor plan differs from the rest. It will not be available for sale until the exhibition closes at the end of August.

Lane Woods’ 4 1/2-acre site was once part of 7 acres owned and used by Sunset, which had a 40,000-square-foot office building there. Like others on the Sunset campus, it was designed by Cliff May, famed for his ranch-style houses.

Like the nearby Civic Center, Sunset’s acreage was carved from Sherwood Hall, also known as the Hopkins estate, which once covered 400 acres between Ravenswood Avenue and San Francisquito Creek. Timothy Hopkins received it as a wedding gift from his adoptive mother, the widow of railroad magnate Mark Hopkins. His bride was her niece, and he had been managing the family’s financial affairs.

Lane Woods gets its first name from the family that founded Sunset. Its second name comes from the 198 trees that were on the site. SummerHill is saving 100 of them, including 11 that are to be transplanted, said Elaine Breeze, the Palo Alto company’s senior vice president. It’s planting 76 new trees.

“Preservation was a big deal for us and the community,” she said. That’s why a courtyard from the office building has become Lane Woods’ centerpiece park. Ringed by mature trees, it has several benches around a fountain in the courtyard.

There’s another small park along Paulson Circle on the project’s north side.

A path worn by people cutting across the site is becoming a public bike and pedestrian path that includes the neighboring Morgan Lane residential project. On the south, it links to a foot bridge that crosses San Francisquito Creek into Palo Alto.

The split-rail fence around the project echoes Sunset’s fencing.

Designing the project was “all driven by the trees,” Breeze said. Therefore, lot sizes vary, as do the houses’ shapes. For example, Residence Three, one of the two model homes, is wide and shallow, allowing “us to preserve the row of ash trees along the back,” Breeze said.

Trees even determine the location of the two-car garages.

In the Residence Three model, it’s on the right rather than facing Willow Road. With no huge door dominating the streetscape, it looks like a more integral part of the house.

Cost close to $2 million

Residence Three, with four bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms standard, has 2,392 to 2,429 square feet, depending on the garage’s location. Its price ranges from $1.8 million to $2.05 million.

Approached from a small front porch, the front door opens to an entry hall centered between the dining room and a library. Both rooms are two steps down from the entry, lending a sense of formality and symmetry.

The cozy library has a gas fireplace. As an option, the library can open to the family room, or it can become a bedroom with a closet replacing the fireplace. If this space is configured as a bedroom, the half-bath off the entry hall becomes a full bath.

Continuing the entry’s symmetry, the stairway is opposite the bathroom. The entry then leads to the family room and kitchen, both two steps down. The family room has an optional gas fireplace. Patio doors lead to the shallow backyard.

An island defines the kitchen, whose main working area is L-shaped. Along one wall are the coat closet, oven, refrigerator space and pantry as well as a passage to the dining room.

The kitchen is equipped with Wolf stainless steel appliances, granite counters, maple cabinets and 18-inch-square ceramic tile flooring. Similar cabinets are used in the bathrooms, while similar tiles are seen in the bathrooms, nook and entry.

Across from the dining room passageway is the laundry room, with sink, cabinets, window and space for side-by-side appliances. Just past the laundry room is the interior door to the garage, which also has a door to the backyard.

Upstairs, the landing overlooks the entryway. A linen closet and full bath with two sinks also are in this area.

The model has a loft to the right that can be configured as a bedroom. Both options have a door leading to a deck over the porch.

Two other bedrooms are on this side of the house. The larger one is shown with two full-size beds and a window seat.

The master bedroom occupies the rest of the upper floor. It, too, is shown with a window seat.
Big bathroom, closet

Almost as large as the bedroom, the master bath includes a walk-in closet just inside the door. The bathroom itself has a toilet closet, oval tub, shower stall and marble-topped vanities that are conveniently opposite each other.

All of the houses are GreenPoint Rated. This program stresses – among other factors – energy efficiency, resource conservation and indoor air quality. They have dual-zone air conditioning and forced-air gas heating, 50-gallon water heaters with recirculating pumps to all fixtures, and wiring for ceiling fans in the family room and master bedroom.

They’re also wired for high-speed networking.

As part of a city requirement to provide below-market-rate houses, Breeze said, SummerHill is donating “upward of $2.5 million” to Habitat for Humanity, which is building a 22-unit affordable project in Menlo Park.

The Sunset Idea House will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays (except July 4), Saturdays and Sundays from June 27 through Aug. 31. Tickets, available only at the door, are $15 general, $5 for those ages 6 to 12 and free for those 5 and younger. People 60 and older receive a $3 discount on Fridays. Credit cards are not accepted.

For details call (800) 786-7375 or go to www.sunset.com/sunset and click on Idea Houses.

Builder finds green complex brings in green

Run Date: September 24, 2007

By Katherine Conrad
Mercury News

Environmentally friendly townhomes in Palo Alto attract buyers despite slump in housing market

Builder Warmington Homes went out on a very green limb when building a townhome development in Palo Alto, bu the risk seems to have struck a chord with buyers — even in a poor market.

In a commitment to the environment rare even in the environmentally friendly Bay Area, developer Warmington Homes has installed a range of energy- and water-efficient features — from solar panels on every unit to extremely low-flush toilets — at its 76-unit townhome project.

Among the other green features: drought-resistant landscaping and tankless water heaters. And while solar is increasingly common in the Bay Area, it’s usually only an option offered by builders. Warmington took the unusual step of making it a standard feature.

Cheryl O’Connor, vice president for sales and marketing for Warmington, explained the developer’s thinking.

“Green is part of the culture. It’s part of the buyer profile,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve been through three recessions and two droughts in my career. I just had a gut feeling that more educated buyers would buy green.”

Apparently she knows her market. In a decidedly down cycle, she says Vantage has sold 32 of the townhomes even with prices that start at $850,000 and head up into the $1 million territory. Throughout most of the summer, Vantage has been either the most popular new home development in Santa Clara County in terms of people touring the project, or in the top four.

Green begets green in P.A.

Even more telling, Warmington has raised its prices from the initial $810,000 listed in late spring.

Buyer Andrew Yu, a director of engineering for Yahoo who moved in two weeks ago, was attracted by both Vantage’s Palo Alto address and its green features. “I definitely like the dual-flush feature to save water,” he said. “I think this is a really smart thing to do.”

Jerry De La Piedra, senior water conservation specialist for the Santa Clara Valley Water district, agrees. “Toilets are the No. 1 water user indoors,” he said. “People don’t realize it.”

The dual-flush models, common in Australia and other warm climes, cut water usage by 20 percent compared with even low-flush toilets and have just started entering the Bay Area market.

Since late 2003, the water district has offered rebates of $125 to homeowners encouraging them to replace toilets that can use from three to seven gallons of water per flush with either low-flow or dual-flush high-efficiency toilets, which use an average of 1.3 gallons per flush or less.

The dual flush models use different amounts of water depending on the waste that needs to be disposed of.

While the city of Palo Alto applauded Warmington’s decision to install solar panels, it has proved costly for the city, which offers rebates for solar roofs.

“We’ve never had a residential developer decide to put solar in,” said Lindsay Joye, Palo Alto’s marketing engineer. “It’s a huge deal to make solar standard and not an option.”

The city’s 8-year-old rebate program gave back $3 to the builder for every watt of energy produced. (The program just dropped the amount to $2.80 a watt.)

At 2,000 watts per unit times $3 times 76, the total is close to half a million dollars, a staggering amount for a city accustomed to paying an average of $300,000 a year in rebates.

Joye said the city tapped into other energy programs to pay the bill, plus the developer helped by spreading the cost out over two fiscal years.

“We had to go to the city council to get it,” she said. “We’ve never had that much of a hit before.”

Sam Zhou, another new homeowner, just moved in with his family of three. While he was attracted by the green features — especially after the rolling blackouts during the summers of 2000 and 2001 — so far he’s lukewarm on the toilets.

But he loves the solar panels. “We have not yet received any power bill yet,” said Zhou, who moved to the United States from China almost 20 years ago. “The real question will be much power the panels save.”

Zhou said living in such an environmentally friendly home makes him feel good, especially after returning from China every year where he visits his parents.

“The pollution over there is so bad. When we were buying this house, it’s sort of all related,” he said. “You have to be conscious about the environment you’re in so you can save it for the future generations.”

Green Townhouses

Vantage townhouses range in size from 1,200 square feet to 1,600 square feet; the 76 townhouses range in price from $850,000 to $1.2 million
Green features include:
2 kilowatt photovoltaic system on every roof
Dual-flush toilets: 0.8 gallons to flush liquids and 1.6 gallons to flush solids
Energy-efficient dishwasher, windows, air conditioning and heating units
Motion sensors and a climate control station to turn off lighting
Tankless hot water system
Native landscaping that is drought resistant
Drip irrigation for landscaping
Materials from the demolition of three office buildings formerly on the site were recycled
Recycled fly ash in the concrete
Engineered lumber substituted for solid-sawed lumber

Katherine Conrad reports on commercial real estate
kconrad@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5073.

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