1995

  I started construction of this home for myself in 1993 to be a building in which I could incorporate many of the new ecological materials and methods available at the time. It was an opportunity to “push the envelope” and try things that I could not do on a customers’ home.

  Even though this project is more than 10 years old, I include it in part to show that I have been building green for some time and am not a “Johnny come lately” to the field. I was “building green” before that label existed. Now there is finally (and thankfully) a great interest in building better, healthier and more sustainable homes.

  This article was in the Bangor Daily News in autumn 1995.

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home's design are simply the expression of "healthy home" principles he has learned from more than 15 years as a designer and builder.

Letizia, 37, is owner of Osprey Building and Design, operated from the two-story "contemporary' refined granola version" of a cape-style home on Route 15 near the Orland-Penobscot town line. He specializes in energy-efficient homes built with nontoxic materials, and is a distributor of ecologically sensitive paints, stains, waxes and adhesives.

The three-year-old home Letizia designed and built was recently displayed in a tour of solar and wind-powered homes sponsored by Real Goods Trading Corp., a California-based catalog supplier of alternative energy products.

Despite the environmentally correct connotations of all this, you don't have to grow a bushy beard to go solar or nontoxic, proclaims the clean-shaven, turtle-necked builder as he ticks off a list of modern conveniences he enjoys: television, a computer, a flush toilet, and the "all-important Cuisinart" food processor.

The portion of Letizia's steeply pitched roof that faces south sports four skylights and a block of 60-watt Solarex solar panels, which supply the power for small appliances and lighting. The house is warmed by passive solar heat and a centrally located Finnish masonry heater. Gas appliances include a water heater, cook stove and refrigerator.

To the right of the home's main entry, southern light streams into his home office through three tall glass windows, warming several cactus plants perched just beyond them. To the left, it washes over the dining area and kitchen. Bedrooms are upstairs.

"I like a bright room,." says the homeowner, who believes the shadows cast on a sunny day add visual interest to his surroundings. Yet he also has incorporated large windows into the northern side of the home. "I like north light. It's bluer and softer. "I don't just make all my decisions from a saving-energy point of view."

Many Maine homes not employing solar energy per se, nonetheless demonstrate the builder or designer's awareness of its principles, he says. Orienting a home toward the south is the most obvious example.

People have simply become more aware of what makes for a comfortable environment, although that awareness is not always translated into building design. The perfect example is the windowless corporate conference room, the kind of place in which, "even with 20 cups of coffee, you'd go to sleep," Letizia says.

Holder of associate degrees in architectural design and construction from the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Letizia was turned on to solar when he worked for an architect in New Jersey in the early 1980s. If clients said they wanted a solar home, the company would build it. But even if solar wasn't specified, the firm would use it, anyway, and no one ever objected to the results.

Letizia says there was some disillusionment about solar when former President Ronald Reagan repealed tax incentives for its use, and when solar hot water panels proved less than optimally effective in colder climates.

Yet the builder says the solar design of his home works well in all but the most extreme weather. "When it's bitter cold, it's all I can do to keep it toasty warm," admits Letizia, who moved to Maine with a back-to-the-land vision 10 years ago after living in New York and New Jersey.

In prolonged cloudy periods, when a limited amount of solar power can be collected, Letizia sometimes relies on his gas generator. But energy efficiency is only one aspect of designing and maintaining a sustainable house.

In designing homes and additions throughout the area, Letizia encourages the use of environmentally sound building materials and finishes. The additional cost involved in nontoxic construction varies from about 10 to 30 percent more than conventional depending on how much of a purist the customer wants to be, he says.

Letizia eschews plywood and particle board, which contain large amounts of formaldehyde, a substance proven to present potentially harmful health effects. In place of plywood, he uses boards, and only natural finishes, such as the Livos paints he distributes made of by-products from the processing of oranges and grapefruit.

Whereas most of the natural finishes he employs are from Europe, most of the building materials he used in his own home were from Maine mills. Using readily available supplies and supporting the local economy are two more tenets of sustainability, Letizia says.

One exception to his ethic of buying locally is the traditional linoleum he purchased for his kitchen, a beautiful terracotta and blue flooring made in Scotland from wood flour, cork, pine resin and linseed oil. Letizia likes that the linoleum is made from natural instead of synthetic materials. He sells the linoleum, and says it costs the same as high-end Armstrong products.

Recognizing his knowledge of toxins and their effects, many of his clients order "safe home audits," in which Letizia will inspect and evaluate aspects of their buildings including air quality, and the chemical content of materials such as carpeting and insulation.

Letizia says research done on effects of exposure to toxic materials shows that susceptibility varies. Sometimes it takes a lot of exposure over time before a problem develops, and the immune system breaks down. But for extremely chemically sensitive people, a single exposure to miniscule amounts can trigger an allergic reaction. In describing the demand for his services, Letizia says it's a niche market.

"The issue of building health is very recent in this country. When I started this in 1988, it was really hard to get information. In Germany, it's been popular for about 25 years. And Scandinavia is where we're getting a lot of our materials and information now. I would like to have more people know about all this to see if it has appeal for them. My only frustration is when people say they never knew these paints existed, or that you could build this way."