The LEED certified house is made – both inside and out – from all sustainable, recycled or low energy-made products as a way to show people it can be affordable to make any home more efficient.
WILLIAMSTOWN, W.Va. – In an effort to let residents of the Mid-Ohio Valley understand the importance of and ease of creating a more ecologically friendly home, a local engineer has been living in the only LEED certified house in the state for more than a year.
“We built our house as a prototype, so we could use it as a demonstration model for new, available technologies,” said homeowner Chip Pickering, CEO of Pickering and Associates. “A whole part of this is to let people know it is possible to do and I hope our home helps people learn they can use these technologies themselves.”
Pickering and his wife, Jan, built their home at 12 Faith Meadows in late 2011 and moved in shortly after it was certified as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) by the United States Green Building Council.
The LEED movement is an internationally recognized green building initiative designed to promote the change of the mainstream home building into more sustainable practices. The building or community must be aimed at improving energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.
Pickering said that location is very important to the LEED process because the closer the home is to schools, stores and restaurants the more points it will get.
“Since we moved in, we have given tours to students from nearly every high school and college in the area as well as architecture students,” Pickering said. “We want to show it off and, hopefully, get others interested in the green movement to make some sustainable improvements to their homes.”
The house not only has energy-efficient fixtures, but also about 40 solar panels, which are connected to the electric grid to feed extra energy created to other homes with solar panels and the power company…
