Super Eco

Photo credit: The 2009 New American Home

According to the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) New American Home, the American Dream may still involve a house with a white picket fence and a garage, but it also now includes award-winning energy conservation components.

The NAHB's National Green Building Program, recently awarded a gold rating to a Las Vegas home with fountains, a cascading waterfall window and a bathroom for each bedroom. I have to admit, this display of water use initially put me off.  After all, Las Vegas is a desert.

Reading on, I found out that the Gold Rating refers to a variety of conservation aspects of the building, including:

• Lot design, preparation and development
• Resource efficiency
• Energy efficiency
• Water efficiency
• Indoor air quality.

The New American Home has an almost zero-impact energy-wise, using active and passive solar energy, clean burning natural gas, and innovative insulating building materials. The construction phase reduced waste at every point and ensured that the local water table wasn't disturbed by the construction. In other words, it's a pretty awesome (and gorgeous) home. It's nice to see style and savings can go together.

But that water thing still kind of gets me. In the documentation about the house, I could find nothing on the water efficiency. It could be because talking toilets isn't as glamorous as photovaic cells. And even if the water efficiency sucks?

Well, I suppose no one's perfect. After all, I still take long baths whenever I can instead of short efficient showers.