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Monday, January 29, 2007

BY LINDSEY KRUSEN
Summit Daily News, Summit County, Colorado

SUMMIT COUNTY - It’s a sunny 20 degrees in Summit County and local Terrasun Design architect, Len Kumar, doesn’t have his boiler on. In fact, he doesn’t have power or utility lines of any sort connected to his house. Kumar’s Summit County residence is an off-grid home, meaning he’s not on the electrical grid. Kumar maintains the cozy 75-degree temperature of his home largely due to overhangs that make use of passive solar gain by directing sunlight into the house. And then there’s the thick insulation, which lines the house’s concrete walls. Solar panels sit unobtrusively on top of the roof, sucking in power for appliances. “My house is designed to last for 100 years,” Kumar said.

Summit County’s Efficient Building Advisory Group (EBAG) – a collection of building and energy conservation professionals including builders, architects, landscape architects and building officials – is also looking to the future. While the ideas they are proposing for an efficient building code, which is still in the draft process, are not as green-extreme as Kumar’s off-grid home, the group does hope to establish minimum, countywide efficient building standards through the code. Assistant county manager Thad Noll said the EBAG worked on a code that was “broad enough to meet everybody’s needs, but not watered down so much that it loses its punch.”

That said, the EBAG is aiming for all the towns and county to adopt the policy and gain the support of the Summit County Builders Association. The EBAG has been meeting regularly since April 2006 to “help town and county business officials determine which efficient building practices are most important to address in Summit County,” according to the group’s report. And the group is sticking together – the draft code will go back to the EBAG in the coming weeks before moving on to town and county officials for consideration. Noll said the initial reaction from the towns has been that the building code is right in principle, “Even though some towns are not participating (in the process) 100 percent, they’re saying, “yeah, we’re in.”