Maine Homebuilder Goes 'Deep Green'

Which new home is the greenest in all the land?

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, that honor belongs to a super-efficient custom home recently completed in Freeport, Maine.

Master builder Peter Taggart, President of Taggart Construction, submitted the home for certification under USGBC’s “LEED for Homes” pilot program, and earned a silver rating—the highest awarded to any home since the program’s conception.

“To my knowledge, just one other home in the country has achieved LEED certification,” Taggart says, “And that one got just the standard certification. Our project made the silver level.”

Designed by Curt Jensch, the 2,300-sq. ft contemporary home overlooks rolling fields and forest near Freeport, Maine—a town famous as the headquarters of the L.L. Bean Company.

This is a home made to minimize the impacts of Maine’s long winters, with super-insulated walls, radiant floor heating, passive solar heat and a 3 kilowatt solar power grid, mounted on a durable metal roof made with recycled steel. But those are only the most visible eco-friendly attributes. A lot of the “green” action happens out of sight—but never out of Peter Taggart’s mind.

“Some of the most important details of green construction will never be seen,” Taggart says. “That’s why this LEED certification is rewarding. It takes into account all the other work we do all the time to reduce our impact on the environment, at the same time making the home more comfortable.

“You can’t see the radiant floor heating, or the fresh air system, or the VOC-free paints that don’t pollute the indoor air,” he adds. “You might not notice how carefully we avoided tree removal and kept excavation to a minimum. But the LEEDS certification recognizes the value in those choices. They reward you for doing the right thing.”

Taggart notes that he entered the LEEDs program as an afterthought. He has been building and renovating with the environment in mind since the late 1970s. Those years of experience are built into the Freeport Home, giving it what it needed to win silver certification from the USGBC.

“I recently started asking our staff to divide up all waste from the job site and sorting it into bins for recycling,” the builder adds. “There’s always something a little more you can do.”