President Bush's Crawford TX Home is Model of Environmentally Friendly Living

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ^ | February 27, 2007 | Marc Morano

[Lecie]

President Bush's Crawford TX Home is Model of Environmentally Friendly Living

February 27, 2007

Marc Morano - February 27, 2007

Former Vice President Al Gore has been criticized for his rather large electric bills ($30,000 a year) at his home in Tennessee.

http://tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367

What you might not have heard about is how environmentally friendly President George Bush's home is in Crawford Texas. Below is a partial reprint from the Chicago Tribune from April 29, 2001.

Chicago Tribune

Bush loves ecology --at home

April 29, 2001

By Rob Sullivan. Rob Sullivan is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles

The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude.

Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.

A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy.

This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford

[EPW Note: The President’s House in Crawford was designed to be eco-friendly.]

According to David Heymann, the house's architect and associate dean of the University of Texas architecture department, Heymann designed the house so that "every room has a relationship with something in the landscape that's different from the room next door. Each of the rooms feels like a slightly different place."

In a USA Today interview, Heymann said, "There's a great grove of oak trees to the west that protects it from the late afternoon sun. Then there is a view out to the north looking at hills, and to the east out over a lake, and the view to the south . . . out to beautiful hills."

[EPW Note: I wonder if the news media will report on the President’s green way of life.]

[GenXFreedomFighter]

... I can safely bet I won't see it/read about it on CNN.

Oh, we might, but the headline of the story might read as follows:

Shocker: Bush Lives Green at Home; Deems It Not Good Enough for the Rest of Us!

[q_an_a]

would you mind explaining what you looked for in a contractor, how big is your house and what this costs?

[upier]

Gore lied and the planet died!

[killermosquito]

Gore lied trees died (or something like that).

[mtnwmn]

Thank you for posting this. I sent it to one TN democrat and one environmentalist.

[Wuli]

All most all home design measures that use the earth and the sun as directly as possible for the home's energy mean (a)smaller bills paid to utility companies, (b)smaller demand on "big" utility companies.

If someone can afford the initial additional costs, there is usually some point in which that cost is offset by the continued lower costs paid to purchase energy for the home. When that is depends on just how far the "green" effort went and what its specific applications cost. For instance, most measures that raise the R-value (insulation) of walls and windows, pays off before most people sell the house. Solar and geothermal measures add greatly to first-time costs, but diminish greatly the monthly utility bills.

However, in almost all cases, from geothermal to solar, because people that could afford to do it (make the greater investment initially) have done it, the technology continues to improve and more people now think they can afford it than did people ten or twenty years ago - because the applied technology has continued to get cheaper.

At least Bush did it himself, instead of (as Gore would have) mandating that all homes do it (ignoring the present state of the technology and its costs, and imposing the additional costs on everyone).

[soccermom]

I wasn't surprised by the Gore hypocrisy one bit, but to have Bush's home put Gore's to shame is just priceless! I wonder if the Gore sycophants on The View will have anything to say about this. I don't watch the show, but I'm sure they were ecstatic over his Oscar.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

2700 sq. feet, most is on the lower (ground) level. When we began thinking about this place, I wanted something really high tech, and looked at passive solar, solar hot water, batteries, etc. Windmills were excluded.
I kept coming back to the ground source heat pump because its proved technology with thousands already in operation. The brand name is Water Furnace, made in Indiana. The local dealer had put in nine or ten of these and wife and I visited several of his installs and interviewed the owners. All were satisfied with their results.
The unit we have features four 200 foot wells with antifreeze in the closed loop system. Each well makes a ton of heat or cold. The liquid reports into the heat exchanger inside at 59-60 F and is then bumped to 70-72 F in the winter with electricity. The unit also heats another closed loop series in the poured cement (tiled) floor. This gives a nice warm floor feeling in the winter without the blast of forced air heat. This warm floor requires an extra water heater tank for storage. The Water Furnace also does forced air but this rarely comes on because the house is super insulated with blown in cellulose in the walls and ceiling. The warm floor is like a big heat sink for the house. It doesn't need to be hot, just warm. A flip of one switch reverses the system and 59 degrees is easy to convert to AC in the summer. Missouri summers are hot and humid. Sometimes on the most humid days, we run a dehumidifier in the game room to keep moisture controlled. The house has traditional ducts and returns for air handling.
This was a costly system with a five year payback vs. traditional electric or propane/electric system. Our house is all electric and utilities are < $100/month for everything. I should add we also burn wood in a big Lopi free standing stove in the living room and move the heat around with a ceiling fan. We don't really need this but with about ten acres of hardwood, this resource would go to waste if we didn't pick it up.

[q_an_a]

Thanks for the information. How long does it take to put in the wells? $100 a month for electric is a great price. That would mean for me in a home 1/3 larger than yours that we would save about 100 a month and in five years about $6,000 toward the system.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The well drilling rig was here at 8:30 and done by 2pm. It was an older style water well rotary rig and he used drilling mud to hold the holes open and cased the holes with pvc pipe.
The back of the house is punched into a hillside so we take advantage of earth sheltering to some extent. This is the third new house we've done and the second one where we had complete control of the design. I threw out all the solar heat theory and put our money on better insulation. Walls are R-50 without a vapor barrier and ceiling is about R-90. I also have an air to air unit to polish the air inside with an on/off switch in the kitchen. It runs when we have a house full or when we're cooking mass quantities.