The super eco-friendly house
Husband and wife Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger designed and built their ‘recycled’ California home in one of Berkley’s oldest residential areas. The eco house is made entirely from reclaimed wood, pieces of junkyard cars, and an old shipping container. The owners really put a lot of thought and many original ideas into the design and function of the home, as well as a lot of experimenting with the salvaged materials beforehand. They used over 100 car roofs for the upper exterior walls searching Berkley car lots for gray, silver and light gold cars with undented roofs. The roofs were selected very carefully to be matching colors and were cut in tile-like shapes resulting in a beautiful facade. The wall bottoms are poplar bark from furniture and the glass awnings were made from junked Dodge caravan side windows and need very little maintenance.
The 2-bedroom house also has green solar energy system installed for electricity and hot water with a back-up tankless water heater for rainy days. All appliances are energy star or better and toilets are dual flush. Insulation is blown in cellulose and interior doors are wheatboard core. All floors are wooden and the walls and ceilings are unpainted plaster. All finish wood in trim, counters, upper floors, stairs, fences, gates, wood siding and deck railings is salvaged wood. The wood furniture is also from locally salvaged wood.
The family has an architectural studio made from a recycled shipping container and build for half the cost of what a wood-frame building would cost.
Karl and Cate explain that is doesn’t cost more to build green at all and it can be a lot more pleasant. According to them, it’s just a matter of time before more people start using recycled materials in their houses.
