Green on the Inside

David and Virginia Jackson’s new enviro home sustains student interest

by Sherri Kimmel

July 1, 2011

The warmest and most striking feature of the Jacksons’ house is their masonry heater, which at a cost of $18,000 exceeded the price of a traditional fireplace by about $5,000, according to David Jackson.

When is a house not just a home? When it’s a living laboratory.

Virginia Jackson had grown up in just such a place as the daughter of Dickinson physicists Ken and Priscilla Laws, who made news in central Pennsylvania when they swung wide the doors of their new passive solar home in 1980. Virginia, now married to a Dickinson physicist, had seen students troop through her parents’ home for 30 years. Carrying on the Laws’ energy-efficiency role modeling was one of the objectives as she and husband David began conjuring plans for new-home construction a few years ago.

The 2,300-square feet, three-bedroom, ultra-energy-efficient house the couple moved into last fall, after painstakingly researching, designing and directing construction, is now making as much—or more—news as her parents’ progressive home did three decades ago.

At a March open house, Priuses lined the curbs of Hillside Drive, just a few blocks from campus. A month earlier, Michael Heiman had brought the first of what will promise to be many student groups to the Jackson house. The professor of environmental studies and geography toured his introductory environmental-science students through the Laws’ house for 20 years but has shifted the learning locus to the Jacksons’ domain.

“It’s like the Laws’ house on steroids,” says Heiman with a wide grin. Though green on the inside, the exterior looks like a normal, modern family home, with fiber-cement siding. “Usually an environmentally friendly house has a quirky look,” says Michael Blair ’12, who was in that first visiting student group. “By looking at it, you would never have guessed about the sustainability.” Heiman agrees that the Jacksons met the challenge of designing a house that fits into the community standards.        

The Jacksons purchased the land in an established neighborhood a few blocks from campus 10 years ago. “At that time we weren’t planning a super-energy-efficient house but just wanted to live close enough to the college so I could walk to work,” says David Jackson, associate professor of physics. “We didn’t get truly serious about building until around 2006.”

The Jacksons found a floor plan they liked on the Internet and tried to tweak it themselves. Then they attended a home show in Harrisburg, Pa., and met the husband-and-wife team that owns Bridlewood Builders. They helped the Jacksons devise a floor plan.

Originally, the Jacksons envisioned a passive-solar home like the Laws’, but as their interest in sustainable home building grew so did their ambition and scope. “I probably made the project more difficult, but I felt the need or desire to research every little piece,” says David. “It’s so much more satisfying. I can look at every nook and cranny and know why we made that choice.”

With so many possibilities, they needed to find a focus. “We decided to let energy efficiency be our guiding force. Once we made that decision, the process was much easier,” he explains. “Our goal was not to live a crazy life but a comfortable life and still hopefully reach net-zero energy [producing as much energy as they consume].”

But he admits, “A net-zero-energy house is really hard to build,” especially in a cold-winter climate. “I think we’ll have to be satisfied with a near-net-zero-energy house.”

Along with a geothermal heating-and-cooling system, the house has 26 solar panels on the roof and special-order glass designed to let in as much radiant energy as possible. It also has structural insulated wall panels that come preinsulated and don’t contain studs. “We don’t lose energy through the studs,” David notes. “And since the insulation completely fills the space inside the walls, it’s a very tight house.” In fact, it’s so airtight, he says they had to install a heat-recovery ventilator to bring fresh air into the house.

Perhaps the most striking feature also is one of the house’s best energy producers—a masonry heater, made with local stone by a craftsman from New Jersey from a Finnish design. The masonry heater is an efficient and clean-burning fireplace. A typical fire lasts about two hours, but the heat will radiate for more than 24 hours. “Every day I walk in and think, ‘Ah, it’s beautiful.’ In winter, I snuggle up to it, and the heat goes deep into your core,” David says.

The fireplace forms the focal point of a high-ceilinged, pine-paneled family room adorned with the guitars the couple loves to harmonize on in their leisure time. Virginia especially wanted to replicate the post-and-beam architecture of her parents’ Douglas Court home—a design based on Priscilla Laws’ childhood home in San Francisco.

Because of the many energy efficiencies, the house, David says, “has a very high thermal inertia. That means the temperature of the house is quite stable and changes very little throughout the day.”

Despite their energy innovations, Virginia says, “We didn’t take it to the nth degree. We weighed the aesthetics and the cost.” David agreed. “We could have used thicker walls and installed more solar panels, but we had to draw the line somewhere.”

Though their building costs may have been 15 percent more than the average custom home, their household expends less than 10 percent of the energy used by a typical American home. “I plan to be here for the rest of my career, so the up-front costs will easily pay for themselves in the long run,” says David.

State and federal incentives eased the initial up charges, a fact not lost on students during their visit. “A lot of what we’re learning is applicable to what we saw in the house,” says Emily Seklecki ’13. “In 10 years, when we’re looking for a home, it will be more feasible to build one.”      

“We got so many tax credits for heating and cooling that they got pushed into multiple years,” David elaborates. For instance, though the solar-array system cost $26,000, subsidies and solar renewable-energy credits are so significant that “we’ll be paid back in four to five years.”

And instead of depleting the electric grid, their home contributes to it during sunnier months. Doing so brings the Jacksons revenue from power companies, which by law must purchase renewable-energy credits. Six or seven credits a year could net the Jacksons $2,000 to $3,000. 

Thanks to The Energy Detective (TED), a device positioned next to the kitchen, the Jacksons can monitor their real-time energy usage and production. When Virginia turns on the stove or the washing machine, she can watch the electricity meter shoot up on TED.

TED was one feature Heiman’s student Rick Lauvai ’13 found “really cool. You can see what appliances [consume energy]. If I had one in my home, I would pay attention. It would have a big impact [on his behavior].” David can even monitor home energy use while at his office in Tome Hall or across town watching his son play soccer by checking his iPhone, which displays TED’s readings. “I’m a physicist; I can’t help but measure everything,” he says with a shrug.

Physics-department colleague Hans Pfister shares Jackson’s fascination with measurement and anticipates bringing students in his Energy and Environmental Physics class to the home.

The couple’s intention “is for every environmental-science student to tour this facility,” David says.

Ken and Priscilla Laws, who he says were his “role models and inspiration,” are thrilled to see their outreach efforts with students continue and hope their daughter’s family will inspire new generations to build green.

Read David Jackson’s blog about the house.