Is President George Bush GREEN?

Is President George W. Bush GREEN?

Many people I talk with are surprised to know that President George W. Bush’s home on his ranch 7 miles northwest of Crawford, Texas was designed and built to be GREEN.

The Bushs purchased the ranch in 1999. Prairie Chapel Ranch has 1583 acres, 4,000-square-foot home designed by David Heymann, then an associate professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. The home is considered the Western White House of President George W. Bush. It boasts 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling.

Laura Bush decided on an “aging in place” concept single level ranch design because "We wanted our older parents to feel comfortable here... We also want to grow old here ourselves." The passive-solar house is positioned to absorb winter sunlight, warming the interior walkways and walls of the residence. Geothermal heat pumps circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet (100 m) deep in the ground. A 25,000 US gallon (151 m³) underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof urns; wastewater from sinks, toilets, and showers cascades into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is then used to irrigate the landscaping around the home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem. They also are into prairie grass preservation.

“By marketplace standards, the house is startlingly small,” says David Heymann, the architect of the 4,000-square-foot home. “Clients of similar ilk are building 16-to-20,000-square-foot houses.” Furthermore for thermal mass the walls are clad in "discards of Leuders limestone. “They cut the top and bottom of it off because nobody really wants it,” Heymann says. “So we bought all this throwaway stone.

To see GREEN homes for sale and other GREEN projects e-mail or call Betty Saenz

Betty Saenz REALTOR® GRI, SRES®

(512) 785-5050

Betty@BettySellsAustin.com

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