Enthusiastic owner-builders, Stefanie Parrott and Dixon Beatty “take their sustainable building seriously while approaching the daily grind of their owner-built project with a real sense of humor,” says their architect, Geoffrey Holton. The owners’ green goals started with the purchase of a Victorian house in the Oakland Point Historic District. Their premise is that reinvesting in this transit-friendly urban neighborhood (two and a half blocks from BART) and restoring deteriorating old housing stock are good environmental strategies.

 

The project respects the integrity of the Victorian house and its historic neighborhood while integrating many green strategies. The couple’s do-it-yourself approach to the project has given them expertise in everything from ground-source heat pumps to grid-tied photovoltaics to the lifecycle analysis of exterior siding materials.