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Oftentimes San Diego seems like the heavy caboose dragging behind the nationwide Green Building train, which is why we were particularly fortunate to experience a little civic boosterism aimed at bringing us up to speed this past weekend. Architect and builder Kevin DeFreitas recently built his family a 3600 sq ft house not far from where I grew up, in a neighborhood otherwise packed with split-level ranch style homes. The house employs both passive and active solar light and heating, cutting edge building materials and clever design to create a good argument for superior beauty and functionality of environmentally-conscious construction.

The house is heated with a solar hot water system installed on the roof, which brings hot water to the pipes under the concrete floor to provide the home radiant heating. This non-duct based heating system helps keep dust out of the air. The health of the four children being raised in the house seems to have been a prevailing concern, and low VOC (volatile organic compound) materials have been used throughout.

In conversation, DeFreitas makes it clear that there would always have been even greener alternatives when it came to the home design. It is clear that a project like his requires a careful balancing of trade-offs. But the carefulness that results from all this consideration of alternatives produces a type of building that stands in stark contrast to the buildings most of us San Diegans live in. We are fortunate, therefore, that DeFreitas does not just design and build single family homes. We can only hope that the technology pioneered in this project will soon be available to us all, and especially to those of us who can least afford the building inefficiencies that so often saddle us.