Catherine, Campbell, and baby Milo

This is the last segment of Victoria’s exploration of Ahalani through an interview with the homeowners. Click here and here to listen to both parts of the interview in their entirety. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

After I had spoken to Campbell and Catherine about the 7 principles that guided them through building Ahalani, I asked them about their daily experience of living in it.  I wanted to find out what their lives are now like since its completion.  I wanted to know about the sense of accomplishment and breakthrough that they experienced.  So toward the end of the interview, I asked them.

Since you’ve finished building and have lived here for six years, how has this house changed your life?

Here are their responses, separately because Catherine was caring for their son Milo when I asked:

Campbell: Every day I wake up and live in this house. We were living in a one bedroom apartment in NYC…it was tight quarters and tight living and that was fine. But there’s something that opens up your whole life when you have a belief, or you have a complaint that’s been going in your head for so many years—I can’t stand it, why do they build this way? Why do people live this way? The energy scare, and on and on and on. And finally…we were just going to buy something, anything to just get out of the city…[then] we found a vacant lot and this whole idea of building came in, and we thought oh, we’re going to build a house.

I can take all these complaints I’ve had in my fifty years of life and I can build the dream home that I want.  I even wrote poems and songs about living in someone else’s dream.  You know, that’s what it is, wherever you’re living, you’re living in somebody else’s dream….So, what if you were to build your own dream, would you copy what somebody else did? Would you go back those three generations and borrow from what you thought was wise and good, home and comfy, so you’re just perpetuating the past? What are you going to do?

Bill Chaleff was beautiful about this because he has a whole way of working as an architect.  He doesn’t begin with here’s a box house, where do you want your rooms? Where do you want your bedroom? [Instead], he began with, what’s your personality like? When you get up in the morning, what do you like to do?

[So I asked myself different questions] what would be healthy? Am I just going to go by my past? when I wake up now, What do I do? Well, first thing I do is I look for light….I want to sit down in a warm spot in the winter with a cup of coffee and the newspaper…Now I can say, how can I do that?  And that’s not going back to, well, I used to have a kitchen that had this nice area… No, I’m saying, that’s what I like.  I like to see the sunrise.  To me that’s the magical hour.  So, it’s part of the name of this house, Ahalani—house made of dawn, and some of the magic that we created here.

The way this played out in the house design was that Bill Chaleff helped them incorporate their love for morning light, and a view of the lake into the direction they built their home.  He advised that rather than build the house due south to catch the maximum solar energy, they could face the house 12 degrees due East, and catch just as much sunlight, while also getting a view of the lake, plus a reflection when the sun hits the lake. Catherine really insisted on the view of the lake, while Campbell wanted maximum energy efficiency. She won and now they can sit at the kitchen table or be in their bedroom and enjoy the light streaming in. 

Catherine: When we first moved in, it was incredible to watch the sunrise upon just waking up. Being out in nature and being close to the water has improved our quality of life.  [The inside of the house wasn’t totally completed when we moved in, in March 2003], so we didn’t experience that fantastic feeling when you buy a house and everything’s brand new. The house has been completed in stages; we just finished the kitchen right before the baby was born last January. So before then we had a makeshift kitchen. We have been completing different parts of the house in stages.

Since they exceeded their original building budget by 60,000 (due to building mistakes/difficulties procuring good labor), they ran out of money for building the kitchen, framing the windows, and finishing other areas. They have completed one project at a time. I am truly impressed with the design and craftsmanship of their home.

Below are some resources to learn more about Ahalani and some of the materials and products it is built with:

• Ahalani: Living in Harmony with the Sun—A short film in 2 parts Catherine and Campbell made about building their solar home
• Renewable Energy Long Island (RELI) - each fall they organize a National Solar Tour, during which Campbell and Catherine have an open house of Ahalani.
• Bill Chaleff- architect of Ahalani, and many more energy efficient homes. member of the US green building council
• SIPS (Structurally Insulated Panels) - the walls of Ahalani.  A SIPS built home is three times as strong as a stick frame house and uses one-tenth the amount of wood.
• Silvaculture: Sustainable forestry program of the Menominee tribe, WI.  They have been sustainably harvesting lumber from the same land for 150 years.  They practice generational responsibility, that is gleaning the wisdom from the past three generations, looking at what can be done in the present (the present is considered to be the fourth generation) in order to plan for next three generations.
• Solar Laminate – roof panels are lined with a solar sensitive material, an alternative to installing a rack of solar panels on the roof.
• Broan Nu-Tone Guardian plus air fresh exchange unit- exhausts indoor air, sucking in fresh outdoor air, which is filtered and heated before entering the house.