Alahani in Long Island

This article is part 1 of an interview with Campbell Dalglish and Catherine Oberg, homeowners and builders of Ahalani, an energy efficient house in Long Island.  Below are my reflections about meeting them and taking a tour of their house. Read Part 2 and Part 3.

Late last year, I became interested in wind and solar power and I read that the New York City area is a good candidate for embracing clean energy technology, especially solar. I learned that the biggest deterrents to adopting renewable energy technologies are culturally conditioned ideas about land usage and what’s possible. Then I heard about a couple on Long Island who built their own energy efficient solar home and who enthusiastically educate others and thought Oh, I have to meet them and see this house!

Campbell Dalglish and Catherine Oberg finished building Ahalani, their Suffolk County, Long Island home, in March 2003. Ahalani is a Navajo word meaning “House made of dawn.” A few months ago I spent a Sunday afternoon visiting and interviewing them, learning about the process they undertook to build their sunny home: two years of research and design, choosing an architect to draw up plans, deciding to take on being the General Contractors themselves, and all the unknowns and surprises they encountered as they built.

I had never stepped foot inside an eco-friendly, sustainably built home before. I have visited an eco-built health food store, but never did I get a personal tour of a home intentionally built to incorporate so many different technologies built by the owners themselves. I knew this would be a treat.

Part of the reason Campbell and Catherine built the house is to demonstrate a paradigm shift that they want to see come alive in the world. And they share the entire process of building in their film: Ahalani: Living in Harmony with the Sun (watch their film here). Sometimes Catherine jokes that Campbell built the house just to make the film, because his passion to show others that it can be done is so strong. But really, they had spoken to many people who had high hopes of building green and then compromised in the end. They decided to follow through on their highest intentions and not compromise. The only items in the house built of conventional materials are the cherry wood kitchen cabinets and some oak railings.

Trees and lake in the backyard

Ahalani is a tall house, sitting behind a berm off the road. They mounded up the ground to create this earthen wall on purpose—it redirects prevailing Northwesterly winds in the winter from pounding the sides of the house. The layout of the grounds immediately struck me as different: where was the customary front lawn? Slate/Brick pathway? Plantings of boxwood and azalea that most suburban homes fall in step with?  I did see trees dotting the property and there is grass amidst them, but landscaping is not the focal point. The house itself is, nestled comfortably in its environment.

The house has two turrets on both sides of the roof in the Queen Anne style of Victorian architecture.  It seems bigger than nearby houses because it’s taller, but its footprint is actually smaller than homes in the area and it doesn’t have a basement.

Inside, the home is very bright and airy. Thirty-six windows and a laminated solar roof make up an integrated passive/active solar system. Their active solar system generates anywhere from 17-33% of their electricity needs, which are greatly reduced from typical construction due to the choices they made in building. Air is heated and cooled geothermally, then circulated through an combined system including an air radiant floor, plenum (a sealed off, insulated area), and air exchange unit. This air circulation system continuously cycles air from the floor and exits through openings at the top of their cathedral ceilings into the center monolithic wall.

All the lights are compact fluorescents; they’ve chosen energy star rated appliances. In the mid afternoon, as we stood inside talking, no lights were on at all, just the refrigerator and computer. They incorporated small but spacious techniques as beautifully demonstrated in their baby’s bedroom: shelves under a staircase lead up to a loft bed. Storage space is built in, so now they are gathering their outgrown city furniture and excess stuff for a tag sale. It’s just not needed anymore.

After I left that day I looked at the homes along the Long Island streets as I drove away. Ahalani really is different, I thought, when comparing it to the fortress-like suburban homes I passed. Most homes are built to protect from natural features, whereas Ahalani befriends those same features. Meanwhile it is beautiful, toasty warm inside and tastefully decorated. They did it! I slapped my steering wheel, excited. I can’t believe it, but they really did do it. Only after visiting Campbell and Catherine could I see what new housing construction could look like—an integrated approach of incorporating the wisdom of the past with an intention to create something better in the present in order to leave enough resources for future generations.

One week after I visited Ahalani, I shared my experiences at a Sunny Way meeting. After hearing my impressions of Ahalani, Megan said, “Oh, it’s an integral house! Today, we have more thought power than we do natural resources power, and it sounds like they took advantage of this fact to do something cool!” Very true, and it has a kind of aliveness or movement to it. In Ahalani, human thought and intention meet nature and physical reality in an elegant way, showing us what is possible. We can create energy efficient buildings that thoughtfully consider our needs and nature’s laws together under one roof.