Photography by Donovan Roberts Witmer
The passive solar design of this home seeks to capture the low angle winter sun to warm its large thermal masses. In summer, provisions are made to deflect the sun and keep the core of the home as cool as possible. Resources: Granite countertops and tile by Classic Granite, Lititz; 717-333-2133, www.classicgranite.us. Timber framing by Lancaster County Timber Frames; 717-755-2990, www.lancotf.com.
“The green building industry isn’t new,” says Jesse Pellman, partner in LongView Structures. “It was just forgotten for a while. If you go back far enough, it wasn’t technology. It was called common sense.”
Houses were once built on appropriate lots, oriented to soak in the winter sun. Floor plans were efficient. But when air conditioning and electrification came along, “it was cheaper to run the systems than build a better house,” Pellman says.
Today, the pendulum is swinging back. Recently, LongView Structures (www.longviewstructures.com) paired up with a homeowner willing to put a few more dollars into construction in order to save many dollars—and energy—on the back end. The resulting home—blending Arts-and-Crafts aesthetics with a Southwestern feel—stands on the scenic south side of Lancaster County’s Kissel Hill. The passive solar heating is supplemented with geothermal heating and cooling and an earth-berm wraparound that blankets the rear of the house for insulation.
Steve and Marijane Ember thought they had fixed on their retirement home when they built a lakeside cottage in Schuylkill County, but they missed family, friends, and services in their native Lancaster County. They wanted a redo, and Steve Ember knew it had to be a passive solar home that draws warmth from the sun and cooling from the earth, a comfortable home for retirement living and family gatherings for years to come.
Steve Ember stumbled on the site for their newer home while rambling the back roads of Warwick Township. An old shack occupied a site ideally suited for passive solar. It was south-facing and steeply sloped for an earth berm, and the valley view wasn’t bad, either.
The Embers found their building partner in Pellman and LongView Structures. The company’s name was inspired by Pellman’s parents’ frequent admonition to their teenage sons—“Remember to take the long view.” Pellman and his business partner knew they wanted to “make better decisions at the outset that will give houses a long-term lifespan, long-term viability, and long-term appeal that is going to ultimately save things from going in the landfill, utility costs, consumption costs. You take a long view.”
Planning for the Ember home ensued for a full year before a shovel went in the ground
But that long view requires “time and energy and thought,” Pellman notes. Planning for the Ember home ensued for a full year before a shovel went in the ground. Steve Ember researched conservation-minded concepts to work into the home. First on the list was thermal mass, the idea that large structures can capture and hold heat.
“These guys, as soon as we started talking about thermal mass, they were all over it,” Ember says.
A low divider built of poured concrete and covered with American Clay faces the large, south-facing windows and separates the living room from a corridor traversing the front of the house.
“We’re just a little bit off of perfect solar,” Ember says. “You come in, and this wall is nice and warm. It just warms up. The purpose was to get that low winter sun up this mass to remediate the temperature.”
The windows had to be rethought because typical low-E windows “are often great windows but really counterproductive in a passive approach” because they block out heat, says Pellman. For this house, they found a glazing that “would allow almost all of the heat to come in but also has a really high insulation value, so it couldn’t get back out,” he says.
To counteract the heating effect of summer sun, Pellman built overhangs “to do most of our shading for us.”
The long corridor serves a purpose, preventing an unintentional effect of passive solar called “sun drenching,” says Ember. “If you had your room and your chair right by the window, you’d be uncomfortable. It’d be too hot. This gives you a little bit of a buffer from the direct sun.”
Comfort and aesthetics combine in one of the home’s distinguishing features—two black walnut grills high on the wall overlooking the living room. On a 35-degree winter’s day, when the sun hits the divider wall just right, the room can “feel like a million bucks, but then it becomes too warm,” Pellman says. The house needed a way to vent air without mechanical systems. The grills, built by local artisan Gene Shaw, front maple doors that open from the second floor to exhaust hot air.
“The main floor and second floor are two different structures,” Pellman says. “I tell people to think about two houses where the one house happened to fall on the other one, so each has its own independent HVAC.”
The effectiveness of the passive solar approach is enhanced by insulation that rises from floor to ceiling with no thermal break. Careful thought was given to the home’s envelope because “if we’re going to go to all this length to make it passive, we have to make sure that the actual structure isn’t going to compromise and allow cold and heat to move in and out,” says Pellman.
The American Clay applied to the divider wall and many other surfaces in the Ember home enhances the Southwest feel with texture and earth shades. American Clay, which originates in New Mexico, provides “an artisan finish,” says Pellman. “It gives a house a character that’s not going to show up on a roller-painted drywall surface.”
Application requires someone who knows what they’re doing, says Seth Cluley, creative director of Beau Soleil Decorative Surfaces (717-413-2680, www.beausoleilds.com), who is a certified applicator of this product, as well as a specialist in a wide variety of other wall and furniture finishes. The textured result, says Ember, “looks like an old wall in Italy.”
American Clay’s versatility is on display in the powder room. The home’s hillside construction and earth berm inspired Cluley to give the room an underground motif. From the ceiling in sky blue to grass shoots overhead to sediment layers in different shades all the way to the floor, Cluley created an underground fantasia in American Clay. He custom-mixed the colors and used sawdust from the site, leftover ground glass, and the occasional shell or rock for texture.
Throughout the home, little details speak to the care that the Embers put into their choices
“That’s the nice thing about the clay,” he says. “You can just go with it.” Plus, he adds, “every once in a while, you run into a client that has that visual sense, that wants something more than the normal finish and wants to do something a little more exciting. I always tell people that powder rooms are the place to go wild.”
Throughout the first floor, detailed woodwork complements the natural look of the American Clay. Timbers in Douglas fir and trim in pine are complemented with accents of Philippine mahogany salvaged from a Lancaster home’s staircase. The cherry and maple kitchen cabinets were custom-made with no formaldehyde glues and zero VOC finishes by Christiana Cabinetry, a KCMA eco-certified shop (www.christianacabinetry.com).
The dramatic floors of the corridor and kitchen look like slate but are actually tiles decorated with an inkjet printer. “There are 140 unique design tiles,” says Ember, who sourced the tiles at Bomberger’s in Lititz.
Ember and Pellman collaborated on home design, improvising on details like a built-in doggie door. Their partnership is evident in the kitchen’s unique eat-in area—a six-seat booth surrounded by shelving, facing a large window and sitting under timbers angling upward from the main ceiling.
“This area was something we really wanted from the beginning. We really wanted a booth,” Ember says. He adds, “Can I show off?” He hits a remote control, and a small television rises from the counter.
Pellman contributed the idea of the upward-angled timbers to break up the long home’s exterior roofline. The large window here is regular low-E, to keep the full sun off diners, and an exterior cedar pergola will be twined with fast-growing hops for additional shade.
Throughout the home, little details speak to the care that the Embers put into their choices and the attention lavished on construction by Pellman and the contractors. Ember found an artisan to craft his vision of a front door embedded with glass panels. A stairway etagere provides display space while under-stair drawers allow storage. Marijane Ember chose the Arts-and-Crafts lighting fixtures throughout the home, and Steve designed a decorative apparatus that combines three of them into a dining room chandelier. A dining room bookshelf hides a wall slot for storing a ping-pong tabletop. Knobs in the kitchen cabinets and a rolling armoire were custom-made by Lititz ceramic artist Steve de Perrott.
“When you can get somebody local like that to give you a quality product, why not do it?” Ember notes.
“That’s what I thought was amazing about this project, that a lot of these things were coming from local people,” says Pellman. “It was really cool to hear that it was all sourced from artisans and friends.”
The collaboration of young builders and a retired couple with a vision created a distinctive home that’s sure to last.
“We’ve been lucky enough to find guys that are the next generation of contractors and builders,” Pellman says. “Nationwide builder surveys all say the biggest challenge to the next wave of homebuilding is going to be lack of skilled labor. But here, our painter’s young, our plumber’s young. And we get somebody like Steve . . .”
“Who never grew up,” says Ember.
“ . . . Who gives us a more innovative alternative approach,” Pellman continues. “It works. That’s great in here. The house is actually going to work.”
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The granite was selected for its hints of red, also found in the cabinetry.
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LongView's design called for deep roof overhangs to help let the winter sun in and shade the summer sun. Knobs in the kitchen were custom made by certamic artist Steve de Perrot
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American Clay offers a rustic natural surface for the walls.
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A powder room features a one-of-a-kind pedestal sink and American Clay wall motif.
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Homeowners Steve and Marijane Ember.
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A long corridor design keeps the sun's most intense heat off the seating areas.
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Staircase supports double as unique bookshelves.
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The Embers' six-seat booth offers diner-style casual comfort in a home environment.
