What Goes Around
BY WILLIAM B. LEONARDA collision of old and new age mountain living is one of the first things you notice when visiting the home of Dennis Brown and his wife Alison Martin. Their ultra-modern 4,800-square-foot circular home stands not far from the rustic log cabins of the Zebulon Vance birthplace just outside of Weaverville, and a ramshackle 100-year-old farm house sits close to the entrance of their gravel drive.
The small pond skirted by the couple’s driveway harkens back to the days when livestock would have gathered at the water’s edge to quench their thirst. This little pond doesn’t look like it at first glance, but it may be the prime example of how innovative technology and modern home design have come to what was not so long ago a backwoods farming community.
“That pond is the furnace and air conditioning unit for the house,” says Brown with a slight grin. “It works pretty much like your traditional electric heat pump or heat exchange system.”
Nearly 1,000 feet of one-and-a-quarter inch piping is coiled at the bottom of the pond. At 11 feet deep, the water never freezes and remains at a fairly constant temperature —varying just a few degrees depending on the season.
“The pond water at that depth makes for a pretty efficient geothermal heat exchange system,” Brown explains.
The system is so efficient that it cools the house to a constant 75 degrees in the summer and warms it to 73 degrees in the winter. The system provides enough heat to supply the house with ample hot water.
“There is not a single hot or cold spot in this house, not even in the attic,” adds Martin. “The temperature remains almost constant throughout the house, except for the work rooms on the lower level. Those are a bit cooler, which is really what you want for work areas anyway.”
The consistent temperature is aided by the house’s round design and a passive solar heating system. Brown and his wife carefully sited the house, making sure that most of the windows faced south. They also chose to have the house insulted with Icynene — a spray-on foam insulation.
Icynene adheres permanently to any building material, and is an “open cell” foam insulation that expands to 100 times its volume once applied. The foam’s expansion fills in the gaps between a house’s outer and inner walls, thus creating a virtually airtight insulation seal, according to the manufacturer. When Brown and Martin chose to insulate their house with Icynene, the material was so innovative and new that it actually baffled the Buncombe County building inspectors.
“Maybe one or two other houses in the county at the time had used Icynene, so the inspectors had never seen it, and there was no mention of it in the county’s building codes,” Brown says with a laugh. “We had to kind of bluff our way through that whole inspection.”
It’s hard to imagine Brown bluffing his way through anything when it comes to high-tech gadgetry or building materials. He and his wife are extremely knowledgeable, and both spent most of their careers working in the information technology industry. Brown, a computer engineer, designed computer hard drives for more than 20 years, while Martin worked in training and development for software products.
It’s clear when you enter their home that innovative technology is not just a passing fancy. They have built a house that encompasses some leading-edge ideas from smart-home technology, from a geothermal heating system to a composite flooring material for the cantilevered deck that surrounds their home’s second floor. Innovation is nothing new to Brown and Martin who have always been interested in using the latest technological ideas and developments in their home.
“When we lived in Massachusetts, I believe our house was one of the first in the state to have a geothermal heating system,” Brown says. “Back then, the systems were pretty much cobbled together from a bunch of different parts in somebody’s garage.”
Brown, 57, and Martin, 56, decided nearly seven years ago that they wanted to leave New England for a milder climate and find someplace where they could build their dream home.
“Retirement really hadn’t even entered our minds at the time,” Martin says. “But we found the place where we wanted to retire, and we made the move.”
Brown and Martin purchased 32 acres of farmland in Weaverville after visiting the Asheville area on recommendations of several friends. They stopped for a few days on a drive to Florida from Massachusetts and liked what they saw.
They originally planned to buy an existing home, but decided to build their own following several fruitless searches. When Martin and Brown say they “built their own house,” they literally did the work themselves with the help of some neighbors and a few subcontractors.
They decided on erecting a home made by Asheville-based Deltec Homes. The unique circular design of the house and the flexibility in designing their own interior floor plans sold them on the idea. Deltec delivered the component parts to the house on a flatbed trailer and assembling the house was left up to Brown and Martin. Their first order of business was to find a crane to lift the wall panels and then the roof into place.
“I just picked up the yellow pages and found what we needed under Asheville Crane,” said Martin.
The couple enlisted the help of their neighbors to erect the house, and then again to complete interior work. It wasn’t strictly volunteer work, however, as Brown and Martin were happy to pay them for the work. Still there’s a lot of pride among the neighbors for a job well done.
“A lot of the neighbors around us invested a lot of time in building this house, and I think they have some sense of ownership about it,” Brown says with slight chuckle.
The idea of a group of neighbors working to raise a high-tech home echoes back to the days of barn raisings and shows just how old traditions and new technology can be inextricably linked.
