NORTH STAMFORD
THE steeply sloped cedar-shingled roof of the model home at Windermere on the Lake shelters roughly 7,000 square feet of living space, a respectable amount of room in this privileged suburban corridor between Pound Ridge, N.Y., and Darien.
The house has five bedrooms and four baths, as well as fancy features like a home theater, wine cellar and mirrored exercise room.
It is the first of 24 homes planned for a development named after an area in the English Lake District, and built in a style meant to evoke 19th-century English country houses.
Set on 74 partly wooded acres with a private lake, Windermere promises to be very lavish and, believe it or not, very green — as in energy-saving and preservation minded.
Windermere is the first project of NRDC Residential, a new division of the National Realty and Development Corporation of Purchase, N.Y., which wants to develop a niche as a builder of “architecturally driven, planned communities with an environmental consciousness,” said Mark Robbins, the division president.
With the help of the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, known by its acronym, LEED, NRDC Residential hopes to present large luxury homes as environmentally friendly.
Yet the goals of spare-no-expense luxury (homes at Windermere start at $3.2 million) and environmental awareness seem unlikely when combined. After all, can a four-level house with a three-car garage and a kitchen full of energy-hungry Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances truly qualify as a model of environmental responsibility?
NRDC is trying to prove that it can, by applying for LEED certification. But even that stamp of approval may ultimately be questionable: Although LEED is generally considered one of the toughest green standards because it requires third-party verification, its overseers at the building council in Washington acknowledge that their willingness to certify expansive houses is controversial.
When the “LEED for Homes” standards were under development, “there was a huge debate about that, one that went on throughout the pilot program,” said Michelle Moore, a senior vice president for the council.
The standards released in December settled on a “home size adjustment” formula that makes it progressively harder for homes larger than the designated average (2,850 square feet for a five-bedroom house) to meet LEED thresholds in categories like energy efficiency, indoor air quality and minimization of construction waste. Smaller houses, on the other hand, are rewarded with lower thresholds.
So, for example, while a 2,500-square-foot three-bedroom house would have to earn about 30 points to qualify for the basic level of LEED certification (higher thresholds are called silver, gold and platinum), the Windermere model home has to earn closer to 60 points to compensate for its size, said Matthew Nielsen, the project’s development manager. (The Windermere developers are seeking only basic certification.)
That doesn’t necessarily mean making the house any less luxurious — but it does mean spending more money.
The typical low-flow shower head, “a cheap credit” used by affordable-housing developers seeking certification, is not an appealing option to upper-end home builders, said Maureen Mahle, program manager for Steven Winter Associates Inc., a Norwalk design firm that consults on residential and commercial LEED applications. They are more likely to install pricey high-tech devices that improve quality of life and enhance the project’s appeal.
All of Windermere’s homes will be built to basic LEED standards. The only optional green element is a $100,000 geothermal system — which uses an electric pump to transfer heat from the soil to the house in the winter, and from the house to the soil in summer. In the model house, the geothermal system is enhanced by an energy recovery ventilator, an air circulation device that tempers incoming fresh air with outgoing exhaust air, thereby further reducing heating and cooling costs.