At this week’s East Kessler Park neighborhood meeting, Councilmember Scott Griggs will present Katherine Homan of Handley Drive a proclamation for having the city’s first comprehensive green home.

Homan and her late husband, Richard, envisioned and built the home long before the word “green” became trendy in construction lingo. We wrote about Homan and her neighborhood activism a little over three years ago, and also about the energy efficient home that was a labor of love for the Homans.

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A story that appeared in the Dallas Morning News last October (that is no longer available online, for some reason) states that Homan pursued the city’s certification of the home to honor her late husband on what would have been his 70th birthday. Richard Homan, she says, “built a healthy house to live in that would be an example to the homebuilding industry about how a green, energy-efficient home could be built.” Other homes with similar characteristics were built around the same time as the Homans’, but Steve Saunders with TexEnergy Solutions, who helped found the Green Built Texas program, asserts that the Homan residence on Handley is first comprehensive green home built in Dallas.

Homan says that during the building her home “and until relatively recently, this house was not taken dead seriously, but rather regarded as a curiosity — a novelty.” They did it as “part of our pledge to each other and a demonstration on how responsible citizens could work to live a more sustainable life,” she says. Echoing those thoughts, the city’s proclamation states that the Homans “showed the persistence to navigate the bewildering array of incomplete and imperfect information that was the wilderness frontier of what is now known as green building.”

Read the full proclamation after the jump.

Whereas; in 1999, Richard and Katherine Homan had the vision to design and then build a home that would serve as a demonstration for what responsible citizens could see as a sustainable standard for new homes and buildings in our community and;

Whereas; The Homans showed the persistence to navigate the bewildering array of incomplete and imperfect information that was the wilderness frontier of what is now known as green building, and;

Whereas; The Homans had the conviction to make the financial and time investment required to bring the demonstration project to a successful conclusion; and

Whereas: The Homans, their Builder — Enviro Custom Homes, their many consultants and contractors created a home which had (among others) the following comprehensive green features:

· Energy Efficiency – Including Structural Insulated Panels (SIP’s), Radiant Barrier, Low “e” Argon filled windows, CFL lighting, Properly sized geothermal heat pump, Solar Water Heating, Solar PV (photo voltaic) – resulting in a HERS Index of 51 (49% more efficient than the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code)

· Indoor Air Quality – Including MERV 10 Filtration, Natural and Mechanical Ventilation, Low VOC installed products and furniture, Energy Recovery Ventilator,

· Materials Management – Locally manufactured products, recycled materials (carpet, countertops), SIP’s, creative use of materials (“concrete as flagstone – interior and exterior”) and on site recycling of construction waste

· Water and Site – 500 Gallon rainwater collection system, Xeriscaped lot, low flow “flush assist” commodes, insta hot, protection of onsite vegetation, water permeable eco pavers, protection against water runoff – during and after construction,

 And Whereas; the Homans’ insight, sacrifice and leadership resulted in a brilliantly executed prophetic vision of what is now commonly understood as a green home and remains nationally competitive — more than a decade later:

We, the City of Dallas hereby

• recognize the Homan Residence at 1629 Handley Drive, Dallas Texas 75208 — as the first “comprehensive green home” built in the City of Dallas, and

• show appropriate appreciation by the City and its Citizens for the Homans’ superior example of sustainability in leading by example.