Despite its plain appearance, the home was commemorated for the unseen craft within its walls. Completed earlier this year, the structure is the first single-family home to spring up under the county’s Green Building Program, an initiative born about one year ago that aims to promote sustainable construction.
“Part of the reason for wanting to make a big deal out of the first one is that we hope it is just barely the beginning, and that more and more folks understand what is available to them through our program,” said Supervisor Rich Gordon, who has helped push several of the county’s recent eco-friendly initiatives through to fruition.
  
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He says the feat was a function of his own conscientious inclinations and had little to do with the county’s rigorous rating scale.
“Most of the homes that I’ve done probably score between 85 (and) 105 points,” Dethlefsen said. “It’s just the right thing to do … Getting 50 points is fairly straight-forward.”
On a tour of the house Monday morning, Dethlefsen pointed out each eco-friendly component baked into the final product, including oriented strand board siding, Trex recycled decking material, less toxic paints, dual-glazed windows, a permeable stone driveway, native plant landscaping, and a tank-less water heater. When describing the roof, in which he inserted an energy-efficient radiant barrier, he stopped to gesticulate.
“What you do by putting this in the roof is, during summer, when you’ve got radiant energy, it reflects it, keeping the house cooler. Then, during winter, there’s a lot (of heat) that escapes, and that energy is re-reflected back into the house,” he said, beaming. “So it kills two birds with one stone, which is kind of cool.”
For his efforts, the county Board of Supervisors presented Dethlefsen with a certificate of appreciation at a board meeting on April 28. Dethlefsen will take the honor with him to the site of his next building project in Oakland, along with some new tactics for minimizing a structure’s environmental impact.
“It’s an ongoing process that’s always maturing and we’ll see that occur over the next decades to come,” he said.
In March, the county tallied 66 permits applications under the program at 66. That’s a number Michael O’Connell, the county’s assistant building inspection manager, is happy to report. O’Connell himself has made some green improvements to his home recently in the name of “long-term payback.”
“Green building incorporates a lot of factors,” he says. “Indoor air quality, for one … And as far as resource management, using recycled materials minimizes the amount of natural resources that need to be harvested. Then there’s energy efficiency, which is probably the paramount component.”
O’Connell said 30 jurisdictions in California have employed “some kind of mandatory green building program.” San Mateo County was one of the first 20.
The program will continue to evolve with technological improvements and state energy code updates. The county Planning Department reviews the program criteria every two years and has a new checklist coming out in August, O’Connell said.
At a board meeting in April, the Board of Supervisors voted to expand the program to incorporate residential and commercial remodeling and addition projects – not just new construction work.
“I think it’ll be something you’ll see on virtually every house that’s built from here on out, to some extent,” said Kevin Farrell, an architect with Farrell, Faber & Associates who helped design 5 Avenue Alhambra. “Whether it comes from the individual’s desire or the county directing it, it’s definitely something that’s not going away and is going to be on the rise.”
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