<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> WorldTribune.com: Mobile — Walking the eco talk: A tale of two houses

Walking the eco talk: A tale of two houses

Thursday, May 8, 2008 Free Headline Alerts

Washington, D.C. is not a place where great leaders go to get away from hot air, spin, and vicious political wars. As Davy Crockett told voters in Tennessee after being rebuffed in an election for Congress, "I'm going to Texas, and the rest of you can go to hell."

No, great leaders prefer to go back home to the front porch swing and their own brand of comfort food — places like Crawford, Texas and (for Al Gore) Nashville.

Last year, an e-mail started circulating which detailed the differences between the two houses and the "inconvenient truth" such facts represented for Gore. Snopes.com attempted to verify the account and came up with the following.

According to the Associated Press, the Gore's 10,000 square foot Belle Meade residence in Tennessee consumes electricity at a rate of about 12 times the average for a typical house in Nashville (191,000 kwh versus 15,600 kwh).

The Prairie Chapel Ranch ranch home owned by George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, was designed by Austin architect David Heymann, an associate dean for undergraduate programs at the University of Texas School of Architecture. The Chicago Tribune described the house as follows in a 2001 article:

The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude.

Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25 percent of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.

A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem. Other news articles published in 2001-02 provided expanded descriptions of the ranch house:

"By marketplace standards, the house is startlingly small," says David Heymann, the architect of the 4,000-square-foot home.

Constructed from a local limestone, the house has eight rooms in a long, narrow design to take advantage of views and breezes. A porch stretches across the back and both ends of the house, widening at one end into a covered patio off the living room.

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