New home, tried and true ideas
Story and photos by Nancy J. Parisi
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Linda Shed Priebe’s East Aurora home.
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Restoration Works, Inc., was founded in 1976 by Priebe and husband Henry Priebe while they resided in what is commonly believed to be Buffalo’s oldest home, the Coit House on Virginia Street. Linda became interested in preserving the home and dealing in architectural artifacts sold out of a shed on the property. Restoration Works later moved to Main Street, and still does limited business by appointment.
The location for Priebe’s new home was a natural choice, but her decision to build in an uncommon, self-sustaining manner necessitated years of research into alternative energy sources and construction options. “I just love this area and decided that I loved it so much that I’d like to build a small house here. Building began in 2005 and it was completed in 2006,” she explains, pointing out a few minor projects that await completion. But what home, historic or cutting-edge, doesn’t have a few unfinished items on the docket?
Priebe settled on a Canadian company that specializes in preengineered residences, also referred to as “kit houses” in the building industry. Viceroy Homes, headquartered in Toronto, has been creating floor plans and building realities since the fifties. Their website (www.viceroy.com) is entertaining to look at with dozens of dreamy exterior shots of homes with tony names and complete plans.
What Viceroy delivers on several trucks, Priebe states, is all that you need to create a house: roofing materials, windows, doors, lumber, and insulation. Everything to build a weather-proof, energy-efficient structure shows up—and then all general contracting and finishing work is up to the homebuilders and their hired subcontractors.
Any Viceroy home may be customized, so Priebe altered her home’s original plans in favor of greener options like argon-filled windows with higher insulating properties and a few other upgrades. She installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, something Buffalonians heard much about with the renovation of the city church purchased and renovated by Ani DiFranco.
“The first thing I did on the project was my heating system. I have eight wells thirty feet deep in my backyard within a twelve-foot circumference. Later, uninterrupted copper tubing was run from the wells into the house. The copper tubing is filled with glycol that picks up the earth’s temperature—55 to 56 degrees almost anywhere on earth—and brings it into the house at that temperature. Geothermal heating can also be laid out horizontally below the frost line … I had to put mine in vertically.”
When asked if the decision to go green was difficult, or if finding someone to install the geothermal system took time, Priebe answers, “No, I knew what I needed; I just had to find the right people to do it. I found a plumbing contractor who had the right connection to do it … Everything that I needed actually came at the right moment.
“In these valleys out here there is an information system bar none. I have never seen anything like it; if you know one of the local people who knows everyone they make recommendations, like for a well digger.” She also goes on to say that she found her countryside neighbors to be more accepting of her alternative plans, contrary to those in the city, who could be dissuasive.
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What about the hotter months? “In the summer the sun is higher in the sky and the large eaves on the house protect the windows from the sun,” Priebe says. She reiterates that the temperature of the material that has flowed through the wells and back into her home is approximately fifty-five degrees: a comfortable temperature for summer.
Looking ahead to more self-sustainability, Priebe contemplates augmenting her existent system with solar panels or wind power. She is presently deciding whether to add a greenhouse or barn to her property, thinking ahead to growing some of her own food and raising heirloom varieties.
“There are two ways I think of all of this: one is that I love being self-sufficient, the other point is that I want to not draw too much from the earth’s resources. We’ve gotten away from being self-sufficient in this country and I’m a proponent of that. I can take care of my own sustenance and free up resources for those who might need them more. I do still have an electric line and am connected to the grid—I have to be concerned about a power outage. So this next year I will put in a generator, powered by propane that I would use as a backup source of energy should the power go out in this area.”
She adds, “If I put in wind turbines I could create more than my own energy needs and sell some back to the grid. If you create energy with solar panels you can also sell back to the grid; you have two meters, and at the end of the year there’s an adjustment in billing.”
Priebe feels her choice is the most responsible way to build a new home in this day and age.
Nancy J. Parisi has been a journalist and photojournalist in Buffalo for two decades and in 2005 completed an MFA at Parsons School of Design. She is a proud urban pioneer and has lived in the city’s Old First Ward for fifteen years.
Green resources: Hobby Farms, Grit, and Mother Earth News. Priebe also mentions a fairly new community resource: U.B.’s Green Office and Green Library located on the South Campus at 220 Winspear Avenue—a clearinghouse and reading room of all things self-sustaining and earth-friendly.
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