SARASOTA BAY - It's rare to find a homebuilding company that has shown continuous growth over the past five years, but that's what MyGreenBuildings has done despite a very challenging economy. Its clients, including the company's CEO, want homes that are beautiful, efficient and strong.
MyGreenBuildings CEO Steve Ellis guides his boat "Saylor" just off the northern end of Longboat Key, where he built a weekend getaway on nearby Jewfish Key. A boat is the only way to get there.
But it's not just any home. This one has just enough green elements to be rated platinum, the highest there is by the Florida Green Building Coalition, and it had to take advantage of the gorgeous island setting that surrounds it.
"You can be living inside, cooking and playing games, but still feel like you're outside and the breezes are rolling past you, you're connected to the outside world," says Ellis.
The four bedroom, four bath home is only 18 feet wide, but feels much bigger than its 1800 square feet, thanks to the expansive outdoor covered living areas. The green elements include soy based foam insulation in all the walls and ceilings. A heat pump type of water heater and a home filled with used and recycled furniture.
"Instead of buying beds from Pottery Barn or one of the big box stores, we actually went to local architectural salvage and found lumber and wood that had a story behind it," says Ellis.
Like the bed in the master bedroom. It features a head board and frame made from decorated timbers from the old Ringling Towers Hotel. The wood used to build another bed frame comes from an old building in Ybor City and uses an old door as its head board. Many of the chairs that surround the eating areas came from a local restaurant that went out of business and the closet doors and shower curtains are made from old sail cloth. Recycling and reusing local materials, one of the basic elements to living green.
"It's about building a stronger home that costs less to maintain over time which is very important to most folks building a home these days, that costs less to operate, that uses less resources."
Ellis and his family invite friends over often and he says the home can comfortably sleep up to 20 people. He says it was built with a budget without solar panels and other high tech green elements and it still performs at very high levels of efficiency.
For more information on Ellis' company, MyGreenBuildings, visit
www.mygreenbuildings.com/.
