Creating a High-End, Low-Impact Bathroom

When San Francisco real estate broker Chris Bartle and his wife, Erin Glassman, decided to expand a split single bathroom in their Panhandle-area home to 1½ baths, they wanted to live up to the principles of Bartle’s Green Key Real Estate brokerage. To handle the costs while meeting their quality, environmental and health goals, they’re completing the project in phases and doing some of the work themselves, with help from a friend who’s a licensed general contractor. Their advice, after completing framing and plumbing and deciding on finishes: be patient and persistent, and make the best use of the resources available to you. Here’s what they’ve learned in the first phase.


Design: High Efficiency, Low Impact
We left existing structural walls in place, and removed or replaced other walls. We’ve installed an electric tankless water heater for the tub/shower to minimize energy usage, and dual-flush toilets and low-flow faucets to reduce water usage. We’ve also replaced old single-pane windows with two double-pane windows, and we’re putting in new ventilation fans.

We decided against using any PVC piping and went with copper for both the supply line and the drain. Our plumber was surprised that we wanted to use copper for the drain, too. “Why do you care what you put down the drain?” he asked. The answer: because it ultimately comes back into the supply line. He warned us it would cost a lot more to use copper, but when he priced it, it turned out to add only $30 per drain.

The only aesthetic concern we had was choosing finishes that were pleasing to us but not too far off the mainstream, so they would appeal to a broad range of buyers in the future. 

Materials Selection: Knowledge Is the Challenge
It was very hard to find green materials. We started this project before GreenHomeGuide was launched, so there was no central directory of green materials and few experts who could advise us. When we went to a tile showroom that sold eco-friendly tile, the staff had no idea what we were talking about. They had the materials but didn’t know what the benefits were or if there were any special installation or maintenance requirements. 

We ran into the same problem when we bought our framing lumber at Home Depot. I asked the salesman whether the lumber was FSC certified and he said “Oh yeah, it is.” He said it so confidently that I just believed him. But when we got it home and asked a friend we found out it wasn’t. It didn’t have the FSC stamp and the price was too low. We ended up using non-FSC-certified framing lumber because of price and availability.

Erin and I both love the Bonded Logic insulation for its sound as well as thermal insulation. We installed it ourselves. Compared with fiberglass, it’s wonderful—you don’t need masks or gloves. It’s expensive—about three times the fiberglass cost, but we didn’t need much of it. It cost about $500 to insulate the walls, floor and ceiling of the 200–square-foot room.

Now that we’ve got the walls and plumbing in place, we’ll tackle finishes in the next phase.  To help suggest finishes, we hired a green architect. We’re going to use recycled glass tiles from Oceanside Glasstile for the walls and a recycled concrete and glass countertop from IceStone. The vanity was built by Woodshanti from reclaimed walnut and cherry.

Construction: Learning on the Job
So far there’ve been no real learning curves. The tile will be a little new, and the countertop too, but we’re not worried about it. Plumbing and wiring the electric tankless water heater was a first for our contractor, but it was very straightforward.

My advice to others is to look for a green contractor, but depending on the project, don’t be afraid to have a nongreen but otherwise good contractor learn about new materials and processes on your job. It worked for us.

Results
We’re not done yet, but I can say the most satisfying moment of this project so far was finally finding and agreeing on the finishes! The most surprising was how expensive good tile is—green or not.

Resources
We found good ideas in books, including Jennifer Roberts’s Good Green Homes and David Johnston’s Green Remodeling. I’m a subscriber to Natural Home magazine and read it religiously.