From South Dakota Avenue, it is hard to miss the banners announcing two new green homes in the neighborhood, located at 5516 and 5520 4th Street NE.  We got in touch with the developer, Tanya Topolewski of True Turtle, who was kind enough to answer a few questions for us.

Photos courtesy True Turtle

Photos courtesy True Turtle

Photos courtesy True Turtle

Photos courtesy of True Turtle

1. Can you tell our readers a little about your development company and what makes it unique?

True Turtle is a sustainable real estate developer. We build exclusively high performance “green” homes. To True Turtle, a sustainable home is a higher quality home designed and built to provide better air quality, better ventilation, and ultra high energy and water efficiency. Our homes use low environmental impact materials and have landscapes that bring back birds and bees. In summary, we provide a “green done for you” home that is more comfortable and healthier to live in while being less costly to operate and maintain.

Our offices are located in Ward 4 (Takoma DC) and we have done multiple highly sustainable LEED Platinum gut renovations in Petworth.

2. What made you choose Riggs Park for your first new construction project?

It was a combination of factors. As a developer, I was familiar with the area as I look at a lot of property. I knew it to be full of solid mostly smaller attached homes in stable neighborhoods. These are things that are attractive to buyers. At the time, the South Dakota/Riggs intersection was under reconstruction and the JBG development was only just beginning. However, knowing more development was on its way was compelling to my choosing to develop here. Of course, the proximity of the property to the Metro was crucial. Putting these factors together, it looked to me like Riggs Park was going to finally start to turn the corner from being off the beaten path to becoming a new “place”.

I did not do an extensive amount of research before I made my decision. Had I done so, I would have uncovered a lot of background information on Art Place, and Ft. Totten Square Phase II (which is potentially going to be built directly behind my properties). Now that I know of these developments, I’m very excited for the residents of Riggs Park. I think the addition of walkable retail and real public civic places will be another milestone in bringing newcomers together with long standing residents. Many times people think of development in negative terms, in my opinion, I think that for Riggs Park it will be transformative in a very good way.

3. Can you tell us a bit about the homes? What particular features make these homes sustainable? Did you incorporate features like reclaimed wood, solar panels, recycled products?

For True Turtle, a sustainable or “green” house means high quality construction creating a healthier, more comfortable home. I’ve highlighted a few specific features of the homes below. However, I think it’s important to note that many of the ‘features’ of our homes are now hidden behind drywall. Fortunately, through the LEED process everything behind the drywall has been inspected, tested and/or verified by an independent 3^rd party. This additional level of quality control is the value of having a green building certification such as LEED.

Some highlights:

Exceptional air quality…special HVAC equipment (an ERV) delivers fresh air throughout the home 24/7. This air is highly filtered through MERV11 filters that remove up to 100% of particulates depending upon size. Our mechanical equipment is tested by third party inspectors to ensure that things like bath fans and kitchen exhausts actually work to remove excess moisture, not just make noise.

 Exceptionally energy efficient…our super insulated skin provides up to twice the amount of insulation required by code. 5516 and 5520 4^th St have R78 roofs (R38 is required) and fully insulated basement walls and floors (no sub slab insulation is required by code at all). Needless to say, these homes are easy to heat and cool, with minimal hot and cold areas, even with the large windows!

Virtually draft free…our homes are designed and built with a special air tight layer that wraps the home and focuses on air tight connections at doors and windows. A virtually draft free home is comfy and snug…no matter how cold or hot outside.

Highly water efficient…we’ve already installed low flow toilets, faucets and showerheads. Our clothes washer and dishwasher are the highest performing Energy Star models we can afford. This all adds up to lower water bills.

We use no or low toxicity finishes…We seek out and use special finishes for our paints, floor finishes and special wood finishes that have either no or low levels of harsh or toxic chemicals. This limits offgassing to protect your family’s health.

We use low environmental impact finishes…our palette of finishes include: Richlite countertops which are exceptionally durable compressed paper with a non-toxic binder, rapidly renewable pressed bamboo flooring and FSC bamboo backsplashes and kitchen details. All these products can be reused and/or recycled.

Provide habitat for birds, bees and butterflies…our landscape is exclusively native plants that will provide drought tolerant exterior beauty for native flora and fauna.

Near net zero energy if solar panels are installed…no, there are no solar panels on the home. Why? Because we as a developer do not qualify for many of the incentives that homeowners do and they do not fit into our budget. We’ve made it easy to install them however, we’ve pre-installed conduit for them, pushed all roof penetrations to the edges to leave space for them and left space in the electrical panel. If solar is installed, these homes are modeled to be near net zero energy.

This is only a partial list of what we do to make our sustainable home higher quality, more comfortable homes to live in. Our website (www.trueturtle.com) has many more details about this project and our past projects.

4. When will you know what level of LEED certification you have achieved for the homes?

LEED Platinum is the highest level of LEED certification attainable. 5516 and 5520 4th St. are on track to achieve LEED Platinum. All of our projects have been LEED Platinum (or higher). We have never missed achieving Platinum and I don’t forsee any problems arising with 4^th St. either.

If you are wondering what “higher than LEED Platinum” is, we built DC’s first gut rehab net zero energy home in Petworth. Net zero meaning that the home produced as much energy as it captures from the solar PV system. This is a goal we have for all of our homes, but the cost of solar is prohibitive as we do not qualify for many of the incentives. Irrespective, for any home we build, if solar is added they are usually what is called “near net zero”…which is pretty darn good.

5. What were some of the challenges of building these sustainable homes from the ground up as compared to the renovation projects you have done in the past? Did you learn anything new about sustainability doing this project?

You get the technical answer to this question…so hold on for some geek!

Since we typically do gut renovations. Building new construction meant we had to use a new type of building envelope. Meaning we built different kinds of exterior walls, roofs and floors than we normally do. We ended up with continuous, connected, super insulated walls, roofs and subslab insulation. This is technically challenging to do and something we cannot do on our gut renovations. It was a change for us and we learned a lot doing it.

Of course, the largest challenge had nothing to do with sustainability…it had to do with building on a large slope! Once we found the right contractor to deal with the site work, things went swimmingly.

6. Are more new construction projects in your future?

Of course! Our next project will be a ground up four unit building in Edgewood/Brookland. In addition to LEED Platinum, it is planned to be built to the Passive House standard. Passive House is a green building standard whose main focus is energy use. A Passive House uses just 10% of the energy of a code built home. They are so energy efficient that people joke they can be heated with a hair dryer…and depending on the climate that’s actually true!

7. How can people find out more about the homes?

OUR NEW WEBSITE: www.trueturtle.com

We have a brand new website that we’ve just brought on line (full disclosure: it’s not 100% done). It includes large amounts of information about how we build our homes sustainably, how sustainably built homes are higher quality homes, our past projects and a little about us.

OPEN HOUSES: We’re open about every other Sunday…people are welcome to just drop in. We love neighbors!

LISTINGS: Some people are interested in

http://www.mrishomes.com/homes-for-sale/5520-4TH-NE-WASHINGTON-DC-20011-138988483

SPECIAL TOURS BY REQUEST We are often asked to give special tours of our homes to local green organizations and other interested groups. We’d be happy to give special tours while we still own them…because once they are sold, we can’t! People should just reach out and ask.