Volume 10 - Issue 1, February 15, 2008 - Lake Chapala Review

February 2008 Lake Chapala Review
Page 57
Homes in 2002, she created more than 500 units of
new construction and rehabs that employ passive solar,
maximum cost-effective energy efficiency, and healthy
building principles. It was her innovative custom homes
that won awards for her. She won the Energy Value in
Housing Award given by the US Dept. of Energy every year
from the time of its founding in 1996 until 2002 when she
sold the company.
She likes to say her hobby is amateur experimental
physics, and doing her own experiments, she developed
new principles for healthy buildings that eventually resulted
in her best-selling book “The Healing House ,How Living
in the Right House Can Heal You Spiritually, Emotionally,
and Physically.” Her own allergy to formaldehyde had
forced her to think about the implications of tight
houses and indoor air quality, particularly the materials
placed in buildings that outgas chemicals. Eventually,
she became known as the “Lady House Doctor,” often
called to assist very sick people in improving their indoor
air quality. Considered the expert in her field, she has
lectured at conferences around the world, including
keynoting the International Solar Energy Conference in
Adelaide Australia in 2001 and at multiple universities,
including Oxford, and the University of Colorado’s School
of Architecture.
She and her husband, Donald Aitken, architect and
nuclear physicist bought a house at Lakeside. Built in
classic hacienda style U form, with the western leg
longer than the eastern, it has plenty of window walls
situated to catch the sun on the south, and solid walls
on the west to protect from the hottest sun. Their small,
newly constructed passive solar, naturally ventilated
casita/oficina maintains a temperature of 72 degrees,
day and night with no auxiliary heating system, and
80% of household electricity is generated through solar
collectors. Their hot water comes from solar thermal
collectors. They have done all of this while still teaching at
the Frank Lloyd Write School of Architecture, speaking by
invitation to Mexican government officials at the highest
levels, and while each is writing a book.
A group of people calling themselves the Chapala
Green Group, a Yahoo! Group, has formed around them.
The first meeting, there were about ten people; the third
meeting, there were sixty. As in many groups at Lakeside,
there are people attending who have great expertise; all
have a commitment to making a difference in measurable
terms. Many are there to prepare themselves for the
coming hard times to come from global warming. Other
people frustrated with the slow pace of government to
respond to global warming, take note: you can make
a difference if you just have a little information. With
Barbara Bannon Harwood and husband here, it is going
to be an exciting time.