Kelly-Woodford House

Kelly-Woodford House

When Tom Kelly and Barbara Woodford set out to build a mountain home for their family in Parkdale, Ore., their goal was to construct an environmentally sustainable building that maximized energy-efficiency without sacrificing architectural interest, beauty and livability. One of the easy decisions, Kelly and his architect agree, was choosing windows and doors from Integrity® from Marvin Windows and Doors.

Since the 1970s, the design/build firm¬ Neil Kelly Company, founded in 1947 by Tom’s father, has led the way in implementing energy-efficient features. Over the years, the firm became one of Oregon’s leading building and remodeling firms. Now the president of Neil Kelly, Tom Kelly has continued the green tradition by making energy efficiency, sustainability and green building materials and techniques a key strength of the firm.

Kelly and Woodford decided to construct their own house as a showpiece of green design — to build a “lab” home that would demonstrate the possibilities, prove their effectiveness, and try newer techniques and materials that a builder might not routinely recommend to a client. Working with LEED-accredited architect Liz Olberding, the Kelly-Woodford family envisioned a comfortable, durable, modern house that would take advantage of the stunning views at their 2,250-foot elevation site, while maximizing energy efficiency and sustainable use of materials.

A bank of Integrity casement and awning windows along the south living room wall provides a magnificent view of Mount Hood as well as a passive solar heat source. Integrity windows and doors use Low E II glass with Argon that works with the seasons to keep the home comfortable, allowing the warming rays of the sun in during the colder months and deflecting them in the summer. When awning windows on the west wall and the high clerestory windows in the north wall are opened, a steady flow of air passes through the house to draw cooler air in and push warmer air out.

Kelly and Olberding knew the maximum square footage of glass they could use in the home and still meet its energy efficiency requirements, and they knew the glass needed to have a certain U-value. Integrity’s Wood-Ultrex windows, with an low U-value of .32, more than made the grade. The aesthetic value of the Wood-Ultrex option was also extremely important. “Integrity Wood-Ultrex windows were really an easy selection for us,” says Olberding. “We wanted the wood details to warm things up visually, and we knew Integrity was going to perform.”

Integrity’s Ultrex® pultruded fiberglass material was a strong selling point. Integrity pioneered the use of pultruded fiberglass in windows and doors, creating an attractive, low-maintenance and highly durable line of products. Ultrex is twice as strong as steel and eight times stronger than vinyl, outlasting and outperforming virtually all other window or door materials. These characteristics help Integrity products stay square and true, while a patented finishing process makes Ultrex highly resistant to scratching, fading and corrosion. All Integrity windows and doors are backed by a dependable warranty that is transferable from owner to owner.

Ultrex is a more environmentally friendly material than vinyl, containing no volatile compounds and manufactured not from petroleum and other hydrocarbon-based materials, but from an essentially inexhaustible supply of glass, or in its most basic form, silica sand. Ultrex is made from 10 percent recycled materials, and has about 80 percent less embodied energy than aluminum and 39 percent less than vinyl. Integrity Windows and Doors is also a leader in implementing greener production processes.

For all of these reasons, Integrity was the clear choice for Kelly and Woodford as they designed and built their vacation home to meet the highest benchmarks of environmentally sustainable, energy-efficient construction.

On July 24, 2006, the U.S. Green Building Council announced that the just-completed Kelly-Woodford home had been granted LEED-H Silver certification — the first LEED-certified residence on the west coast, and only the fourth in the nation. Now, more than a year later, the natural landscaping has had time to get established, and the homeowners have had time to settle in as well. Tom Kelly’s dreams for this house have come to pass: it is comfortable and beautiful, and it is a shining showcase for the possibilities of environmentally sustainable home design and construction.

And, says Kelly, “I just love the windows.”