In The News
Lake Michigan Shore - April 2008
Eco-Built - A Geothermal Family Home in Holland
Martha and Urs Waldvogel have just moved from Switzerland, Urs' native country. Into the nearly 5,800-square-foot home they built on the northern edge of Lake Macatawa, in Holland, Michigan. Urs had long yearned to live on a lake. "That was always my dream," he says. They considered building on Lake Tahoe, in California, but chose, finally, to settle closer to Martha's family in the Midwest. They looked long and hard before choosing the Holland property. The next step was to find a builder.
They were concerned. "When I saw the way they built here, with thin walls, almost no insulation, and cheap windows, I said, 'I don't want to build a house like that,'" Urs recalls. They even discussed bringing builders over from Switzerland. And there were the environmental issues. "Americans instigated the environmentally friendly movement in the seventies," Martha says. "Europeans have, however, taken the absolute lead in furthering the technology. We found, in observing and researching the homes, that not much more effort has been made to make homes better insulated and more energy efficient. I said to Urs, 'If you want to build a home, it's got to be green.'" And it had to be a builder who could produce quality work that was easy on the environment. Martha let her fingers do the walking ? on her computer keyboard, of course - and hit upon a firm called Cottage Home. "We kind of lucked out," she says. "We looked at some of the homes they built. They were solid. It wasn't your typical [drafty home]."
