Some houses are green because they have geothermal heating and cooling, low-e windows or are made of recycled materials. Jim McFerrin’s West Meade home is green for another reason — its shape.
In a neighborhood filled with traditional colonials and ranch houses, McFerrin’s house at 6612 Chatsworth Place is a geodesic dome.
The home uses less energy for heating and cooling than a traditional house. It also required less building materials than an ordinary house with three bedrooms, two full baths and 3,100 square feet of living space, said McFerrin, a Nashville psychiatrist who has lived there since 2003. He now is downsizing and selling the house.
“My gas and electric bills are a third to a half less than I expected,” he said.
Bill Bank, a Nashville businessman who had the house built from a kit in 1984 and lived there for 16 years, said the shape of the dome makes the home extremely efficient. The house was built from 60 pre-assembled triangular wall and roof sections that were trucked to West Meade and constructed on site, creating a structure with almost no right angles and a vast amount of interior space.
“The idea behind the dome is that it’s stronger construction than a conventional house. And for the same amount of square feet, it uses 12 percent less building material and has less exposed surface. There’s less heat lost and absorbed, so it’s energy efficient,” he said.
Emphasis put on how inside looks
The house looks unusual from the outside — think of a basketball cut in half and rising from a wooded hillside — but the geodesic design creates soaring ceilings and an unobstructed interior, Bank said.
“The aesthetics are totally from the inside out,” Bank said. “In Nashville, home construction is governed by how it looks from the street. I wanted to live in a house with visual appeal from the inside, not the outside.”
Bank obtained a zoning variance before building the house and said none of the homeowners who lived in the neighborhood at the time complained about the unusual design. One neighbor did object to his decision not to cut down any trees to create a lawn.
“He was upset I didn’t have a lawn I had to mow every week,” Bank said.
More than 25 years later, those trees have matured and make the house almost invisible from the street. The trees work with the design of the house, which is built so the main living area is on the second level, to give the impression of living in a treehouse, McFerrin said.
There is even a tree growing through the floor of the deck that wraps around the side of the house.
“It looks like something out in the country, a lodge,” McFerrin said. “Anyone who loves nature will love to be here.”
With its open floor plan, the house is perfect for entertaining, he said. The central living area is essentially one large room with high ceilings that follow the curve of the domed roof. Two private 16-by-12-foot bedrooms are on the main floor.
A flight of steps from the main floor leads to the master bedroom, situated in a loft overlooking the living room. The absence of walls in the loft is not an issue for McFerrin — who is single, as was Bank when he lived there — but could limit the home’s appeal to families with children.
“It’s a specialized house,” said Charlotte Witzenburg, broker for the Lipman Group Sotheby’s International Realty, who is marketing the house for McFerrin. It’s listed for $429,900.
The house cost $182,000 to build in 1984, and McFerrin has updated the house with hardwood, new carpet and more.
With its two-car garage, private lot of nearly a full acre, wet bar and wood-burning fireplace — not to mention its geodesic design — the home has a lot to offer the right buyer, Witzenburg said. “People think Nashville has colonials and ranches and McMansions,” she said. “They need to know we have things like this.”
As he downsizes, McFerrin is moving from one unusual design to another. His next home, on land west of Nashville, will be an A-frame.