Nearly three years in the past, when George Kontaroudis and Meg Metzger, a Brooklyn couple, purchased an 800-square-foot home on the Greek island of Skopelos, there was excellent news and unhealthy information, and it wasn’t delicate.
Excellent news: The century-old home, which sat on the luxurious island the place the 2008 film “Mamma Mia” was filmed, was listed for a mere 41,000 euros (about $42,300).
Dangerous information: It had a mysterious boulder taking on a lot of the bottom ground, and an advert hoc sheet of plywood as a substitute of a entrance door. These inconveniences went far to elucidate why the property had languished in the marketplace for nearly a decade. (The couple in the end paid 36,000 euros — about $37,120.)
Excellent news: Mr. Kontaroudis, 44, who grew up in Athens, spent his childhood summers on Skopelos, and the property was a brief stroll from the place his mother and father nonetheless personal a house. The couple may give their kids, Thalia (now 6) and Artemis (now 2), the identical halcyon expertise as their father (minus the possibility to check out as extras in “Mamma Mia,” a possibility the 20-something Mr. Kontaroudis turned down with out remorse as a result of “I used to be too cool,” he recalled).
Dangerous information: The placement was on a lane that lacked vehicle entry. All renovation supplies must be hauled uphill by a motorized wheelbarrow or a donkey. The donkey’s day fee was greater than $200, so the couple opted for the wheelbarrow.
Excellent news: Mr. Kontaroudis is an architect who likes a problem. He not solely repaired the house’s evident flaws however in doing so created the primary licensed passive home on Skopelos, an energy-efficient constructing that stands as much as the Mediterranean’s more and more vicious local weather extremes.
First, after all, he had to determine the way to get in. Due to the hilly terrain, the principle entrance was on the second ground, and it was initially reached by an exterior staircase rising from the entrance yard subsequent door. This was not an inconvenience to the unique house owners of the adjoining properties, who had been sisters. However the present neighbor wished to disclaim the precise of solution to any future occupants. Earlier than the home was put in the marketplace, the vendor dutifully encased the prevailing stair in concrete in order that the doorway was not accessible and punched a rudimentary new door on the bottom ground.
After sketching a number of potentialities, Mr. Kontaroudis opted to maintain a ground-floor entrance instantly beneath the place the previous entrance door had been.
Then he handled the boulder.
“It wasn’t precisely a boulder,” Ms. Metzger, 40, who’s a ceramicist, clarified. 100 years in the past, when builders with their restricted hand instruments and transportation choices (see donkeys) discovered an enormous rock on a building website, they tended to not take away it however to encase it in concrete and let or not it’s. Turning a rock right into a concrete block allowed the encircling house for use extra effectively.
The couple had been resigned, like their predecessors, to cohabiting with the block and benefiting from their higher two flooring, which comprised lower than 500 sq. ft. Then they discovered throughout demolition that a big portion of the mass was friable sand, and all of it may go. The renovated residence has a first-floor visitor room, one and a half bogs and a third-floor main bed room, off which the ladies share an alcove.
The founding father of KWH structure, in Brooklyn, Mr. Kontaroudis is a specialist in passive home building, which seeks to supply optimum indoor air high quality and cozy temperatures. That is achieved, as he described it, by means of “good insulation, a leak-free constructing envelope, prime quality home windows and doorways and a constantly working mechanical air flow system.”
Mr. Kontaroudis organized for a bunch of builders from the mainland metropolis of Thessaloniki to attend a coaching course within the expertise. When it got here time to start building, he put them up on the island.
“We rented them a villa, and it was like ‘The Actual World,’” Ms. Metzger stated. “All people had a good time.”
Beneath the supervision of an area contractor and with detailed drawings and all the mandatory supplies, the crew accomplished the renovation in three and a half months at a value of about $206,000.
As with many passive homes, the improvements had been designed to be felt however not seen. The stucco that coats the partitions as a main barrier to air leaks is frequent in Greece. And although a second, thick stucco layer with bits of cork was an insulation novelty imported from Italy, its properties meant that the partitions may stay authentically crooked. (Insulation positioned inside the partitions, moderately than utilized to the floor, would have required the partitions to be straightened, dropping not solely allure but in addition a substantial quantity of house.)
The builders reclaimed no matter they might of the unique supplies, together with pine flooring and casework and any chestnut roof beams that weren’t devoured by bugs. The home additionally got here with a trove of furnishings and artifacts, a few of which the couple stored and supplemented with antiques from Athens, merchandise from Ikea and Ms. Metzger’s handmade pendant lamps, sconces and sinks.
Final summer time, the passive-house expertise was put to the take a look at when Greece endured a warmth wave that resulted within the deaths of a number of vacationers. The household managed with a single air-conditioner — “the smallest in the marketplace,” Mr. Kontaroudis stated.
A extra quantitative story, he added, will probably be informed by the sensors put in to measure power use and air high quality: “Inside a few years, we’ll have a knowledge set that demonstrates how this home has carried out.”
For now, he has instructed the schoolteacher who rents the home within the non-summer months to be at liberty to make any changes for his consolation.
As of mid-December, when the climate on Skopelos is usually chilly and wet, he added, the warmth had not been turned on.
