Barbara Bannon Harwood, known to friends as Pia, is the beautiful scion of a brilliant family. Her father was a professor of Chemistry and Physics in Nebraska. Her grandfather was a County Commissioner; her father a City Councilman and mayor. I can imagine her growing up in that down to earth, big sky country, out in nature enough to form questions about its substance and its cycles, and having a father who could explain the natural phenomena she encountered. At the same time, she got to witness her grandfather and father live out their own can-do attitudes. She also had an allergy to many things, including formaldehyde. All these facts would figure large in her future.
Having had curiosity encouraged, she became a journalist and honed her ability to ask questions while working for the Chicago Sun Times. It was during her time there that she and her children took food one winter day to a poor urban family. They found a hungry elderly couple living in a cold, drafty apartment, freezing wind whistling through its leaky windows. Harwood and her family brought back plastic to cover windows, a small heater, and used carpet to warm the floors. She left there with a spiritual epiphany, wondering how she could help to create better housing for the poor.
The universe always answers our questions, and shortly, as part of a work assignment, she was sent to do a story on a small passive-solar house in southern Illinois. The occupants had the same income as those of the family she had helped earlier in Chicago, but these people had enough to eat, and their home was warm and comfortable, tucked into a south-facing hill and fronted with glass to capture the sun's heat. The southern Illinois couple needed only $30 per winter to heat their house, burning half a cord of wood in an iron stove. The Chicago couple was spending $500 every month, their entire Social Security check, to pay rent and fossil-fuel based power heating.
The advantages of passive solar design were instantly apparent, and she began to lobby to use passive solar concepts and energy efficient construction in designs for low-income housing, demonstrating their cost effectiveness. At that time, in 1980, there was very little literature on the subject of low-income housing and energy-efficiency or passive solar heating. Through her research and active lobbying efforts, she literally changed perceptions of what could be done with low-cost housing. She began with Owens-Corning, manufacturer of fiberglass insulation products, pointing out to them that they could sell more insulation if they advertised how much fuel the increased levels of insulation would save. They took the bait, creating the EPDS, or Energy Performance Design System, now called the Pink Panther Program. She gave her first public speech on low-income housing and energy issues in 1989 on the podium at a housing conference with the venerable Senator Alan Cranston. At that time the government was spending five billion dollars a year to cool and heat public housing. She said that was a ridiculous waste of money, and suggested they start improving the energy efficiency of the buildings to reduce the bills.
Having researched the fields of passive solar architecture and energy efficient building materials, in 1984, Harwood started her own low-income housing construction company, BBH Enterprises, in Dallas, Texas where she put in a small subdivision. Until the sale of that company, and the subsequently created Enviro Custom 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. Harwood became best-known for building low-income energy-efficient housing, but it was primarily 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.
