Property Spotlight - The Lifestream Cottage

Don’t miss one of Seattle’s most innovative new homes on the Green Home Tour in the Maple Leaf neighborhood. This amazing 3-story, 2 bedroom/2bath backyard cottage is going beyond green home standards to invite homeowners and builders to redefine what it means to live in a healthy home.

The Lifestream Cottage is designed to be a home that can evolve with technology and still provide healthy living and sleeping spaces to the humans who live inside them. This is done through three key measures that were the design goals of the project.

#1) Maximum energy efficiency, #2) Build a chemical-free house that does not off-gas and #3) Build a home free of electromagnetic pollution (EMF-Free), that minimizes radiation exposure from everyday electromagnetic waves that bounce around inside the home.

These concepts for building go beyond Built-Green checklists and come from the field of electro-biology and the new science of building biology.

The owner/designer of the cottage John Stream, of Lifestream Solutions is a building biologist and industrial designer. His project team included the builder and systems designer Michael Cleveland, architect Erin Lau, and co-designer/co-owner, and investor Dana Stream.

On the tour you will get to peak behind the walls of this cottage to see makes this house off the charts with energy efficiency. One of the coolest features you will see is how this cottage has an exterior and interior insulation system that includes 18 inches of insulation, separated by a 2 inch air gap used for channeling pipes and wires. When asked about the R-value, Mr. Stream calls the wall and roof system “R-Ridiculous.” since the R-value well exceeds the highest energy efficiency standards. This tight envelope requires an Energy Recovery Ventilator to help maximize efficiency and keep fresh air coming in while the ERV recycles heat back into the house.

How does one build a chemical-free house? Is it possible? The answer is yes! Stop in on Saturday from 11-5pm and find out how.

What is truly innovative about this cottage are the steps that the design team took to make ensure the sleeping area was well protected from any possibility electromagnetic radiation. Since 80% of healing in the body occurs when humans are asleep, and electromagnetic radiation disrupts that healing sleep, it is essential to keep the bedroom an EMF-free zone.

Measures to reduce energy fields in the home included reducing the amount of metal used in construction, using fiberglass rebar instead of metal in the foundation to help the earth’s magnetic field pass through the home and not become distorted, using steel shielded wires throughout the whole house with no overhead lighting or wires running at head level in the walls and finally in the bedroom removing wiring from the area around the bed while still providing electric sockets for lighting. Masterfully innovative! A must see on this tour!