Joanne Ellis’ new clifftop home on Bainbridge Island shows green can also be gorgeous.”It’s pretty darn awesome,” Ellis says in describing her dream home with floor-to-ceiling windows that look east to Seattle. Yet its drama and Puget Sound location is only part of its allure. It’s also energy-efficient.
Courtesy of Coates Design
“The whole house is designed to passively cool and heat itself,” Ellis says. It’s oriented to capture sun and shade, and its concrete floors and concrete interior wall hold the heat.

On a 100-degree day last year, she says the house was comfortable without air conditioning. Ellis” home — chosen as “This Week’s Green House” — earned the top or platinum rating in June from the private U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program. Her architect Matthew Coates says it’s the first LEED-platinum house in Washington that’s not in Seattle. The 2,450 square-feet home, which has a separate 700 square-foot apartment, spared no expense on its green features, which include geothermal heating, two 1,500 gallon cisterns, a vegetated roof, a 4-kilowatt solar array and Loewen triple-pane wood windows. Read on