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After first targeting the world’s toughest green-building certification for a house being constructed on Southeast Woodward Street in Portland, brothers Dustin and Garrett Moon have now decided the lessons they’ve learned, and hope to teach, are much more important than any certification.

In July 2008, with the help of family members, Dustin and Garrett set out on what they believed would be a yearlong process of deconstructing the old house and building a new one in its place. And as the project developed, it looked more and more likely that the home would qualify for Living Building certification.

The Living Building Challenge is a three-year-old worldwide certification program that challenges builders to construct structures that produce all of their own energy on-site. Projects are judged on site, energy usage, materials, water, indoor quality, beauty and inspiration, design process and leadership. After a project is completed, information is collected over a 12-month period.

According to Eden Brukman, vice president of International Living Building Institute, who follows the Moons’ project, Living Building certification is currently being sought for 70 projects in six countries. No project has been certified as a Living Building, but three projects – one each in British Columbia, Missouri and New York – are in the final stages.

The Moons’ house is now in its second year of construction, and Dustin believes they are at least a year away from completing the project. Dustin and Garrett believe the project is on track to achieve nearly all of the Living Building Challenge requirements.

“I think we’ll achieve all of the (areas), except the materials radius,” Dustin said. “A good example is copper wire; you just can’t find a local company that makes copper wire.”

There are steps the brothers could take to write manufacturers and request their product have a local level of manufacturing, but Garrett said such a level of due diligence could increase the project timeline to approximately six years.
“We are still very much in the spirit of the Living Building Challenge,” Dustin said.

Dustin said the project suffered when they tried early on to build to Living Building Challenge standards.

“We should’ve just used the right materials from the beginning, and not worried about the radius,” Dustin said. “Eventually we just decided we were going to build it right.”

The house has become a learning process not just for the brothers, but for the entire world. The project has its own website, , with videos and blog posts about specific areas of the home’s design as well as a diagram of house with materials listed.

Dustin and Garrett have named the 2,600-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house “The Commons,” and plan to live in it, along with their partners and parents. But they also plan to share their plans, lessons and knowledge with anyone who wants it.

“We’re trying to keep track of everything we do, and we’re going to release the plans as open source to try and educate and inspire people,” Garrett said.

One major lesson the brothers are hoping to share is about on-site treatment of gray water. They hope to have all of the home’s gray water flow into a surge tank. From there the water will go through a slow-sand-filtration system, which the World Health Organization recognizes for treating surface water to become drinking water.

The water will be pumped from the filtration system up to the second floor into a room that acts as a greenhouse. The water will be filtered through the plants and then pumped up to the roof and filtered through a 10-foot-by-10-foot green space on the roof. At that point, any remaining water will flow into the 9,000-gallon cistern that collects rainwater. The home already has compostable toilets, which do not require water.

The rainwater will be the home’s primary drinking water, which uses UV filtrations, but adding gray water to the drinking water is not something that meets health codes in Oregon.

“We‘d like to be the test case to prove it can be done,” Dustin said. “We’d like the house to be net zero on water.”

All steps necessary to achieve a net-zero energy rating are being used for The Commons, which will feature a heat recovery ventilator, solar panels and solar hot water. The exterior of the house is covered in seven inches of polyiso insulation, which is then covered by a rain screen. The sides of the house facing west and south will be covered in deciduous vines to create an air barrier and shade.

“We’re very Passive House influenced,” Dustin said.

The home was constructed with steel studs, and all wood in the home is either Forest Stewardship Council certified lumber or reclaimed wood. The home’s windows, which will be installed in August, are designed to trap infrared heat in the home. Large wood blinds on the home’s exterior will block out the sun when necessary.

Because the home sits within 500 feet of a bus line, the brothers were able to remove the home’s driveway and turn the cement into steps that lead into a metal workshop and art studio built behind the house. The family’s garden is built on top of the shop, which is built partly into the ground, and is one the property’s four green roofs.

The house has seen a slew of visitors, including Discovery Channel personnel, Mayor Sam Adams and some of the area’s top builders and architects.

“There has been a lot of positive reaction,” Dustin said.