2012 Spring Real Family: Building for the Heart and for the Family
Category: Newsroom » Parade of HomesSM » Parade Featured Stories - February 14, 2012
Don and Barbara Shelby’s new home is not quite what you’d expect from a local celebrity. Unless you’ve followed Don’s career since he retired from the anchor chair at WCCO TV. Today, he’s writing and producing work that speaks to his personal passion about the environment. This home is the embodiment of that passion.
“I’m conservative in the sense that I think waste of any kind is wrong,” explains Don, who applies that ethic to the way he lives life, and now, to the way his home was designed and built.
“Most homes can lose as much as 45 percent of the energy used to heat and cool them. Why waste that?” he insists. “On the other side, if the over-use of that [fossil] fuel is causing damage to the planet, then I don’t want to be a part of that either.”
Those two ethics intersect for Don in this home, which was designed and built to conserve energy and resources during construction as well as every day they live there. You can read more about the home, designed and constructed by the Landschute Group, on page 27.
Environmentalism isn’t just a philosophy for Don, it’s a personal conviction stemming from his deep belief in family and his love and concern for the Inuit people and their culture. He personifies the Native American admonition to live sustainably and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future.
Don’s waste-not education began quite early. “My dad and mom were both conservative,” and their garage was the proof. “It was filled with coffee cans full of nails and screws. We never had to go to the hardware store because my dad thought, why waste a perfectly good [used] one. I spent hours of my life just organizing all those screws by size.”
Don’s parents wanted to make sure he had a good career too, and that didn’t mean television. “My dad made me apprentice to a carpenter for four years and become journeyman carpenter when I was in college.”
Those early experiences have informed Don’s life ever since, contributing to his success as a journalist and to the legacy he is leaving to his three daughters as well as Beatrice and his other two grandchildren, Hudson and Josephine. This house is a part of that legacy.
The Inukshuk
Prominent in Don and Barbara’s front yard is an interesting and imposing granite figure, an Inukshuk. “The classic figure of the north tundra is the inukshuk,” Don explains. “It is a sort of human-form cairn made out of found stone by the Inuit people of the far north. Inukshuks are built on the horizon and the caribou herds think they’re human. By placing the Inukshuk closer and closer together, the Inuit are able to herd the caribou.
The arctic is a place Don loves and visits often. “I like the cold, and have a fascination with polar exploration,” he says. He’s been on expeditions with Will Steger, Ann Bancroft, Paul Shurke and Sir Richard Branson. But what really made an impact on Don was getting to know the native Inuit people.
“The temperature is rising twice as fast in the arctic as it is globally. It’s causing the sea ice to melt,” says Don, who has seen the evidence first hand. “The lives of the Inuit people are changing, so much so that their culture may soon disappear.
“The Inukshuk will sit in front of the house because it will represent to me those people we should be keeping in mind. We should understand that the effects of our behavior can harm them.”
Triple Certification
We’re really thrilled to feature Don Shelby’s new home in our spring Parade of Homes. Sure, we like that fact that you all know Don and he’s an incredibly interesting guy. But more than that, we love being able to show you his beautiful and extremely green home that will have certification in three different green build programs.
Minnesota’s Green Path: You can read a lot more about this new green certification program throughout our Guidebook, and Don’s home has earned its highest level — Master Certification. All MN Green Path homes receive a Home Performance Report (HPR), a “window sticker” which details the home’s HERS (Home Energy Rating Score) rating, all its green features, like Don’s geothermal heat and LED lighting, which saves 90 percent over conventional lighting. The HPR also graphically details the home’s position along the Green Path (from basic code to totally green). Don’s HPR is pretty amazing, with an incredible HERS of 18.
LEED for Homes Platinum: This leading international holistic green program is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, and designed to promote building sustainability. LEED certification is a rigorous program that requires meeting a high standards in the five green categories: sustainable sites water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. Don’s home is at the highest level, Platinum.
Minnesota GreenStar: Like LEED, Minnesota GreenStar is a rigorous, holistic program, and has been designed for the upper midwest’s temperature and humidity extremes. Don’s home will be certified at its highest level as well. And while Don is an emeritus director to the GreenStar board, his home earned this certification all by itself.