But what if you could go even further?

What if you could build a house that generated as much energy as it consumed, that captured and reused all of its own water, that provided as much value to wildlife as it did to its human inhabitants?

How would you do it?

Brandon Tauscher, Timothy Buckley and John Fazzolari decided to find out.

The three men last year hatched a plan to design and build a home that meets the greenest of green certification standards: The Living Building Challenge.

Overseen by the nonprofit Cascadia Region Green Building Council, the challenge calls on builders to meet 16 prerequisites under six broad categories of sustainability: site design; energy; materials; water; indoor environment; and beauty and inspiration.

This year, the house will take shape in Felida, part of a small subdivision of bungalow-style homes being constructed by Fazzolari Custom Homes.

About 60 building projects across the country are currently being designed or built to meet the Living Building Challenge, but the house northwest of Vancouver is believed to be the first in Washington and possibly the only single-family home anywhere devised to meet the challenge.

Meeting the challenge won’t be easy or cheap, and nobody will guarantee that it’s even possible.

“This is extreme green building,” Fazzolari said.

Tapping an ever-widening web of green-minded contractors and suppliers, Fazzolari said a few already have offered to provide materials at cost. In the end, though, Fazzolari knows a very expensive house will rise at the corner of Northwest 120th Street and 42nd Avenue.

To make it pencil out, he must find a buyer willing to pay top dollar for a house with a composting toilet.

In striving for the highest possible standards — and swallowing the higher costs, probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — promoters believe they’ll both raise the profile and improve green building techniques in Southwest Washington and beyond.

They’ve agreed to allow The Columbian to follow the process, beginning with groundbreaking as soon as this spring.

The dreamer

Brandon Tauscher gave up a career as a high school teacher in La Center to found the nonprofit organization Project Green Build.

A native of the Lewis County logging town of Morton, Tauscher built his own house in La Center using a “lighter shade” of green: Orienting the house to receive passive solar heating and lighting and siting its three levels on a relatively small footprint.

He wanted to do more.

When he learned about the Living Building Challenge, he spent months seeking out builders willing to undertake the project.

With the homebuilding industry cooling off in Clark County, Tauscher realized there were plenty of builders looking for an edge. Green sells, and Tauscher found builders and suppliers interested in getting in on the action.

Last fall, he found an especially receptive audience in Fazzolari, a Portland native who started his custom home-building business in 2003. The two men soon agreed that Fazzolari would set aside a 5,900-square-foot lot for the experiment in The Bungalows at Messner Estates, a 40-lot subdivision near Felida Community Park.

“We really didn’t designate a quote-unquote ‘leader,’” Tauscher said. “It really seems kind of like a new model that’s not very hierarchical.”

The architect

As a freshman studying architecture at Washington State University, Timothy Buckley vividly remembers a professor pointing out the amount of waste and pollution generated by a single building.

Compared to the natural forest it replaced, Buckley realized early on in his career he wanted to look for designs that would ease our footprint on the globe.

“We’re putting more and more people on the planet, and we need to be a lot more savvy about how we’re utilizing our resources,” he said.

He also recognizes that suburban living, in a single-family home miles away from the area’s urban center, is not the standard template envisioned by sustainability advocates. They tend to prefer homes with smaller footprints, where residents can walk or ride the bus to shop, work and play.

“Ninety-nine percent of the homes in America don’t meet that criteria,” Buckley said. “So maybe there’s more value in showing what 90 percent of the people are living in with a single-family home — and just how green that can be.”

He sees the Felida home as more than a green dream.

“We are really hoping for this to be a learning opportunity for everyone,” he said. “Homeowners, architects, builders.”

The builder

John Fazzolari realized early on that the Living Building Challenge would not be cheap.

But the Vancouver builder, with Tauscher and Buckley’s agreement, decided that it was necessary to serve as a pioneer for pushing ahead with green building techniques. The first personal computer cost many thousands of dollars, but the price has fallen as the technology improved. Today, the majority of American homes have a computer.

Fazzolari figures the same concept holds true in the home-building industry. Someone needs to take the first step.

“Twenty to thirty years down the road, this is going to be more mainstream,” he said.

Fazzolari figures it will cost at least $80,000 just to cover the roof in solar panels, not counting the untold costs of the other innovations he’ll have to put in place: Sustainably grown lumber; artwork that lifts the soul; vapor-free sealants for improved indoor air quality.

Fazzolari, whose two children suffered allergies he suspects to be related to indoor air quality, envisions the Felida house as a model for improved living. “The house is where people spend 12 to 14 hours a day,” he said. “Whatever we can do to make that house healthy, we want to do.”

At the same time, he faces some daunting market realities as the group weighs the pros and cons of various designs, materials and techniques.

Fazzolari figures building the house will cost more than $600,000, not counting the cost of the land.

With the burden of actually selling the home, Fazzolari said he feels an acute sense of responsibility to get the specifications right. The group will face hundreds of choices in the months ahead.

“At the end of the day, there’s one cook that’s going to make the decision ultimately,” he said. “And that’s what I’m going to have to do.”

Erik Robinson can be reached at 360-735-4551 or erik.robinson@columbian.com.