As a young girl, Harriet Kazansky spent her time in the rural town of Wurtsboro at the bungalow colony her grandparents lived in. She remembers the stream her grandfather had on his property, and in a way, her small pond mimics it. In fact, the same pair of red chairs that sit beside her pond now are the same chairs that sat outside her grandparents’ stream 57 years ago.

“It felt like I was coming home,” Kazansky says about her move to Woodstock. “I always felt like I belonged in the country. I never liked the city. I was just never a city person.”

Originally from Staten Island, Kazansky decided to move up to the Hudson Valley in 2003 after her children were married. When looking for a house in the area she sought a home that was efficient and environmentally sound. “I didn’t want to feel like I was damaging the environment anymore,” Kazansky says.

In 2003, Kazansky bought her ultra-green home in Woodstock. “It was the [green] systems that made this house stand out,” Kazansky says. “I really wanted these systems. I’m thrilled with them.”

Kazansky, a retired psychotherapist, currently lives in an incredibly efficient house that combines a passive solar system and geothermal heating and cooling. Built in 1981 by original owner Joan Gundersen, the house is supported by a multitude of systems that leave it with one utility bill—electric.

Gundersen built the home to run independent of fossil fuels after the 1979 energy crisis. She hired Adirondack Alternate Energy to design blueprints and lay out the raw materials to build a passive solar home.

The post and beam house is constructed from Adirondack white pine, with all windows facing due south, directly in line with the sun’s rotation. The windows, in conjunction with the angle of the roof, allow sun in during the winter and will keep it out during the summer.

“It’s a silent system,” Gundersen says. “It’s a system that’s there and it’s just as nature has intended. It’s just an extension of that.”

In the center of the house is an air shaft, lined with local bricks Gundersen collected from Kingston beaches and garage sales, which connects to a 200-ton thermal mass composed of sand, gravel, and insulation that lies beneath the house. Together they function to keep the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. At the top of the air shaft are vents where fans draw air in, suck the air down, and push it through the thermal mass beneath the house. From the thermal mass are pipes connecting to floor vents throughout the house that circulate air.

After the passive solar home was built, Gundersen was able to get a rebate from Central Hudson Gas & Electric in order to afford the installation of a geothermal heating system in the mid-1980s. While the initial cost for the geothermal is more expensive than a conventional heating system, Gundersen says, “It pays for itself in the end. It has a long payback period, but you save on it.”

Geothermal heating works with a closed series of pipes filled with water looping underneath the ground. The pipes are extended to the geothermal furnace, which extracts the heat from the water to heat the house.

When Gundersen installed the geothermal system, she also added radiant tubing beneath the floors that circulates water from the geothermal, keeping the floors cozy throughout the winter. “No slippers here!” Kazansky says with pride.

Kazansky’s introduction to living with green systems has inspired an eco-conscious overhaul in her life. The house has made her more aware of the environment and has put her in touch with nature; she eats organic, non-processed foods, she refrains from pesticide use, and refuses to add any additional renovations unless they are ecofriendly. Within the next few years she plans to install solar panels to offset the small amount of electricity she uses now. In addition, she’ll also be adding an irrigation system for her gardens that captures rainwater and feeds it to the plants as needed.

Kazansky says she plans to live in her Woodstock home for the rest of her life. Not just because she loves her home, but because of the people who surround her.

“I like that they are responsible for what they do and say,” Kazansky says of her neighbors. “They feel responsibility, that they can’t just do and say anything. I like how proactive they are.”

Their sense of responsibility has influenced Kazansky. While she didn’t build her home green from the ground up, she inherited it that way, and Gundersen’s early vision for a green future has changed Kazansky’s perspective on the environment and how we live in it.

“I could never go back to living the other way,” Kazansky says about living in an oil or propane-fueled home. “If I moved to another house, I’d be putting in green systems from day one.”

Kazansky’s life in Woodstock lets her live cleaner, without guilt, and instead, with a sense of pride and contribution. Knowing people could create efficient and sustainable homes in the 1980s makes Kazansky confident that people “could do it much better” now when it comes to green building.

“We could all change the world,” Kazansky says. “It really starts with each one of us asking for green and not taking what isn’t.”