Words by Jennifer Jory
Peninsula home builder David Edwards likes to go the extra mile. Lots of extra miles, in fact. He spent his last summer vacation cycling through Europe, logging 1,000 miles that included every mountain pass featured on the Tour de France. Next, he hiked the mountains in Chamonix, then rode his bike from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean with his son. With a love for monumental challenges, David’s decision to switch careers and start a green building company shouldn’t come as a surprise. “You only get one life and you don’t know how long you get,” he says. “Every day is a gift, as my mom said.”
David’s career pivot took shape after working in the biotech industry left him feeling unfulfilled. “As a counterpoint to graduate school and my post-doctorate, I began remodeling homes,” the biochemist recounts. “You can work and do research and have nothing to show for it after years. But good building, remodeling and working with your hands, is the exact opposite. Every day, you get to see what you’ve done and it’s super fulfilling.” When the biotech company he worked for went under and a colleague hired him to build a new house, David’s leap into building homes was complete.
David’s passion to use his expertise to transform the building industry comes from a deeply personal place. “I went to graduate school as a biochemist because my mom got cancer and died when I was 25,” he says. “I feel like every moment you have is limited. You can’t take anything for granted, and we have a responsibility to leave the world a better place.”
With a mission to make a difference, David founded Earth Bound Homes and began building green, energy-efficient houses using nontoxic building materials and sustainable strategies. David confesses that, having never worked for or hired a construction company when he started the business, he had a significant learning curve. “Our focus was always green building,” he points out. “But then we really started focusing on material health and indoor air quality … zero-energy houses. What we found is that when you focused on health, building efficiency came as a byproduct without added cost.”
Being a home builder with a background in biochemistry gives David a unique way of thinking about how to live more sustainably and healthily in our homes. “I want to make sure that whatever time I have on the planet, I use to try to help people,” he explains. Many Earth Bound Homes clients have sensitivity to common allergens, hay fever, asthma or emphysema. “They’re all dramatically helped by airtight houses and air filtration systems,” he says.
The Peninsula is where David has raised his three children with his wife Amy, and it’s where Earth Bound Homes has built a number of passive houses. The term refers to homes that use 90% less energy than typical houses and are highly efficient, as well as comfortable and ecologically sound.
A recent Palo Alto project taps into the company’s decades of experience in green and healthy building. “This house is much more quiet, comfortable, durable and energy-efficient,” David says. “It also has better indoor air quality than most custom homes built these days.” To achieve that, David’s team installed straw panel walls, cork insulation and plaster wall coverings.
“This home will be so quiet and comfortable, you can sit next to the enormous windows on the coldest days and feel fine,” David says. The house uses almost no toxic chemicals in any of its building materials and is nearly airtight. It has a fresh air system that features heavily filtered air to keep the home healthy even on the worst wildfire smoke days. “It’s like being outside on that perfect spring day when the air is fresh, clean and the temperature is just right,” David describes. Even the concrete used by the construction team was produced with 60 percent less energy, by using waste products from coal-fired power plants and steel smelting factories.
In San Mateo, Earth Bound’s project, dubbed the Asymmetrical House, highlights the importance of a home’s crawl space as a foundation for wellness. Unlike many houses around the Bay Area, its crawl space is a sealed, insulated and conditioned zone that plays an important role in the home’s performance. If a crawl space is untreated, it can impact a house’s air quality and introduce mold and chemicals such as radon, David says.
But buildings aren’t the only kind of local impact Earth Bound Homes is making. To promote wellness and sustainability to the entire building industry, David created the Bay Area Building Science Collaborative.
Through it, he shares research and information with builders, architects, designers and trades workers. “I try to be a teacher who protects people’s health,” he says. “Especially against cancer-causing chemicals.” He creates educational videos for his YouTube channel, “Building a Better Way,” to help homeowners and builders learn state-of-the-art techniques. Recently, David and his team developed a stamp called Healthy Building Approved, which they’ll use to verify individual materials as safe based on their chemical content.
As David spreads his vision for healthier homes by giving talks, creating videos and working with the collaborative he created, he reflects on what drives him. “The great joy is to be able to do a job that you’re passionate about, that you love and you think makes a difference in the world,” he says.
For David, in work and in life, it seems there’s always another mountain to climb. He’s set his sights on conquering the Alps and Dolomites next year. “If I can get 1 percent better at the things I do every day, that makes me a better mentor, educator, father, boss and human being.”