The house has a ten-foot-wide front porch, a five-foot-wide back balcony, and three-foot-wide eaves all the way around. When the summer sun is high in the sky, these overhangs keep the sun from shining directly into most of the windows. As the days grow shorter in the fall, the sun gets up later, goes to bed earlier, and is generally lazy about climbing above the horizon. The lower its arc, the more direct rays shine through the windows. The deciduous trees on the back hillside lose their leaves, letting even more of the sun’s rays in. By the winter solstice, the sun shines all the way across the living room. Where the bright rays land on the dark stone floor and countertops, they transfer their heat. The heavy stone surfaces act as a “thermal mass,” saving warmth for a long time after the sun goes down.

This house has a standing seam metal roof with Titanium UDL50 underlayment. Metal roofs will last a lifetime, then the metal can be recycled. It is easy to clip solar panels to a metal roof, without making roof penetrations that can leak. Most homes have asphalt shingles on the roof. They last about 25 years, then they have to be torn off and hauled to the landfill. Long-lasting solar panels installed on top of asphalt shingles are expensive to remove and replace. Another benefit of metal: the water running off the roof is clean enough to collect in the rainwater tanks and use to water the garden. With a traditional asphalt roof, every year the stone particles embedded in the asphalt slough off into the gutters and downspouts and end up in the yard.

Three of the metal roof's four downspouts are connected to three 500-gallon water tanks to allow collection of asphalt-free water from the roof for temporary storage and redistribution through a drip irrigation system in the garden. The patio and driveway are made of specially-spaced Cambridge® pavers that allow heavy downpours to "disappear" into the pavement and replenish the ground water rather than creating a torrent of runoff.

Powhatan House’s cool and leafy garden features heirloom Royal Isabella concord grapes, Fuyu persimmons, Stanley plums, Blenheim apricots, white peaches, berry bushes and a built-in barbecue. Butterflies float to the milkweed and butterfly bush, bees balance on the lavender flowers, and birds sing, court and forage for worms in this chemical-free paradise, sheltered under the crest of Minor's Hill. The yard is terraced with stacked stone. The sandy loam soil - once an ancient riverbed - has been amended with many truckloads of mulch. Mosses, ferns and other native, edible and ornamental plants happily reach their roots deep into this soft earth. During pounding summer thunderstorms, the terraced beds and thick root systems act as a giant sponge, gently holding the rainwater as a reservoir against drought, allowing the plants to thrive with little attention. The garden brings year-round surprises – crocuses and daffodils appear in early spring, followed by redbud, roses, azaleas, pachysandra and a lush growth of the sedum on the back hillside. As the trees leaf out, the porches and balcony become secluded refuges, hidden in the leaves of the young maple, pine, fir, oak, magnolia and tulip tree forest. Crepe Myrtle and hibiscus bring magenta and heliotrope blooms in summer. In fall, the maple and Fuyu persimmon trees turn red and golden; the gingko leaves turn bright gold. When the persimmon leaves tumble to the ground, the bright orange fruit hangs like ornaments on the bare branches, ready for eating fresh or baking into holiday puddings. No pesticides, herbicides or other garden chemicals have been used in the garden in over ten years.