An eco-friendly home on Nova Scotia’s Mahone Bay with a giant-sized dock

32 Himmelman Lane, Herman’s Island, N.S.

Asking price: $2,980,000

Lot size: 1.53 acres

Property taxes: $11,277 (approximately, 2025)

Listing agents: Susan Diamond and Alex Lilley Osende, Engel & Völkers

The backstory

In a results-oriented world, sometimes process gets short shrift. But when a long process leads to the exact result you want, then maybe it deserves the time it takes.

For Pat Dunlop and Elaine Jacobsen, the process of buying their home on Mahone Bay near Lunenberg, N.S., was exactly that. They were two Maritimers trying to find a way to get back home after years of living and working in Vancouver and Toronto.

“We started coming every summer for probably five consecutive summers,” said Ms. Jacobsen, who grew up in New Brunswick. They’d rent a cottage or an Airbnb for a couple of weeks and drive around the South Shore of Nova Scotia looking for land where they could build their dream getaway.

In 2009, their real estate agent showed them a development lot next to recently completed 32 Himmelman Lane, designed by Halifax-based Solterre Design. No. 32 wasn’t for sale, but because they were looking to build an eco-friendly home they got introduced to the owners, who were early adopters of the environmentally conscious Platinum LEED standard for residential property construction.

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“I had said to the owners, ‘We’re not looking for a house like this, but we’d like to learn from you,’” said Ms. Dunlop. “I got his business card, and they went back to the U.S., and we started communicating about what books I should read and started an informal conversation.”

By the time the owners decided to sell in 2011, the couple had the inside track (even though they’d never actually been inside the house before). When they flew in just for a viewing it turned out they were looking for a house just like it.

“The architect did such a fabulous job siting the house on the point of the land; you can see that point all the way through the house,” said Ms. Dunlop. “There’s corner windows everywhere here, so it feels like three-quarters of your room is outside.”

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The house today

The house sits on a shelf a step down from the raised roadway, so as visitors come to the front door, they descend a gentle ramp to the entrance. The building is chevron-shaped with two wings angled toward the road and sweeping away from the shore. Seen from above, it’s almost like an arrowhead pointing to the water.

You’ll also note big windows and large overhangs above them. A key part of the LEED certification is energy conservation, and those overhangs keep the sun’s rays angled away in summer, while they almost seem to bounce light back in during the winter.

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“We don’t ever have to turn on the air conditioning,” said Ms. Dunlop. “In the winter, we had to put our sunglasses on! It’s unbelievable.”

The bones of the original house are all here, but in 2017 they did a major interior renovation to replace decor that was a bit dated.

The previous owners “were older, the interior was Holly Hobbie – pigtails and gingham – it was not our taste at all,” said Ms. Jacobsen. The dark slate was taken out and in came lots of white oak. New cabinetry, new oversized sliding doors, new hardware, new backsplashes and light colours were added everywhere.

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The LEED certification meant the building had to have a certain amount of recycled materials. In this house, a lot of those are Victorian-era solid-wood interior doors that were salvaged in Nova Scotia.

“It boils down to a super quality build. All the materials used in this house have to be natural materials, super insulated. They left us two binders of information of how they achieved it,” said Ms. Jacobsen.

The wing to the right is the guest quarters. The wing to the left contains most of the main living space. Everything is oriented toward the water, with all the cabinetry opposite the window-walls facing Mahone Bay.

Just past the kitchen is the primary bedroom. The first thing you see if you sit up in bed is the water through the trees. Around the corner, you’ll find an enormous four-piece ensuite bathroom, all newly updated.

Government wharf

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The house is in what you might call yacht country: It’s literally around the corner from the Lunenburg Yacht Club and Restaurant, and many of the houses up and down this stretch of coast have large docks. It was Ms. Dunlop’s intent to get her own sailboat when the couple began a project to extend a dock from their 200 feet of mostly sandy shoreline, but eventually the enterprise turned into a huge 116-foot-long steel structure that could function in the extreme tides as well as handle winds and occasional ice floes.

“In New Brunswick this is what you call a government wharf, and there’s only one in the whole town,” said Ms. Jacobsen. It took two years of work, and their contractor wasn’t sure they could keep going after he put the first 40 feet in and the low tide at the end of the dock would barely come up to one’s ankles. At its full length, it all works out. “We’ve had yachts in; they can tie up at the end of the wharf. It’s 14 feet at low tide,” said Ms. Dunlop.

But it’s not just function. The dock’s form works with the house to enhance the views: “We aligned the wharf at that midpoint of the deck, that follows that midpoint at the front of the house,” said Ms. Dunlop. As soon as you come in the front door, you have an unobstructed view all the way down to where you’d dock your yacht.

Unfortunately, by the time they completed it, Ms. Dunlop – a Cape Bretoner who had been sailing all her life – found the physical aspects were a bit more of a chore than a fun time. So they made a switch to an 18-foot motorboat. And of course they also have their kayaks, which are a great way to wave hello to fellow waterfront neighbours with houses like theirs: camouflaged by trees from the roadway.

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