The Vashon Athletic Club, with its pool, hot tub, showers and bright lights, might not seem like a beacon of energy conservation, but since club owner Kevin Allman bought the business in 2004, the club has made changes that benefit both the environment and Allman’s bottom line.

An environmentalist from his childhood, Allman did not wait for Al Gore’s documentary to spur him into action. He’s been making pro-environment changes since he bought his first club in Des Moines in 2000, he said.

“This business and that business would not have been as efficient and lean from a business perspective had I not made those changes,” he said.

His first conservation steps at the Vashon Athletic Club came shortly after he bought it, he said. Through a program with Puget Sound Energy, he had all the fluorescent lights in the pool area, weight room, aerobic studio and bathrooms retrofitted to T8 fluorescent lights, which have a higher output and lower wattage than others. He also changed all the screw-in bulbs to compact fluorescents, he said.

The shower heads and sink faucets were next on his agenda. He replaced his nine 2.5 to 3 gallon-a-minute shower heads with 2 gallon-a-minute shower heads. In the locker room’s four sinks, he changed the previous 2.2 gallon-a-minute aerators to 1 gallon-a-minute aerators through a program he said he was fortunate to tap into with the City of Seattle.

The club’s temperature, thanks to a programmable thermostat he had installed, stays at 66 degrees during the day and drops to 55 degrees at night.

Outside, he has worked to change the club’s lights as well but found that fluorescent lights did not meet its needs. He was able to change from 100-watt bulbs to 75-watt bulbs in the club’s motion sensor lights and switch from a 400-watt multi-vapor bulb to a 170-watt sodium bulb in another, according to Allman.

“The sodium bulb has similar wattage to the 400-watt bulb,” he said, “and we were still able to scrape off 230 watts of use there.”

More than a year ago, the club started turning off its court lights when not in use, Allman said. The squash court uses 1,600 watts, and the racquetball court uses 2,400 watts. Previously, those lights had been on 16 hours a day, and now they are on only four to five hours a day — when the court is booked and at peak-use times. The club is also looking into fluorescent lights for the courts. At the time of the retrofit, court fluorescent lights were not available, Allman said.

The women’s locker room is scheduled for a remodel, and Allman is looking at installing an on-demand water heater when that happens and replacing the shower heads with new 1.75 gallon-a-minute shower heads, but he wants to try them out at home first, he said, just to make sure water flow still feels adequate.

In addition to the large changes he has made, Allman understands that small changes are also important. He recently ordered three new cardio machines that are human powered to replace the three electric cardio machines currently at the club.

The club is also committed to recycling, Allman said, which is a change he made when he came on board.

“We have reduced dramatically the solid waste because of that,” he said.

To further increase the club’s energy efficiency and decrease its consumption, he said, he will work with Amy Huggins, — the club’s yoga teacher — and members of her Low-Carbon Diet Group, to look at some other things, such as better weather stripping, he said.

As for the future, if Allman buys the building from Mark Leonard, the former owner of the club, he will look to make more substantial changes, such as installing a more energy-efficient heat system for the building, pool and burner that heats the water for the pool, he said.

Allman’s family used to give him a hard time about his environmental leanings, he said, but that has dropped off in recent years as global warming has become front-page news.

“I feel good about it. That’s the important thing,” he said, shrugging off the teasing and noting that the club also supports the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust.

In the three years since he bought the business, energy costs have increased dramatically, he said, particularly gas, which the club relies on heavily.

“I shudder to think now what my energy costs would be if I’d not done this work,” he said.