Design Review

  Alright, alright so it's been a few days, ok weeks since my last post.  My apologies.  What with trying to get hoop houses built, researching and tracking down products, things have been pretty hectic.  The good part is now I have some images to share of our proposed floor plan and a couple of elevations.

  We finished up our design charrette last week with Dave from Lindhout, Tom Boyle, John Boylan of Lakeside Services (HVAC), Tom and Shannon Rau, Joannee and I and our Green Rater, Alex.  We had a really good meeting lots of good discussion about mechanical systems and photovoltaics.  The house has undergone a few iterations since the initial charrette and as a result we hope to pick up 5 more points toward our LEED certification.  But I won't get into the geeky stuff tonight.  I would like to talk the house and maybe some about our product selections so far.

You can see we retained the small footprint of the house, it took a few heart to heart discussions but with some design help from Joannee, Dave and Piet were able to draw out a really fun floorplan on the first floor without expanding the size of the house.  This is important to us because more space means having to spend more money to fill it up, heat it, cool it and clean it 

1. Tulikivi masonry heater is the centerpiece here, literally.  Locating the heater in a central location and with very few walls will allow us to use this as the primary heat source in the winter.  This is a soapstone behemoth weighing in at over 5000 lbs.  The soapstone absorbs the heat from the fire and slowly radiates the heat outward over time.  A 1 1/2 hour burn twice a day will heat the house for about 24 - 30 hours.  Possibly longer with the R-35 walls.
2. Reclaimed wood flooring throughout the house upstairs and down.  We are looking at maple or possibly locust.
3. Recycled brick in the mudroom coming from the garage.  The mudroom was originally going to be the space between the garage and main house.  Thanks to a little sleight of hand from Dave we were able to increase the size of the room in the house.  The original mudroom now becomes a breezeway and a home for the grill.  Also becasue the garage is detached from the house, this improves the indoor air quality and scores 3 points for LEED.  Durability is also a LEED consideration and we have developed a project specific durability checklist.
4. The kitchen is on the south side of the house.  In order for the house to benefit from solar orientation LEED requires 40% of the total glazing area to be on the South side.  A challenge when you have a small house, a fairly steep roof and countertops to work around!  Again, Dave sneaks in the round window in the upstairs bedroom to eek us over the line. We are considering two manufacturers Accurate Dorwin made in Canada and Serious Windows, made in California,  Both exceed Energy Star ratings by almost double.
5. All appliances in the house will be Energy Star rated.  Hopefully we will be able to reduce our electrical load in the house enough to make solar power feasible.

Ok it's late, I'll add more tomorrow.  Oh wait, I said that last month.