I have been mulling over this subject with a builder friend for a while now and I think I can make my point brief. He is building a very "green" house which is small and pretty and so forth but the cost is astronomical. A simple example of why it is so expensive is that the architect specified clay drain tiles around the foundation instead of PVC. Much more $$. Not that I approve of the use of vinyl - just rent "Blue Vinyl" and you'll see why - My thought is: would the world be better off if they used the pvc and put the price difference into their town's fund to help low income folks winterize and add insulation? That seems to me to be so much more environmentally responsible.
Perry Road update - foundation
Here is a rendering of the Perry Road project for the press.
The ICF foundation is in and the slab goes down thursday. The plumber is putting the drains in to the septic and roughing for a future basement bathroom. We used Nudura ICFs which have 2 1/2" of foam inside and out. and a footing form that stays in place as a footing drain inside and out. We are putting 4" of foam under the slab and radiant tubing in the slab (in case we need it someday)
"Free" Design
I didn't get a job once because the folks decided to go with a full service design build firm that offered "free" design services. I had the rather funny image of some old retired architect who worked for free because he was either being blackmailed or he was very wealthy and just loved to work so much that he was doing it for free. The other thought was that the person doing the "free" design work was some high school drafting class kid who they were paying so little that it was easy for the company to absorb the cost. These people may actually have been gullible enough to think that they weren't, somewhere in the bill, paying for design.
Update on the Perry Road Project
We broke ground last Friday and quickly discovered ledge. The big unknown here in Vermont. In comes the architect (me) to lay out the ramifications of moving the house, raising the house or spending the money to blast the interfering rock. This house relies on sitting well in the land without lots of terracing and earth moving to force it to look good. Also raising it would put the first floor even higher above the meadow and driveway where they will park their vehicles. So the decision was made to blast. At 8:30 that evening I got a call from the excavator who had stayed at the site until dark and dug away what he could to expose the rock. He determined that he could rent a jackhammer, one that attaches to a large excavator to remove the offending rock. Done. Cheaper than blasting. I recommended a batch of my famous chocolate chip cookies with secret ingredient to be baked by the owners for the excavator. It is important to feed the folks building your house.
Next come the footings and the ICF foundation. Should make for some good pictures. stay tuned.
Put green building in a larger frame of reference, please
There is a lot of discussion lately about second homes and how can they be "green" given their very nature as inherently excessive. I thought I'd add some rambling and incoherent thoughts to the issue. I am often struck by the futility of the notion that we can actually do something significant to slow and reverse global climate change. I sometimes feel that perhaps my efforts should be much better spent in an area where I could make a larger difference that green building. I heard an interview (no reference or url here because I don't remember) with someone saying we should be putting our money and effort into dealing with climate change rather than combating it directly because we are way behind in a war that we cannot hope to win. Anything our government mandates or our people, specifically the American and Chinese people, would be willing to do or sacrifice is going to be way too little and way too late. We should be gearing up the ability of the world to quickly mobilize massive humanitarian efforts when large scale famine sets in - as would seem to be happening now. We should be looking at the ramifications of losing our oceans as a food source. What does it mean to return to a local economy - where would my underwear come from? Water allocation is a huge issue that will cost billions of people their lives not just their livelihoods in the coming decades. The spread of a disease that could wipe out half the world's population is a looming threat that scientists involved with such things refer to as a "when" not an "if". If you think the war in Iraq is costing a lot, just wait... We are soon going to be forced to make much larger changes than building green houses and getting rid of the SUV. So I look at the debate about second homes as being rather piddly and myopic. Phew, got that of my chest but now I don't feel better.
Fern House
The ferns are unfurling around the fern house, our seasonal guest sleeping / napping spot The bed is a futon on a slatted frame hung from the structure on parachute cord. The entire project took about forty hours and $700 or $800 bucks a few years ago. Mostly just 2 x 4's , 2 x 6's polycarbonate roofing and charcoal coated metal screen. I will try to get some better pics up on the website. www.swinburnearchitect.com
Building Science.Com
Building Science.com - I am ashamed at my oversight. This is an amazing organization. They are central to the residential building industry and if one were to manage to read their entire website, one would have received quite an education. I have referred to them for years when I have a question or need a good explanation for a client but forgot to add them into my links in this blog.
scary bad plastic
I'm sure everyone by now has heard assorted things about how bad for us (and not just the environment) plastic can be. Green Sage is an E-Zine that comes across my desk periodically and they have a concise article about the good and bad in regards to plastics.
Builder /Architect Magazine
David Powell was featured in the April 2008 Trade magazine "Builder/Architect" Vermont Edition. the article features a number of projects we worked on together as well as an article on page 9 written by me which is a better developed version of a previous entry on this blog.
Grandpa eloquence
Too good not to share: Bob, I wish I needed a house. You gave me lots of stuff on tree houses, though; and I read the books and think about tree houses the same way I think about Zeppelins and interurban trains and tiny Smart cars, all the great ideas I'd like to exploit. The house looks delightful. Some architct I read about today, a woman, said something like, architecture works when the occupant feel happy. Maybe thats Duh! but I have been in spaces that made me feel that the ceiling was going to come down and crush me, or the walls close in like that room in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum. Large public spaces, like our Harris Theater in Millenium Center, give you a feeling of joyful anticipation when you walk in (holding, in my case, the convenient handrails).
My room here is so placed that I can see the moon over Rockefeller Center's tower as I lie in bed. That's a wonderful collaberation between architecture and astronomy.
Congratulations! Love,Allen
Award Winning Architect (again)
Yes, it's official as of this morning although some of you have known since Friday. I won the Providence, RI sustainable housing competition in the "affordable" category! Here are some links: Providence Business News, City of Providence, ProJo.com, Rhode Island's Future ProJo.com 2 Mayor's office press release Greater City I was down in Providence this morning shaking hands with the mayor. Remind me not to look like a dork when in front of a bunch of suits. I guess it has been a while. I have created a new page for the competition entry on my site. It is the whole presentation in pdf form so it may be slow to load. It is fun to practice what I preach and have it recognized in this manner. In the meantime check some of the above links. I hope they all work. The other winner Kristine West had a good design and I have enjoyed studying it further. Turns out she also did another entry in the affordable category which didn't win but is very sweet.
new blog links
I added a few new blog links tonight. Materialicious is a high traffic site that could suck up way too much time but well worth the visit as evidenced by the find below.
Longhouse is a single house design and build type blog which are fun to read sometimes to see how other people go about making decisions. The architect works for one of my favorite firms located in Maine. Elliot Elliot and Norelius. I am seduced by the long narrow house form of Longhouse but I need porches! I don't like the inside or outside but nothing in between nature of a lot of houses.
Form Follows Function
Here is something vaguely architectural. This is a device that rotates and sorts bucket loads from an excavator in a gravel pit. What emerges is various piles from rocks to gravel. There is an old engine in the back that runs the whole thing. Tires rotate against tires to turn the sloped cylinder and as gravel tumbles though it the finest gravel falls out into a pile in front, small rocks to the left and big rocks out the end. Very homemade and very cool. It should be in the Smithsonian. I worked for the man who built this when I was in high school in Maine. I think we all know someone like him, able to make or fix anything.
A Little bit of Me
Composting Toilets in Vermont
With a title like this I'll probably get lots of google hits and lots of spam. An interesting note: We had intended to use composting toilets in the Perry Road Project but in Vermont this allows you to reduce the size of the leech field by only 25%. They also require you to have the septic folks take your compost away every year. Another factor in our decision not to use composting toilets is the cost. This is a very low budget house and composting toilets are pretty pricey. We will probably go with Toto low flow toilets. These have a very good reputation.
Complicated Budget Houses
I see many houses around here that would have benefited from some professional design help. It seems that people like to spend more money than they need to . These houses look complicated (if it looks complex then it is expensive) and yet they are obviously intended to be low cost housing. Not many people (or banks) "get" that spending money on an architect or designer up front can save them much more money in the months to follow during construction. Perhaps it is similar to solar hot water systems. Spend 5k to 7k up front and it takes 5 years or so before it is paid off in savings and then it starts saving money. It's like putting and extra $50 in the bank every month. That's an extra $6000 dollars over the next 10 years not counting for interest and certainly not counting for rising oil, gas or electricity costs. There was a picture in this month's "National Geographic" showing a Chinese subdivision from above. Many of the houses had solar hot water systems on the roof. They must be smarter than us.
A nice part of the process
I am involved with a project that is currently in the trimming out phase. This is the point where, if all goes well, the client and the builder can really see what I was blathering on about months ago. The owner is having some "aha!" moments and really appreciating the back and forth of the design process and the builder is humming along comfortable in making decisions and enjoying doing good work. Of course with the warm weather and the snow finally gone here in Vermont and no bugs yet, I think it would be hard not to be happy. Gotta go work on the garden. We get a substantial portion of our food year round from our own garden.
I guess I’ll never be a rich architect
There is an article in the summer 2008 “Fine Homebuilding” entitled “How to Afford an Architect” by Duo Dickinson. A good article if you ignore the super high percentage of construction cost fee numbers he uses. I have heard of (st)architects getting 12% to 15% of construction costs but 16% to 18% and 60 to 80 drawings for a house? Get real Duo! That’s why people are scared of hiring architects. I doubt I could design a house complicated enough to require even 40 drawings! I think I did 18 once…Of course, maybe I’m going about this all wrong.
Perry Road Project
okay, enough talk, lets see pictures. This is a house that I have just finished tuning and tweaking. Construction will start next month. see my website for more information. We may set up an independant blog for this project. We are going for LEED certification and of course, Energy Star. We are pushing the low cost limits as well. I designed it so that the owners can do most of the labor without getting into too much time and complexity. Materials and subs costs are coming in at a little over $50 per square foot not including site work, well and septic. The shell is made of structural insulated panels from Foard Panel.
Oh, and of course, being in Vermont, there is a sleeping porch.
I am a Purist
I am a purist, architecturally speaking.
When the subject of style comes up people usually have very firm ideas in their heads. For years it seemed that everyone building their house in Vermont wanted a “cape”…with big windows and lots of light and an open floor plan. Talk about contradicting ones self. People tend to be as conservative architecturally in Vermont as they are socially liberal. Clapboard capes and Greek revivals are certainly not the most economical houses to construct either. I have done my share and I’ve done them well without too much compromising of my purist sensibilities. What I mean by this is that I like a lot of house styles but in reviewing houses that I really responded to emotionally over the years the common theme was that they were not trying to be something they weren’t. Capes trying to live like ranches, neo-victorians with cutesy plastic trim, developer subdivision type houses with layered gables on the front façade for no other reason than to attempt to reduce the scale of the house. I despise fakery of that sort. This reaction of mine applies to other things architectural as well. Concrete trying to look like stone, vinyl trying to look like wood, ceramic tile trying to look like stone or clay tiles, and (sound of “Psycho” violins) distressed wood cabinetry. Legitimacy of materials as well as style is important.
