This blog contains useful information of home design as well as news about my projects and my architectural practice.

CONSTRUCTION BUDGETS AND SETTING PRIORITIES

9/12/2014

Images of beautiful homes are everywhere: on the internet, in home magazines, on television. We may see these beautiful things and want them for ourselves. Unfortunately, we’re rarely given a sense of what they cost to build and may be unpleasantly surprised when we dig deeper.

I think it’s only human nature that our wants are greater than our ability to pay for them. No matter how large our budgets for a new home, addition or remodeling project, there will be things that we’d like to include but aren’t able or willing to pay for.

If you’re thinking about remodeling an existing house or building a new one, consider these strategies for keeping costs in line with what you can afford:

Build no more than you’ll use regularly (for example, consider eliminating the formal living room and formal dining room, unless these are spaces that are an important part of your lifestyle).
Determine your priorities: what is absolutely essential? what would be nice to have but could be eliminated if necessary?
Consider using expensive materials, such as stone, in limited amounts in places where you’ll be able to enjoy them every day, (for example, using stone on the fireplace in your family room, rather than on a chimney surround that’s barely visible from the ground).
Build what you like and will use, not what you think will increase your home’s resale value (how often will you use that mammoth whirlpool tub and fireplace that you’re considering for your master bathroom?) This assumes that you’re not building with the intention of selling soon.
Consider lavishing more money on spaces that are important to you, and being more frugal in spaces that are less important (for example, splurging on a special tile backsplash in the kitchen if you love to cook and do it often, but keeping things simple in the bedroom if you use it mostly for sleeping).

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SUSTAINABLE BUILDING

4/9/2013

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Sustainable or “green” building means reducing the negative impacts that our buildings have on our environment and on ourselves.

According to Alex Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen.com, the top ten priorities in green building are:

Reduce energy use
Reduce water use
Ensure a healthy indoor environment
Reduce the need for driving
Build smaller and optimize materials use
Ensure durability and reuse existing buildings
Protect and restore the site
Use green materials
Create resilient, climate-adapted buildings
Make it easy for homeowners to be green

Given the fact that fossil fuels are a major contributor to global warming, that world demand for those fossil fuels will eventually exceed easily-obtained supplies and that we are dependent on foreign countries for much of the energy we use, the most important thing we can do to make our buildings more sustainable is to design, build and operate them to use less energy.

Sustainable design requires a systems approach from the beginning of the design process - considering how the different parts of a building work together. It is not a feature or two that are tacked on after the design is complete. The heart of an energy efficient home is a tight, well-insulated building envelope with high quality windows and doors, and efficient heating equipment, appliances and lighting. These measures require more care during construction and may add some small additional cost during construction but will save money over time in reduced energy bills.

If a homeowner is truly interested in sustainable building, it is important to work with a builder who has experience in building energy efficient homes or is willing to learn. And finally, even the “greenest” home will waste energy if its occupants are not using it in a thoughtful way to save energy.

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WORKING WITH NATURE

8/14/2012

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It’s a shame that when we design and build our houses, we don’t give more thought to how we can make use of the assets and features that our building site presents us with. It is common to orient a home to views, if one is lucky enough to have them, but it is less common to consider the effects of the sun, the wind, the topography, landscape features and vegetation.

A home that is stretched out in the east-west direction, with windows on the south, can make use of passive solar heat gain in the winter. Appropriately sized overhangs keep the sun out in the summer when it’s not wanted. Even a home on a small lot can use its site to its advantage by putting the most-used spaces on the south side and reserving the north side for garages, bathrooms, storage and other utilitarian spaces. This works best when the front or back of the lot faces south. If developers designed subdivisions with the sun in mind, streets could be laid out so that every lot could have a sunny orientation.

Putting windows on two sides of every room allows not only for better lighting of the space but also for cross-ventilation, which can be further enhanced by orienting windows toward the prevailing summer breezes.

When choosing a floorplan, it’s important to think about how it will fit onto one’s particular site, especially if the site is a sloping one, which is best suited to a multi-level home. Think about how a car will approach the house, where the garage will sit, the route that visitors take from the driveway to the front door, which rooms should get the best views and the most sunlight, where decks and patios will be, and which rooms will have doors to the outside. Think about features such as trees or rock outcroppings, and how the building will fit around these, perhaps using them as exterior focal points by placing windows so that these features are visible from important rooms in the house.

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CONSTRUCTION BUDGETS AND SETTING PRIORITIES

SUSTAINABLE BUILDING

WORKING WITH NATURE

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