Whenever I mention that we are going to build our own house, and that it's going to be eco-friendly, people always nod knowingly and say "solar panels, right?" -- but the truth is that solar panels are simply not cost-efficient, at least not yet. We won't be having geothermal heating either (where holes are dug deep down into the ground and the heat is used to heat the house, and the energy is somehow used to cool the house in the summer, too). In fact, there are a whole bunch of very expensive bells and whistles that people think of when they think of an eco-friendly house that may reduce costs and energy use, but cost way more to install than they will save.
One of the reasons is because we are building on our very small property lot, and within the city of Toronto. That makes geothermal impossible, or unbelievably expensive, and as we are already on the city power grid it doesn't make sense. If we were building on a new property that didn't already have utility access, geothermal would work well, but we're not.
The designers have also said that we can plan for the space for installing solar panels, in order to put them in at some date in the future when the costs for them have come down A LOT, but that time is still a ways away.
So our house is going to have a couple of bells, and maybe 1 or 2 fancy whistles, but no more than that, at least for the time being.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Where to Start
Well, neither dh nor I are capable of designing a home, and the lot is so small that it's not possible to buy someone else's plans and adapt them to our space, so we needed to hire architects to design our house for us.
Luckily, J found a design team that we think are going to be terrific. They have designed a number of eco-friendly homes already, and yet they are a young couple with lots of enthusiasm for good planning and the challenges of building a home that will suit our family's needs and energy. The company is called Solares. J and I think the designers are very intelligent and they seem to be excellent listeners, which is very important. They also seem to really understand what our priorities are for the house, starting with the need to be practical and user-friendly, and ending with family-focused.
We first had a couple of meetings with them, to determine whether or not we suited each other as architects and clients, and to ask questions about the project, on both sides. After we decided to go ahead with the project, they gave us a bunch of homework! The work was about 2 pages of questions, which in John's case morphed into a 9 page essay (to be fair, he included a bunch of photographs in the 9 pages), and in my case it turned into 7 pages plus photos. Both kids had to answer their questions as well, and C had fun choosing the photographs she liked best from style magazines. If her bedroom doesn't end up purple I'll be very surprised!
The homework was designed for C and T (the architects) to get a feel for our family's needs, wants, lifestyle, etc. I think we all got a kick out of imagining a day at home, five years into the future -- although it made me laugh when I read that John had included a dog in his future, whereas I had specifically said we are not getting a dog, regardless of what John said, so don't even think about it!
The main words I wanted included in the approach are: unpretentious, practical, efficient, intelligent, organized, colourful, simple, comfortable. We'll see what they come up with and how it fits with this vocabulary!
Luckily, J found a design team that we think are going to be terrific. They have designed a number of eco-friendly homes already, and yet they are a young couple with lots of enthusiasm for good planning and the challenges of building a home that will suit our family's needs and energy. The company is called Solares. J and I think the designers are very intelligent and they seem to be excellent listeners, which is very important. They also seem to really understand what our priorities are for the house, starting with the need to be practical and user-friendly, and ending with family-focused.
We first had a couple of meetings with them, to determine whether or not we suited each other as architects and clients, and to ask questions about the project, on both sides. After we decided to go ahead with the project, they gave us a bunch of homework! The work was about 2 pages of questions, which in John's case morphed into a 9 page essay (to be fair, he included a bunch of photographs in the 9 pages), and in my case it turned into 7 pages plus photos. Both kids had to answer their questions as well, and C had fun choosing the photographs she liked best from style magazines. If her bedroom doesn't end up purple I'll be very surprised!
The homework was designed for C and T (the architects) to get a feel for our family's needs, wants, lifestyle, etc. I think we all got a kick out of imagining a day at home, five years into the future -- although it made me laugh when I read that John had included a dog in his future, whereas I had specifically said we are not getting a dog, regardless of what John said, so don't even think about it!
The main words I wanted included in the approach are: unpretentious, practical, efficient, intelligent, organized, colourful, simple, comfortable. We'll see what they come up with and how it fits with this vocabulary!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Why Do It?
My husband, son, daughter, cat, and myself live in a tiny little bungalow, which I bought before we got married almost 15 years ago. The house was built in 1919, and it is 625 square feet, although that doesn't include the finished basement, so our actual living space is more like 1100 square feet.
The one washroom in the house is in the basement, and thank heavens my dh is "only" 5'11" and my son is still not very tall (just turned 13 this year) because the basement is hazardous to taller people. I remember the first time I got into the shower, the water hit me in the middle of my back because stepping up into the tub meant that the shower head aims just too low for anyone except a child to get under it. Needless to say we put a handheld unit in so we can have proper showers.
So the house is a crappy little sh*tbox, and the walls are cracking and there is no airflow and we keep cleaning mold out of the basement bedroom (and everywhere else), but we do like the neighbourhood the house is in. It's a quiet street, with a dead end, and with 24 hour public transit all around us in every direction; bus service has just improved a great deal recently, and the plan is to build a subway line and a light rail transit line at our 2 nearest intersections, so the access is just going to get better and better. We have decent schools nearby, and good access to the 2 closest universities, which means the kids can live at home if they go to those universities, which we are going to encourage in order to cut down on university expenses.
Anyhow, all of these points make this a good location to live in, but clearly, we need a bigger and better house. We talked about just moving into another home, but housing prices are still very high, especially in the places where there is the most public transit access, and plus we would really like to have the home that will work for us, and we would like it to have the least possible carbon footprint and be cost-efficient, all of which leads us to the decision to build our own home.
The one washroom in the house is in the basement, and thank heavens my dh is "only" 5'11" and my son is still not very tall (just turned 13 this year) because the basement is hazardous to taller people. I remember the first time I got into the shower, the water hit me in the middle of my back because stepping up into the tub meant that the shower head aims just too low for anyone except a child to get under it. Needless to say we put a handheld unit in so we can have proper showers.
So the house is a crappy little sh*tbox, and the walls are cracking and there is no airflow and we keep cleaning mold out of the basement bedroom (and everywhere else), but we do like the neighbourhood the house is in. It's a quiet street, with a dead end, and with 24 hour public transit all around us in every direction; bus service has just improved a great deal recently, and the plan is to build a subway line and a light rail transit line at our 2 nearest intersections, so the access is just going to get better and better. We have decent schools nearby, and good access to the 2 closest universities, which means the kids can live at home if they go to those universities, which we are going to encourage in order to cut down on university expenses.
Anyhow, all of these points make this a good location to live in, but clearly, we need a bigger and better house. We talked about just moving into another home, but housing prices are still very high, especially in the places where there is the most public transit access, and plus we would really like to have the home that will work for us, and we would like it to have the least possible carbon footprint and be cost-efficient, all of which leads us to the decision to build our own home.
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