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!
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