The Design Goes Forward
Tasha and I, after visiting the site with Jon, had a little crisis of faith and we both felt we needed a meeting with Jon and Kandy in person to discuss some of our issues.
I may have wrote this before, but it largely boiled down to me wanting a passive solar house and Tasha not being able to live with both the view to the south--future neighbors--and the thermal mass--concrete doesn't play nice with little heads and probably won't be too nice to our knees when we're 80-- needed to make it work. So with that off the table we lifted many of the constraints and we were able to come up with something that will work for both of us.
Last night sitting around the table enjoying brownies--great job Kandy--Jon sketched this
We're shooting for something like the center sketch.
Basically, there are three components to the structure: The garage, farthest to the left, leading to the center of the house where we'll do the working and living, and then the tall skinny two story (with walkout) sleeping area. I'm not sure if you can see it, but the opposite face of the second story has a three season/sleeping porch facing the hills to the west. It'll be a great place to hang out and watch storms roll in. At some future date we may turn the walkout into an in-law suite.
We both want PV so tossing the passive solar won't be too terrible. As long as I can see some sun in the winter I'll be OK. Six years on the shore of Lake Erie was enough of a hiatus from the sun!
I may have wrote this before, but it largely boiled down to me wanting a passive solar house and Tasha not being able to live with both the view to the south--future neighbors--and the thermal mass--concrete doesn't play nice with little heads and probably won't be too nice to our knees when we're 80-- needed to make it work. So with that off the table we lifted many of the constraints and we were able to come up with something that will work for both of us.
Last night sitting around the table enjoying brownies--great job Kandy--Jon sketched this
We're shooting for something like the center sketch.
Basically, there are three components to the structure: The garage, farthest to the left, leading to the center of the house where we'll do the working and living, and then the tall skinny two story (with walkout) sleeping area. I'm not sure if you can see it, but the opposite face of the second story has a three season/sleeping porch facing the hills to the west. It'll be a great place to hang out and watch storms roll in. At some future date we may turn the walkout into an in-law suite.
We both want PV so tossing the passive solar won't be too terrible. As long as I can see some sun in the winter I'll be OK. Six years on the shore of Lake Erie was enough of a hiatus from the sun!
posted by Joe at
9:53 AM
1 Comments:
There is no need to abandon your quest for a passive solar home. I have just built a new traditional style 4000 sq. ft. passive solar home. The website is: www.SolarHouseProject.com. The website explains how the home was built and how it functions. This home, heated by the sun, cost about the same a comparable size new ENERGY STAR qualified home but uses less than 70% of the energy of that comparable new home.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home