First, the practical:
- The house will home my wife, myself, and several (future) kids.
- I am an artist/computer artist and my wife is a dancer.
- We plan to live there for the rest of our lives.
- I intend to have a large role in the construction of the house. but...
- I only have basic construction knowledge. but...
- I love to learn and love to work with my hands.
- The house will be secluded, in the woods. (Central CT)
- Aside from the land, I am aiming for construction costs to end up around $150k
- I believe that enormous value can be found by rethinking design/lifestyle traditions, and I am open to these thoughts.
- I value long term efficiency over short term savings.
- I am a bargain hunter, and believe that better things can always be found for less money if the time is taken, and highly value efficiency.
- I love the thought of self-sufficient lifestyles.
Here are some houses that inspire me: (gut reaction, not ideals)
This blog is just a central place to muse upon ideas, not necessarily a progression. Thanks for all your comments, please keep them coming!
3 comments:
Well, if you are young and plan on living here for the rest of your life than then you need to think very very seriously about energy efficiency.
In twenty years cheap oil will be a thing of the past. That means everything that is manufactured using oil power will be much more expensive. (food, clothes, electricity and everything else)
Pv is not efficient. Maybe with future technology it will be but I would not plan on it. Let it be a bonus if it is. It is much much less expensive to save energy than to use PV to generate wasted energy.
here is an informative link:
http://www.sunfrost.com/stand_alone_PV.html
Definitely. Thanks.
That sunfrost website is great! I love some of the thinking (rethinking) happening in the other articles as well. "Sleeping Compartments", "Using outside air to assist refrigeration". Love it.
Although you "plan" to live in this home for the rest of your life I suggest that you keep the idea of "sellability" somewhat in mind-- we never know what opportunities and changes might occur in life and if you ignore the possibility that you might want/need to sell some day, you may design somethign "perfect" for you yet undesireable to a larger market. I agree with the comment about the current inefficiency with photovoltaics; in my case I am thinking of designing with the idea of adding solar as the ROI improves. This means attention towards very low electric consumption lighting and appliances and perhaps prewireing for future battery bank/grid reselling and possibly some 12 volt wiring in place.
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