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The Lawrence Street House – Schematic Pt 2

As we started the design, we looked at our relationships of rooms to each other (from our notebook), the aspects of the rooms we wanted (the den needed to also double as a guest bedroom) and the relationships of all of this to the outdoor living areas of our lot and our relationship to the neighborhood.

You really can’t initially take just one thing and focus on that. Good design needs to be comprehensive. We’re going for LEED certification (targeting Platinum again!) and even LEED recognizes this. I think I’ve mentioned before in this blog (or my other blog): everything is connected. And that applies to the design, too. How and where we place the kitchen affects the rest of the house and affects how I barbecue in the summer months. The shape of the house plan affects the rooflines, which affects the ability to install solar panels. The location and shape of the garage affects the location and shape of the rest of the house. Where the basic “mass” of the house sits affects whether or not our patios get good sun (important to us) or are constantly in the shade (not good in Oregon).
We start pen on paper, freehand, rough and only generally to scale. This first part is more organizational. What rooms are generally where and how the overall flow and circulation might work.
The lot is narrow (60 feet) and, with the interior yard setback (5 feet) and the street setback (10 feet), we only have 45 feet to work with. The one aspect of our design I will focus on today is the garage and its relationship to the house and its shape. As has been the case for many years, our mindset is a 2- or 3-car garage. That’s been our culture. We, obviously, aren’t thinking a 3-car garage here, but we have settled out that even with our walking and bike riding, we want space for 2 cars.
In the normal mode of thinking (which we’re trying to change), that’s at a minimum 20 by 20 foot box. And with only a 45 foot wide building area, that can dominate the design. So how to get around that? Even with our alley access, that size box fills up our yard area. So do we want yard or garage? Can we have both?
This calls for thinking outside the box (pun intended). Appropriate, since the garage is usually a box. So we thought, could our lifestyle accept an end-to-end arrangement for the garage? Then the “box” is more like 12 feet by 40 feet (and that sets up visual issues we’ll address later), we have a smaller garage door, which lessens the auto impact, even though it’s facing the alley, and seems like it will fit our lifestyle.
The picture above is our first iteration (north is up — north is always up). The house basically is at the southwest corner of the lot, garage along the north and accessory dwelling unit at the southeast. This leaves a nice south and east facing area for patios. This gives us a more “square” arrangement for the heated part of the house (more energy and material efficient) and a much nicer yard area. The rooflines seem like they will work well this way, so we’re going to develop this a little further.
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The Lawrence Street House – Site Analysis

I know this wasn’t a one word title; sorry. Before we start designing (and the excitement of getting started builds, so there’s still that temptation. Resist!), we take a really good look at the site. We call this our site analysis. Yeah, not very creative, but accurate.

We look at a number of things. The topography of the land (it’s mostly flat, with a depression where the previous house was), the immediately surrounding features: neighboring houses, the big overgrown apple tree, power lines, utilities, and the gravel alley to name a few. How the house would relate to the surrounding neighborhood.
As I’ve mentioned, we live in a society of garage door openers and not knowing our neighbors. Our lot is unique since it’s on 15th. I talked in an earlier post how 15th is also a major bike street. In fact, we’ve noticed there is probably more bike traffic on 15th than cars. We like that. There are also more pedestrians along 15th than many suburban streets. We like that, too.
So we’re filing away the desire to not turn our backs on the street. We are going to be faced with wanting an outdoor living area for our home that has some privacy, but doesn’t turn our back on the rest of the neighborhood. We have this philosophy that our entire society would be just a little better if we related to our neighbors a little more. For us, it’s that spiritual aspect of “loving your neighbor”.
We also have a relatively non-descript four-plex to the west, across Lawrence, some nicer houses across 15th to the south and a still-vacant lot across the alley to the east. Uly’s Tamale Cart parks right along 15th (we’d like to meet Uly: anyone know him?). We want to downplay the garage, so we will be taking access to the garage off the alley. We absolutely want to take advantage of solar (patio, photovoltaic and hot water). Since we’re on the corner, we’d kind of like it if our front door related to the corner. And we have the ability to increase density on our urban lot by building what’s called an accessory dwelling unit (ADU).
ADUs are a secondary house on the same lot that could be a place for elderly parents to live or a rental house. An ADU can be no larger than 800 square feet and we want to take advantage of that for a several reasons: our lot is large (9,000 sq ft) and this is a better use of land, we’ll have a place for elderly parents if needed, and if not, we’ll have the ability for rental income as we head into retirement.
You can see it’s important to think through and evaluate these things BEFORE you start designing. It saves changes (or mistakes) later.
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The Lawrence Street House – Schematic Pt 1

We’ve started the design. After we synthesize the notebook (it’s good to organize your thoughts, even when designing your own home), we started sketching. I plotted out a scale site plan with the surrounding houses, trees, streets, etc.

Making note of the site analysis information and thinking about the factors that arise in that process, we can actually start designing the house. Finally. Most times, we as architects meet with our client and go over their notebook. We try to “get into their head” as to what they want, what the pictures and descriptions they’ve compiled actually mean. If they’ve done a good, comprehensive job on this, our job as an architect is much easier.
We have also owned this lot since last summer. So we have taken bike rides past our lot, stopped and just savored the neighborhood. We’ve eaten at our favorite restaurant (just three blocks away) and walked around the neighborhood. We’ve become intimately familiar with this piece of ground near downtown.
I’m also in a bit of a unique situation since this is my house and my wife and I are the clients. So this process is a little different. As I mentioned in my earlier “programming” post, my wife has really good ideas — some I haven’t thought of. So when the time came to sit down with pen and paper, she sat with me, too.
And, yes, this techno-geek-early-adopter still designs with pen on paper. As much as I’d like to go paperless, and I do in many areas, when it comes to the free flow of ideas in an initial design of a house, pen and paper is still the best.
We sat down for an uninterrupted afternoon, looked through our notebook again, talked about the surrounding aspects of the lot we’ve now owned for about 6 months and started.
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The Lawrence Street House – Programming

I’m trying to title each of these posts with a one-word summary. Site. Beginnings. You know, try to keep it simple. After all, this is thesimpleHOUSE.
So this next step in our process is called “programming”. I tried to look for a better word, because programming is long, sounds technical and doesn’t quite have the sexiness of a word like “beginnings”. But there really isn’t a better word, so I stayed with that.

Programming is where we take the information from a client (in this case, myself and my wife) and help them organize it into a framework where we can move into a schematic design (for starters) of their home.
You would think since I’m an architect and am designing my own home for myself and my wife (who I’ve been happily married to for almost three decades), we could dispense with the programming and just start designing. Well, that was the temptation.
But I’m so convinced of our process and the years of experience with it that we did it, too. My wife and I sat down and “programmed” our new home. The first picture above is one aspect of this process. We have a matrix where we link all the rooms and areas of our home and decide what kind of relationship we want between them. We color-code this with “direct”, “indirect” or “no relationship”. This is the first part of the process.
The second part (represented by the second picture) is going room by room and listing ideas, thoughts and dreams specific to that room. Downloading images and taking pictures of things we like are also incorporated into a page for each room. Any furniture we intend to keep (“reuse” is one of the three “R”s) is measured and listed at the bottom of the page for that room.
After all that is compiled, it creates a very comprehensive basis for starting a design. The other benefit it does is it gets the client (in this case me and my wife) talking and communicating about what we would like. It can be (and was for us) a wonderful process of thoughts, ideas and dreams. And I discovered even non-architects (my wife) often have really good ideas I haven’t thought of. And that’s how we grow and learn and get better at what we do.
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The Lawrence Street House – Site

I know this picture is probably a bit hard for you to read and see. But that isn’t really the most relevant part of this post. As my wife and I were looking for a lot to build on, there were some factors that affected our decision.

First, we like to ride bikes. We’re not the racing bike sponsored spandex riders, but what I call casual bikers. That means we like to ride around town, to a restaurant to eat, downtown for a chocolate latte, etc. I also like to ride to work during the summer.
So one factor was bikability. And the lot we found is right on 15th Avenue, which is one of Eugene’s major bike routes.
Another factor is, in the current vernacular, walkability. LEED considers the walkability of a location and whether or not you are within a 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile of major amenities. A good resource is a website called WalkScore (http://www.walkscore.com). you can enter your address and it will give you a score on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the better. Our lot scored an 85, or “Very Walkable”.
The reason this is important (some of you were asking that, I’m sure) is that it reduces our dependence on a car. This has numerous effects: less emissions and pollution, lower money outlay (less gas purchases, maintenance, etc), and better health (walking or biking is good exercise, so you’re healthier and will probably spend less money and time at the doctor and buying medications). You see, everything is connected. And, since this is an urban infill lot, our City won’t have to spend money extending services to the suburbs because of our home construction: it’s all already there.
Plus, if you’re out walking or biking, you have a better connect with people. You might even get into a conversation. And that can only be good. We live in a society of air-conditioned homes, sealed automobiles and garage door openers. Many of us don’t know our neighbors.
So before we even started designing our new home, we carefully considered our site location.
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The Lawrence Street House – Beginnings

I know it’s been a while since my last blog, so I’ll bring those of you who are new to thesimpleHOUSE up to date. Our kids are grown. We raised them in a 2,750 sq ft house that worked really well as they passed through their teen years and into adulthood. But now our daughter is married (they had their second anniversary in August) and our son just graduated from college and will be moving out soon. So we’re very close to being two people in what is now seeming to be a very large house. So last summer, after much searching, we found a wonderful urban infill lot in downtown Eugene, Oregon (our home town). We have the 2,750 sq ft house on the market for sale (let me know if you’re interested; it’s nice and doesn’t quite qualify as a McMansion) and are starting the design process. We recently did a LEED Platinum house (theSAGE in previous posts) that pulled out all the stops on sustainability. And you know, it wasn’t really that hard to do. So armed with a desire to be in something around 1,600 square feet, within walking distance of most amenities and that “itch” that I, as an architect, get about every decade, we’re designing another home. Stay tuned.

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Our Coffee Addiction

If you think I’m going to slam coffee in today’s blog, you’re wrong. While I do recommend fair trade, organic shade grown coffee for what may be obvious reasons, today’s topic is actually about the disposable cups we drink our coffee from.

I hope by now everyone is death on styrofoam cups. I’m not even going there. But what I am going to talk about today is the paper cups and lids we often get from Starbucks or Full City or (insert your favorite coffee shop here).

Estimates are that we will use about 23 billion paper coffee cups in 2010. Billion. That will require cutting down 9.4 million trees, 7 trillion BTUs of energy and 5.7 billion gallons of water. This will create 363 million pounds of solid waste. We have trouble processing such large numbers, so here are some comparisons.

The energy used just to manufacture the cups that we use just for our coffee could power 77,000 homes. It’s almost a gallon of water for every human being on the planet. Just from our paper coffee cups. And the FDA has regulations on the amount of recycled paper pulp that is allowed in contact with food and beverages. So the majority of our paper cups are made with a high percentage of virgin paper.

Yet the answer is simple: Carry a reusable mug with you to the coffee shop. Many are already doing this, but if we’re going to use 23 billion paper cups next year, many are not. Most every shop I know will fill your mug with your favorite brew.

Plus, many offer discounts if you use your own mug. So the benefits are twofold: help the environment and save money.

And that’s a win-win all the way around.

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Consumption and Waste

Well I got the ball rolling on this blog. So after just two posts, I’m going to shift a bit into a little more general topic of consumption and waste. This topic does fit with “halve it all” because if we reduce our consumption and our waste, we (and our world) will be better off for it.

We are a society of consumers. In the U.S., we have 5% of the world’s population and yet we consume 24% of all the world’s energy. Seems a little lop-sided, huh? If we consume less, we will waste less.

On the website Mindfully.org, Americans consume 815 billion calories of food a day (about 200 billion more than we need — enough to feed 80 million people). We also throw out 200,000 tons of edible food each day.

Remember yesterday’s post about restaurant food portions? Have you ever done the “doggie bag” thing of your left over extra food, brought it home, put it in the frig and then tossed it a week later because you forgot about it?

I had coffee with a friend today and we had a good discussion about consumption and waste. He mentioned about how we need to start looking beyond just the waste we produce and really evaluate the embodied energy in things. That means considering where something is made, how much energy is used to make it, etc. You see, it’s more than just what we throw out. For a really interesting video about all this, check out The Story of Stuff.

My city (Eugene, Oregon) is developing a Climate and Energy Action Plan. Interestingly enough, the next public meeting topic is Consumption and Waste. It will be at the Eugene Water & Electric Board on January 6, 2010 from 6 pm to 9 pm. These public forums are a great way for you to get involved and share your opinions.

So as you work to “halve it all”, put this next meeting on your calendar; they are enjoyable and informative.

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Eating Out at Restaurants

Here’s another area where we consume too much and really don’t need to. Our favorite restaurant in Eugene is a great little place with grass-fed free range humanely raised beef in their burgers. Pepper Jack cheese, green chilis… yum.

BUT, these burgers are 1/2 pound! Plus fries. And the bun. They don’t post the calories, but one order probably exceeds the minimum daily requirement of something. But they’re SO good! What to do?

Well, my wife and I split one of these burgers (with fries, of course). That’s still 1/4 pound of beef, we still are full when we leave and we’ve accomplished two things: first, we’ve saved about $10 and we’ve eaten half as much food. We also haven’t contributed to our personal obesity (at least not as much).

Obesity in America is a huge issue (pun intended). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, some cancers and type 2 diabetes. In 2008, in the U.S., only Colorado had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Thirty two states were at 25% or more and six states were at 30% or more.

It’s all about calories and activity. We as a culture tend to do too much of the calories and not enough activity.

So back to the restaurants. Next time you’re going to eat out, eat with a friend and share an order. You may not leave absolutely stuffed (it takes your stomach about 20 minutes to get the signal to your brain), but you will likely be satisfied and comfortable within a half hour.

Give it a try and halve your next restaurant meal!

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Where This All Began

The idea for this blog came about from water spots on our dishes. Yeah, really.

You see, my wife and I were having trouble with our dishwasher leaving water spots on our glasses. So, we did what most people do: bought some Rinse Aid. You know, the very expensive blue liquid that keeps your dishwasher from spotting your glasses.

But what was troublesome to us was that we live in an area with very clean, normal, soft water. Not in an area with high mineral content or hard water. Plus, after a while of this, the glasses started spotting again.

We thought, well, the dishwasher is about nine years old, so maybe we’re going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new dishwasher. So I called my friend who sold us the dishwasher; then my wife and I went down to his store and said, “We’re probably going to have to buy a new dishwasher”. He asked us how much detergent we were using and I said, “We’re using what the dishwasher owner’s manual says to use”.

“That’s your problem,” my friend said, “You’re using too much detergent.” We looked at him and said, “Huh?” (we were kind of left speechless). He replied, “The dishwasher companies are tied in with the detergent companies, so they always recommend more than you need. Try using about half the detergent.”

So we did. And it worked! Our dishes still got clean, we didn’t get sick or anything. PLUS… I thought, “Do I really now need the very expensive blue liquid spot stuff?” So we stopped using the very expensive blue liquid spot stuff. And it worked! Our glasses didn’t spot. And we’re still using our original dishwasher (it’s now about eleven years old).

So not only do we now use half the detergent, we have stopped using the blue liquid additive and are saving a boat-load of money. That also got us thinking about what other areas of our lives and homes could this principle of using about half apply?

There are quite a few; and that’s what has inspired this blog. I thought there might be other people out there who have discovered the principle of halves. So we’re looking for your input too. I’ll be posting my thoughts and discoveries and I encourage you to post yours, too. Hey, I might even turn this into a book.

Now if I could just disable the “Rinse Aid Empty” light on our dishwasher…