Category: Lifestyle

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The Lawrence Street House – Rainwater, Part 1

In addition to harvesting the solar on our site, we are seriously considering harvesting our rainwater. Eugene gets about 50 inches of rain each year. The rooftop of our main house is about 3,400 sq ft (remember, this includes porches and the garage), and our secondary unit has a roof area of about 1,570 sq ft.

There are several resources you can get online to calculate how many gallons of water this translates into. that’s helpful as we get into our irrigation demand and other things we might want to do with our water.
I’ve talked with the people from RainTech in Jacksonville, Oregon, just over 150 miles from here. Their system (pictured above), is called RainSpace. It’s underground, simple low-tech and just seems elegant to us. Visit their site, watch their installation video and see what we mean.
We’re hoping to use rainwater for all our irrigation and maybe even flush our toilets and wash our clothes with it. I’ll get into a bit more about that tomorrow. Meanwhile, check out RainTech, their green certifications and learn a little more about their company.

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The Lawrence Street House – Front Porch continued…

I know it’s been a while since my last post. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, I’ve been in the final stages of completing my Sustainable Building Advisor class and the last part of the class got even more intense. Second, we’ve been also finishing the working drawings so we can get bids and find out just where we’re at on our budget.

In this post, I want to kind of tag on to my Front Porch article previously in April. This has been a huge part of my wife and my personal culture shift and paradigm that it became a major part of our design. It is also a major part of our landscaping layout. Thankfully, our landscape architect, David Dougherty (Dougherty Landscape Architects), who designed our landscaping in our present house 11 years ago was called into service to design our new one. David understands our desires (our current landscaping is incredible), sustainability and front porch philosophy.
Because our house faces probably the major bike and pedestrian east-west connection through town, we wanted to have our house relate well to that. It’s interesting that our City code allows us, because we are on a corner lot, to pick one side as the “front” and the other one as the “side”. This means, if we wanted to, we could build a 6′ high, solid wood fence the entire 150 foot length of our lot along this wonderful ped/bike corridor. Real neighborly, huh?
Of course, that would be totally contrary to what we envision for this house. We want to be part of the neighborhood, not project this idea that “this is my space; stay out.” Yet, because we are on a major circulation path, we do want some level of privacy for our outdoor living space. From the street as well as from the secondary home. Therein lies the challenge.
And David met that challenge. The image above is a segment of our conceptual plan, showing the porch and the yard. You can download a full size plan by clicking here, but I want to focus my discussion today on just the front porch and the yard.
I’ll start with the yard first. As I said, we wanted some level of privacy when we’re out having a barbecue or family gathering. After all, this is a major circulation path. Not a wood fence or hedge of arborvitae. This isn’t a major path for cars. We were mowing our lot the other day and in a fifteen minute period or so, I counted 22 bikes, 6 pedestrians and 2 cars passing by. So sound privacy isn’t much of an issue. We also don’t want to be completely on display. David captured that essence wonderfully and we are now taking this conceptual plan to that next level with only minor changes. We are reducing the lawn size even more (that IS our only lawn area — about 250 sq ft on a 9,000 sq ft lot) and providing some more patio for our outdoor table, chairs and umbrella. I’ll go into more detail as this progresses in a later post.
If you’ve read my April post about front porches, you’ll understand why our front porch is the way it is; if you haven’t read it, do that now, then return to this spot. We are envisioning some stone insets between the porch steps and the sidewalk wrapping around the corner. This allows people to cut the corner walking from 15th to Lawrence (they will anyway, so why not go with it?) and makes a hugely-inviting “front” to our home. My wife and I can see ourselves sitting out on the front porch on a Saturday morning, greeting passersby and maybe even inviting them up for a cup of coffee or ice tea (if summer ever arrives…). Neighborhood is all about this interaction and that is some of what we’ve lost in our recent trends in house and subdivision design.
That’s probably enough information for anyone to process in one sitting. As I mentioned, I’ll talk in more detail about some of our other landscape ideas later.
But this parting thought: most people design a house, get everything done, sometimes even start construction, THEN think about colors, plants, patios, etc. It needs to happen sooner, in this earlier stage of design, so the indoors and outdoors have some cohesive connection (and so it fits into the budget). Good design is comprehensive.

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The Front Porch and "The Garden"

HISTORY

As an architect, the design of place has always held an incredible fascination to me. To be able to be a part of creating a built environment that is beautiful and useful has always held an appeal that is hard to describe. I first wanted to be an architect when I was in fifth grade; and that “desire of my heart” stuck throughout my teen and young adult years.


The place of homes has also always intrigued me. The places we live and eat and raise our kids have held a special place in my passions. Even in my junior high years, I would design houses for classmates for 25¢ or 50¢ on taped-together pieces of typing paper.


Homes are an incredible place where we live and interact with those we love and care deeply about. Even Jesus is “going to prepare a place” for us that where he is, we may be also. This is a huge part of who we are as humans and what we need physically, emotionally and spiritually.


CULTURAL HISTORY

Culturally, porches have been around since ancient times. In Greek and Roman architecture, porches were common. Also called porticos, loggia or verandas, these covered, open structures attached to buildings were everywhere.


And, in the history of the United States, porches were brought here with the melting pot of cultures coming into this country from Europe and Africa and were also common throughout our early history until right around World War II.


CONNECTION TO NATURE

Porches are a splendid connection we have to nature. It’s about how we feel when we’re outside. The refreshing aspect of sitting out enjoying Creation. I think this can be traced back to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve walking in the “cool of the day” with God. We have within us that God-given connection to nature, that desire to be part of the Garden.


Even in the US, this connection to nature was so strong that we established the world’s first national park in 1872. There is an innate sense in our being that we are somehow connected to nature and the outdoors. The fresh air, the activity. It’s live, not YouTube.


CONNECTION TO NEIGHBORS

Porches also are a wonderful way to interact with our neighbors. To sit on the front porch in a chair or a swing, sipping ice tea or lemonade in our present “cool of the day” still holds an amazing appeal to us. To be able to greet our neighbors and have a short chat fosters a very spiritual concept called “community”.


While our connection to nature could be part of the first great commandment of loving God, our connection to those in our immediate community could be part of that second commandment to love our neighbor. Do we really love our neighbor? Do we even KNOW our neighbor? We’ve fallen out of touch with those around us.


DEMISE OF THE FRONT PORCH

Three events in the mid 20th Century had an almost fatal effect on the front porch and our connection to our neighbors: the automobile, the air conditioner and the television.


In the summer time, we would often sit outside in the evenings to escape the heat inside our homes. Little insulation, no air conditioning, no TV made this a viable, even necessary alternative. And we didn’t have large back yards with large decks, barbecues and spas. So we’d sit on our front porches and watch our neighbors and friends walk by. We walked more then since we maybe had one car per family and not too many places to drive to.


With the growing availability of the automobile, we became much more mobile as a society. We could go places, and we did. We weren’t home as much. Most people could afford a car, some two. We spent less time in our neighborhood, on our porches. At first, garages were detached buildings at the back of our property. Then, they were attached so we could go directly inside our homes. Then the garage to “house” our cars became a dominant architectural feature. And when electric openers gained even more popularity, we could drive home, press a remote-control button, open our garage door, drive inside and never have contact with any of our neighbors.


With the advent of the air conditioner, we also didn’t have to escape the heat of our homes. We could stay inside in a thermally-constant, comfortable environment. And we had something to occupy our time while inside: television. Television literally exploded in the late 1940s. In 1948, there were 350,000 TVs in the US. By August 1949, there were 2 million. October 1950, 8 million and by 1953, half of all US homes (25 million) had TVs.


Houses didn’t need front porches anymore, so there was a trend toward the ranch house and a simple box with maybe a small roof over the front door… or maybe not.


LONGINGS AND THE NEW URBANISM

I was born in 1956, after World War II, so I don’t remember growing up in a house with a front porch. I designed our first two houses, and both had front porches; but they were really just token porches; they weren’t “real”. They were just for show or as that transition space between outside and inside. It happened during the period of the late 1980s and early 1990s when we started putting porches back on the front of our houses, but I’m not sure we really knew why.


I’m thinking now it was a longing for what we no longer had in our connection to the outdoors and our connection to our neighbors. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we remembered a time when we had those connections and it was a time of the front porch. Our connection to God (vertical, through nature and the outdoors) and our connection to our neighbors (horizontal, through a chair and some lemonade) is, I believe, fundamental to the way we are created.


There is a trend in planning that is what I’d call a sort of return to our roots. It’s that desire to regain some of what we lost with the automobile, the air conditioner and the television. It is a desire for the simpler, more basic lifestyle where we can breathe a little easier and be a little calmer. It’s a Sabbath of sorts, where we don’t feel compelled to produce, we can just be.

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TV Commercials

I was trying to think of a blog topic that relates to “halving it all” and started to feel like I had exhausted a lot of the topics. Then I thought of TV commercials. And that sent me down an interesting path of thought.

My wife and I some time ago cut our cable TV subscription back to the bare basic minimum. In fact, we would have cut it out completely, but with our internet service, the basic cable TV is almost free, so we kept it. What we discovered some time ago was iTunes and AppleTV. We have found we can buy our TV shows (the few we watch) for less money than the expanded basic cable service. So we did. And while that didn’t “halve” our costs, it did something much deeper.

It eliminated the commercials.

Not only can we watch a one hour show in 42 minutes (yes, a typical one hour show has 18 minutes of commercials), we don’t see the commercials. And while that can sometimes be a conversation blocker in a social setting when someone asks “did you see the new Pepsi commercial?”, it really hasn’t hurt us any. What it HAS done is we now find we want less “stuff”.

We realized in kind of an epiphany yesterday that we are much more content with what we have. We’re not bombarded with the constant 18 minutes per hour of all the stuff we can’t live without. And we’re finding we can live without a lot of it. We don’t need the latest this or that or the new whatever.

And we’re much happier.

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Junk Mail

So last time I talked about phone books. Today I’d like to talk about junk mail. No one gets junk mail do we? Oh, really? You do?

Our recycle bin at home is dominated by the junk mail that comes to us in the snail mail. I think that’s the dominant form of paper we recycle. Some, we don’t even open or look at. It simply goes from mail box to recycle bin to making more junk mail.

It’s even worse at my office; and with the economy the way it is, it seems to have ramped up. We get some of the trade magazines for free. And we get eight copies– one for each staff. Sometimes two or three per staff if they have multiple spellings of our names. One trade company I know was sending us 10 copies. I contacted them, said we really only need one (it’s still a good publication), they said they would get it down to one. We’re still getting 10 and it’s been over a year. Maybe I should publish their name here…

There is a company I discovered a few years ago and I will publish their name here. I discovered them when I was getting 3 copies a month of an Eddie Bauer mailing advertisement (when there isn’t an Eddie Bauer store within 100 miles of my home). It’s called Catalog Choice (http://www.catalogchoice.org/). It’s free and it works. Think of the number of trees and water used simply to make and print the paper junk mail is sent to us on.

Like I mentioned with the phone books last time, it’s a way to opt-out of catalogues you don’t want to get. Or multiple catalogues to one address. It’s easy to use. And, since I originally joined, they have added an opt-in for electronic catalogs called iCatalog. The way it works is retailers really do want to target their mail ads. We really only want to get what we want to get. Catalog Choice puts that together in a database and viola! less junk mail. Retailers are happy, I’m happy, it’s a win win.

And, with diligence, it has made a difference. Our home junk mail has been probably cut 60 to 70%. Not all retailers participate, but many do. And there are more and more each month. Check it out; it’s a way to more the “halve” your junk mail.

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The Lawrence Street House – Front Porch

This post is Front Porch because we also have a Side Porch I’ll talk about in a future post.
Part of our desire to be downtown is neighborhood. Connecting with people and the whole aspect of our culture that we’ve lost in the suburbs. We’ve noticed, when walking around this neighborhood that people are out front. 15th Street is a major bike and pedestrian connector with more bikes than cars, I think.
So we wanted a place that relates our home design to the street. We found a picture of an old bungalow house that had kind of a corner wrap-around porch. That concept stuck with us. Since our lot is a corner lot, this orientation seemed to make all sorts of sense.
So here’s the result. We have a nice corner porch, south-facing, with room for a couple of chairs to sit out and drink coffee and watch the neighbors walk by. It has what we envision to be a gently curved roof to provide visual interest from the street and protection from the rain as people come to visit. Right now, we’re showing a short sidewalk to each street: Lawrence and 15th.

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Saving Water

Water. Something we in the US take largely for granted. We go to the faucet, turn it on and don’t really think twice about it. For us it’s abundant, cheap and clean. And for those of us in the Pacific Northwest, it’s cool, refreshing and drinkable — right out of the tap.
But a lot of the world doesn’t have access to good, clean water. So why should I care? I should care because there is only so much water in the world. And being less wasteful is always a good thing. Americans use, on average almost 70 gallons of water per day per person. That’s a huge amount of water. And if we simply installed more water efficient fixtures and regularly checked for leaks, we could reduce that by about 35% to about 45 gallons per day. Not quite “half”, but darn close.
Most of the savings would come in more efficient toilets. I had a friend suggest taking the water bottles we throw away, filling them with water and putting them in our toilet tanks to reduce each flush. I remember a long time ago, they suggested doing a similar thing with bricks to displace the water, but it got brick gunk in the toilet and didn’t work too well.
So I wonder how this would work? We don’t use plastic water bottles, and I don’t want to buy them just to try this (I have one of those fundamental issues with water bottles), so here’s the challenge: give it a try and let me know how it works.
Some other ways to save water are to run the faucet when brushing your teeth only to get the toothbrush wet, then shut it off and only turn it back on when you go to rinse. Small step, but ask “would this be good if EVERYONE did it? I think so.
Shorter showers, only running full loads of dishes and clothes also would help. And, water efficient landscaping (another topic on another day), would be huge. Lawns are the number one irrigated crop in the world.

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Phantom Electricity

This handy little device is called “Kill A Watt”. I have one. It’s been very educational. You can buy them at most any hardware store and our local library will even check one out to you for free.
What is does is measure the amount of electricity flowing to any device: computer, TV, DVD player, stereo. You may or may not know this, but many devices draw electricity even when they are off. If you have a tv with a remote, it’s sucking electricity 24/7. All so you can have that “instant on” feature we absolutely can’t live without (forgive the sarcasm). This post meshes well with our thirty second rule I talked about earlier, only it could be almost a 24/7 rule.
It’s estimated that about 10% of our electricity use in our homes goes to phantom power. and that might not seem like much, but would you enjoy getting a check in the mail for 10% of your electricity use each month? I would.
Newer TVs and devices can get an Energy Star rating, and that’s better, but plug strips are becoming very popular. We have a TV/DVD/Apple TV in our bedroom. The TV and DVD are Energy Star and draw barely 1 to 3 watts while off (that’s not bad, but two devices x 3 watts x 24 hours x 365 days adds up). Plus, as big a fan as I am of Apple, our Apple TV (an older model, I’m an early adopter), was drawing 29 watts just sitting there!
So I got a plug strip. After, all, it’s not often we watch TV in bed, so even the 3 watts was more than we wanted to consume. Now, when we want to watch TV, I click on the plug strip. The down side is instead of instant on, I have to wait about 15 – 20 seconds. What’s unbelievable about this is that in our culture we would actually notice that. We should all just step back, take a deep breath and relax. We’d all be healthier for it.
I recommend you get or borrow a Kill A Watt and check out the phantom power in your home. It may be educational for you, too.

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White

If you’re following a recent wave on Facebook, you’ll have noticed women posting their bra color to raise awareness about breast cancer. Well, I had already planned this post, so thought it timely to go for it. I was originally going to call it “Halves and Doubles: Underwear”, but decided to change simply to “White”.
But what does this have to do with our desire to “halve it all”? Thanks for asking. Today’s post is actually about doubling. I have about 20 pair of briefs. There, I said it. TMI. But why does this even matter? Thanks for asking that, too.
If we adjust the amount of clothing we own so that we are able to run full loads of wash, not partial loads (and not even “almost full” loads), we will save water. So actually doubling the amount of underwear we own may ultimately save in the long run. So you see, it’s not just about doing with less, it’s about being smart about what we do.
I buy underwear that is well-made, all the same color (so they don’t need to be washed separately) and they last. Durability is a factor to consider, too, since that saves material, manufacturing, money, etc.
This can apply to clothing other than underwear, too, but a picture of a shirt here wouldn’t have been as eye-catching to you. And, just so you know, it was quite an experience Googling underwear images. THAT was truly TMI. It took me a very long time to find an image I felt was appropriate. Finally found this one on about page 24 of the search list.