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Mary S. and the Egan Warming Center

The other day, I saw a post on my Facebook News Feed about the Egan Warming Center. I’ve lived here in Eugene for most of my life and had never heard of the Warming Center. Administered by St. Vincent dePaul, the Egan Warming Center’s mission is to provide homeless people in Lane County a place to sleep indoors when temperatures drop to 28º or below between November 15 and March 31. Several churches in our area open their facilities for people to sleep when it gets cold. So I reposted the link on my Facebook and said, “this is worth getting the word out.” Then I went about the rest of my day.

Little did I know that on my way home that night (I had a late meeting downtown and was catching the late bus), a lady who appeared to be homeless got on the bus wanting to know where a particular church was. It happened to be one of the churches that host the homeless on cold nights.

I told her it was a couple of stops after my stop, and a young couple on the bus also said they were headed there, too. She was grateful for the help and caring and we struck up a conversation. Actually, it was more I got to listen to her story for the 15 minutes until my stop. About halfway into the conversation I said, “My name’s Bill, what’s yours?” and she said “I’m Mary S.” and we shook hands.

It’s interesting how it’s easy to judge someone by their looks yet when you talk to them (I did get a few words in), you find they have a lot on the ball. Mary S. had thin hair, deep furrows on her perfectly-round face and meticulously-applied pink lipstick. Yet her lipstick wasn’t gaudy; it was tastefully applied.

I listened as she talked about the atrocities of shooting gray wolves, the slaughter of seals, global warming and the awfulness of animal farming and how selfishness was really at the root of it all. It was a fascinating time. She had some very deep insights into this world and life in general. It looked like she had most, if not all, of her possessions in the two plastic grocery bags she carried with her.

And it made me realize just how fortunate I am. As I came home to my warm house, hot mocha and electric blanket, I thought of Mary S. and the wonderful volunteers who will spend all night giving her, the other young couple on the bus and who knows how many others the ability to have a warm, dry place to sleep.

And it made me think how the simple act of riding the bus goes way deeper than just reducing my carbon footprint and living a simpler, sustainable lifestyle; it’s an opportunity to meet people you wouldn’t normally talk with. And that can open up some amazing conversations and friendships.

By reducing my carbon footprint, I think I just increased my heart footprint.

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The Philosophy of Sustainable Design

The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, by Jason McLennan is unique in “green” books about architecture and building design in that it really gets to the philosophy behind sustainable practices, and not just a list of “dos” or “don’ts.” I appreciate that. McLennan is teaching us to fish.

With sixteen chapters and five appendices, the book is very complete. It is also very readable. Sometimes books like this are, frankly, a bit dry and technical. They can tend to be “thick”, as I call them, meaning you need to read a paragraph, stop and reread it again to really comprehend what the author is trying to say. But not so with The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. This book is extremely comprehensive in its approach and its way of thinking.

From the philosophy to the evolution through the principles of sustainable design, McLennan talks about biomimicry (how learning from natural systems and processes can benefit our lives) and the cycle of life (the seven generations principle) and how these all fit together into a whole. All are viewed in a context of respect. Respect for nature, respect for place, respect for people, respect for our grandkids.

“Sustainability deals with all aspects of society,” McLennan writes. If there is one principle in this book that comes through loud and clear, it’s that everything is connected. No one action or process can be done in a vacuum. It WILL affect something, somewhere. “We are not exempt in any way from this overarching interconnectedness principle. And yet, curiously and arrogantly, we act like we are.”

While McLennan talks in depth (and in an interesting style) about sustainable principles, he briefly touches on the concept of how we are disconnected from place. The idea that we have air-conditioned homes and offices that we commute to and from in air-conditioned cars, shows how we have lost our sense of place; we have increasingly relied on science and technology to solve all our problems. In relating this to global warming, he posits that our culture says, “what does it matter how hot it gets if you have an air conditioner?” For me, this is evident in our loss of the front porch and resulting demise of neighborhoods (see my “The Front Porch and the Garden” post). There are some simple principles we need to return to.

All told, this is a great read. It’s not thick, but it is substantial. The Philosophy of Sustainable Design is a “must read” book for anyone wanting to walk the talk.

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my aha moment

A couple of weeks ago, Mutual of Omaha came through Eugene. Someone from their organization had wandered across our website and contacted me about recording my “aha moment”. I thought, “why not?”

So, on a warm, sunny August day, in an Airstream trailer in downtown Eugene, I spent a few minutes chatting with Jessica Henry and recording a snippet of what started stirring in me in late 2008. It was that “stirring” that led to the beginning of thesimpleHOUSE and our whole concept. You can watch my aha moment at

my aha moment

Let me know what you think. I’m usually fairly calm in front of people, but found myself a bit nervous with lights, camera and microphone. It was still a great experience, though and I’m glad I did it. It’s always good to tell your story and fremind yourself just what it was that brought you to the point you’re at.

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The Lawrence Street House – Sidewalks and Urbanite

Our lot is 60 x 150 feet. The 150 foot side has a fairly new sidewalk, but the 60 foot side on Lawrence Street, I think may have the original sidewalk from 1940. It’s worn, broken, heaving and needs to be replaced.


Now, we could chop it up, haul it to the dump and contribute to the roughly one third of the local waste stream that comes from construction debris or (and here’s where it gets good), we could reuse those chunks as part of our landscape plan.


It’s called “urbanite” and a good description can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yk4rmzr. So we’re working with our landscape architect on this and as Rex, from DLA’s office said “I built a patio at a previous house that way and really liked it. Saves disposal and hauling energy of the old plus new material extraction and hauling energy!”

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theFERN – latest picture

stucco and roof are on theFERN in Marathon, Texas
Steven Jones sent us the latest picture of his version of theFERN that he’s building in Marathon, Texas. His comment: “I love it!”
Thanks, Steven, we’re looking forward to seeing it completed.
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The Lawrence Street House – Rainwater, Part 2

Our primary us for rainwater will be for landscape irrigation. We’re designing our landscape first to need less water to start with. That’s the way it is with good design in anything, reduce is the first “r”.

So we’re being strategic in our plant selection, using the concept of the right plant in the right place. We’re reducing our actual lawn area to just about 100 sq ft. Lawns are the largest irrigated “crop” in the US, and we often use clean, drinking water to do it.
Then, after we reduce, we’re going to reuse (the second “r”) our rainwater that already would have fallen onto the ground where our house will be. The landscaping that needs irrigation will largely be fed by a drip system. Drip irrigation is hugely more efficient than pop-up heads.
We’re also looking at using rainwater for two of the major water-using “appliances” inside our home: our toilets and clothes washer. More on those next time.
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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 – Solar Electric [update]

[added revised pricing on solar hot water system and total cost; even better than I originally thought]

In addition to thinking about our landscape design, finishing the structural plans and selecting some of our finishes (more on those to come), we’ve been looking at our solar configuration(s).

Typically, you’ll do a 2 or 3 KW photovoltaic and a separate hot water system. This maximizes tax credits and utility incentives and generates a lot of electricity and hot water. Photovoltaic systems are still expensive and the cells are getting more efficient, but they’re still relatively inefficient. HOWEVER, they are still worth it in my book.
Hot water systems typically generate a lot of hot water for a relatively low cost. As a point of comparison, a 2 KW equivalent hot water system will cost about $8,000 to $9,000 where a 2 KW stand-alone pv will be in the $13,000 neighborhood. Both of those are before credits and incentives.
But our LEED rater, Eli, has a friend who is an engineering type who had a thought. This, of course can sometimes be dangerous (engineers having thoughts can be kind of like architects having an idea). But the more I’ve considered his thought, the more it makes sense to me.
What he observed is during the summer, a typical solar hot water system will heat a normal 120 gallon solar water tank up to maximum temperature, then shut off. Two “problems” with that. First, 120 gallons is more water than most people use (a typical home has a 52 gallon water heater). Second, when it shuts off, in the time of year when you get the most solar, you are basically throwing away that extra energy by not collecting it. Two very intriguing points.
So his thought is to bag the solar hot water system with its oversized tank, pumps, plumbing, etc and put that money into upsizing your photovoltaic system. So I got some preliminary pricing on upsized pv. A 2.1 KW system is about $13,500 ($1,200 net after credits), a 3.2 KW $20,000 ($4,500 net) and a 4.9 KW system $29,400 ($9,500 net). A hot water system nets out at about $4,200 after credits. So a 3 KW plus hot water system nets at about $8,700 but boosting it up to almost 5 KW (3 KW plus the 2 KW hot water) nets at $9,500. And, during the summer, we can sell the extra back to our utility and build a credit for the winter.
We’re strongly leaning toward the 4.9 KW system. We’ll couple that with a small, 40 gallon high efficiency water heater (like the Rheem Marathon). I have Eli checking to see how much energy we should actually save (which is more important to us than the tax credits) and I’ll report how that pencils out.
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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.