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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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theFERN – Marathon, Texas

Here are some pictures of Steven Jones’ progress on theFERN that he’s building in Marathon, Texas.

He is using SIPs panels from EH Systems (http://www.ehssips.com/) and their panels will be featured in the Easter Edition of Extreme Makeover Home Edition on ABC.
I’ll be posting more pictures and following Steven’s progress as he builds theFERN. I’ll also be uploading to our website more pictures and information for you to see.
The beauty of the SIPs is these exterior walls and roof panels were installed in two days.
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The Lawrence Street House – LEED for Homes

We have officially registered our home with the US Green Building Council. This is the first step in pursuing LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification.

In addition to this registration, we hire a LEED rater — Earth Advantage from P-Town. Our local rater is Eli and he worked with us on theSAGE.
He is starting some preliminary calculations for the building shell (walls, floors, roof insulation and windows) so we can establish a baseline of where we’ll be for energy efficiency.
One concept we’ll be incorporating throughout is the idea that the most efficient heater, the most efficient light, the most efficient (insert item here) is the one you don’t have to use in the first place. This saves on many levels: initial cost (you don’t buy it), operating costs (you don’t use it) and maintenance costs (if it ain’t there, you don’t have to fix it).
I do have to insert here that there are some up front costs associated with some efficiency measures (extra insulation to reduce heating and cooling needs). But in the overall life-cycle cost of a home, only about 10-15% is the initial cost; virtually all of the rest (about 85%) is the operating and maintenance costs: paying for the energy to run the furnace or turn on the lights.
So we will be looking at efficiency measures up front. The house is already designed to take advantage of natural lighting and we’re looking at every other component with these efficiency measures in mind.
As an aside, I think we’re going to love our new neighborhood. Brenda and I went down last week to mow the weeds (trying to be a good neighbor), and met our soon-to-be neighbor, Jim. We had a very pleasant conversation with him and I’m sure we’ll enjoy living on Lawrence.
Stay tuned.
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The Lawrence Street House – SDU (finally)

Finally. We have the design for our secondary dwelling unit (aka SDU). It’s amazing how challenging it has been to design a two-bedroom, one bath home in under 800 square feet.

City of Eugene code allows for a second dwelling on the same property if the lot is large enough (it is), if the owner of the property lives in one of the houses (we will) and the second house is no larger than 800 square feet (it comes in at a relatively lean 776 square feet).
Having the mindset of small homes and having done this before with theFERN plan, I thought this would be fairly straightforward. Was I wrong. theFERN is a generous 1,024 sq ft. It’s interesting when you get this small how every inch counts even more.
Our SDU is 250 sq ft SMALLER than theFERN. That’s the equivalent of a room 15 x 16 feet. Pretty large. And we still wanted two bedrooms.
After lots of pushing and pulling, reviews, sketches, redraws, redesign, hair-pulling, we feel we have a really good plan. It blends well with our main house and will have similar details. You can download a larger pdf version of the picture by clicking here.
I’m actually very happy with the way it laid out.
AND, we met with our Landscape Architect yesterday and he’s starting on the site/landscape. I’ll talk more about our design goals and philosophy about the landscape in a future post.
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The Lawrence Street House – Charrette

What is a charrette? The classic definition is an intense period of design activity. It usually consists of gathering several of the involved people, clients and designers in one room for an uninterrupted time of brain-storming.

We have found this to be valuable, resulting in incredible results with our previous project, theSAGE, so thought we should do this with our home.
So Friday, January 29, myself, my wife, my business partner Dan and one of our staff, Ryan, sat down for about 2 1/2 hours to go over our schematic design I have shown you here over the last few posts. It was a time of collaboration and exchange of ideas, as well as a fresh look at the home.
Sometimes, we can be too close to a design. With that, it takes an “outsider’s” perspective to give some input. This time yesterday was incredibly valuable. Both Dan and Ryan understand my wife and my lifestyle enough that they gave us input and insights we hadn’t either thought of or considered.
With that, we are making some refinements to the plan layout, specifically in the main bath, utility and den areas. We also had a chance to refine the exterior direction, which is the rough sketch you see above. Our first “hit” on the exterior was good, but this is better, so we’re heading this way.
Over the next few days, I’ll be refining the plan and developing the exterior a little further. We are now entering what we call the design development phase. This means the schematic is on track, we can develop things with a little more detail and refinement before we enter the working drawings stage.
My wife and I are even more excited about the direction our home design is going and are looking forward to this next phase. The process is working. And it’s working really well.
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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 Lot – circa 1948

Just found out a friend of ours lived in the house that was on our lot when she was in high school in 1948. She was gracious enough to scan some of her old pictures.

This is the original front porch.

Small world.