After a year of looking for a house or site for our project, we have finally found success and are getting set to start construction before the end of the year.
The goal of this project is to create a sustainably design and built house for our family that can also act as a demonstration project. Kevin's business, EcoDEEP will be located within the house. The house will be a great showcase for sustainable products and strategies.
As we set out looking for a project house, we were focusing on:
- A site in St. Paul close to public transportation and amenities. We want to limit the need for use of our car.
- An existing house in need of updating (no brand new kitchens) and one that can be transformed into a modern house (no tudors or other strong historic styles).
- A site that will allow solar access for both passive and active solar systems.
We were able to find a 1940's house in St. Paul's Highland Park. Great location and close to shopping, library, parks and river.
2 comments:
Part of me feels awkward about posting a comment now to a post from so many months ago, but as my question is regarding something you likely decided in about this time frame...
Did you look into a geothermal heat pump as one of the green features you would include in your new home, and if so, what factors counted against putting that into the design?
Doug -
We considered geo-thermal briefly.
It is a very efficient system that genreally offers pretty good payback periods.
Because the existing home already has a high efficiency furnace, and because of the other energy efficiency strategies wwe're including in the design of the house to significantly reduce our energy load (thereby making a geothermal system have less overall impact on effcy wth longer paybac periods) and because the soil conditions were not optimum for geo-thermal on our lot, it just wans't the best choice for this project. I would recommend it as a great system to others, however. One just needs to make sure it's a good fit for the specific project.
-K
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