As many of our close friends and family know, this house has been a work in progress for years. We began some preliminary design sketches about 4 years ago and we are now weeks away from breaking ground. The past 4 years have been interesting, to say the least, and our family is larger now - but overall the design goals remain the same. We always knew we wanted to build something "different" - unlike the McMansions so common everywhere these days - but somewhere along the way, we came to the notion of green building. Over the past four years our dream home has evolved into an eco-sensitive, holistic creation - something to be proud of and something to help instill some environmental sensibilities and priorities in our children. If, by chance we educate some others along the way - that's okay too!
Briefly stated, our house is a passive-solar, modern-industrial home. It's small by most standards at just under 2,300 sq ft. It has a wide open living area on the first floor which contains a living, dining, and kitchen. The home's first floor is also universally designed (ie ADA accessible) with a first floor Master bedroom and ramped entrance walkway. The second floor contains 3 more bedrooms and a loft-office. Because I work from home, the loft office allows me to have my own space, while still being able to keep one eye and ear on the kids either down in the Living Areas, or in the adjacent bedroom/play room. The central, two story utility core houses the small but efficient laundry space, the master bath, and a powder room on the first floor, and the kids' bath on the second floor. We will use rainwater to flush toilets, wash clothes, and for outdoor uses. We will use dual flush toilets (you get to pick the size of flush you need!), and a solar hot water heating system. The ultimate goal is to install a grid-tied, roof-mounted, PV solar electric system as soon as funds permit. This will allow our house to be heated AND powered by the sun, and our water heated by the sun as well. Materials for the home were chosen for their recyclability, non-toxicity, proximity to our location, and so on. In a nut shell - that's the low down on the house itself, now let's move on to the process so far.
Like I said, research and design has been about 4 years. About two years ago we began looking for building lots. Because we have young children, we wanted something in an older suburban or urban-fringe area instead of something downtown. Neither of us work downtown, and even though great strides have been made to impove the infrastructure for residential living in downtown Cincinnati, it's still not quite there yet - for families at least. For a single person, young couple, or retired couple, downtown might be great, but it's not really ready for kids - in our opinion. Soooo - we first looked in the older, closer suburbs - not wanting to promote urban sprawl any more. We looked for areas that were convenient to transportation routes and services like doctors offices, hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, schools, churches, and parks. Knowing that we wanted to build a solar home offered it's own challenges. We needed an unobstructed southern exposure for at least 5 hours a day, and again we were on a rediculously tight budget. After about a year of searching (and overlooking this piece of land several times) we finally looked at a lot in Clermont County Ohio - just east of downtown. The lot was a "flag lot" where you have a long drive to access the property from the road, and the lot is behind other houses. The neighborhood was nice and had been developed about 25 years ago. It was developed in the traditional way - selling tracts of farmland off in one acre parcels, but this one behind the rest was nearly 2 acres, fairly flat, and had been vacant for 25 years. Although we weren't crazy about the way the neighborhood originally developed, we
were crazy about the property - nearly 2 acres, half of it wooded - and it's location. The lot was private, but within 2 miles of all of the things we needed as mentioned above. We would be able to keep the wooded area and install a native prairie meadow as well. (We are big on maintenance-free everything). We purchased the lot in Summer of 2005 and began our journey toward construction. Shortly after purchasing the lot, my husband took a job with a high school about 5 miles from the property (he's a high school math teacher and basketball coach), so with me working from home, and him 5 miles away - we will be such the eco-family! He's even thinking about getting a bicycle to ride to school in nice weather.
Over the past 9 months we have tweaked the final design, consulted with solar consultants and engineers, contractors, fabricators, and vendors of other products. We have put the word out to anyone and everyone that the house is on its way. W e have been featured in Cincinnati Magazine. We are letting everyone know that the home will be open for tours (including the annual Ohio Solar Homes Tour each October), and have been encouraging architects, designers, students, educators, engineers, ecologists, horticulturalists (and any other -ists who will listen) to contact us and let us know of their interest in touring. For each tour we will discuss the construction methods and PRODUCTS used on the house. This is a huge perk for the contractors and vendors of the products being used in the house. We've already had several products donated or provided at deep discount in exchanged for mention in marketing and tour materials, and placing product literature on display during tours. It's a WIN, WIN situation. Everybody sees, everybody learns.
After getting all of the drawings in order (I did the construction documents myself - with some consultation with Robin Hahn of Advantage Group Engineers on the framing and concrete floor system), we are now ready to proceed with zoning and building permits. We have applied for our financing through the same bank that holds the lot loan, so we are just waiting for their final word. As soon as they say the construction money is in the account, we can send the drawings in for permit. We don't see any hold ups there, so hopefully we'll be able to give the excavator the green light sometime in April. Excavation and utilities are another story - did I mention it was a "flag lot" with a 315 foot x 20 foot wide driveway from the street? I'll follow up on that one with details another time!
The only potential problem for the permits could be the rainwater catchment system, but we've talked to the county about that before, and I think we've satisfied them - but that's a whole other story!
That's pretty much the beginning of the beginning. Other than the pesky details, you are caught up to this point in time. As we move through construction, I'll talk more about the details, but for now it's a waiting game with the bank. I'll try and figure out how to post photos and get some of the property up here! Enjoy and thanks for reading!
