The Site . . .

As I mentioned yesterday, green design is a holistic approach to building, where every piece and every decision affects all others, and it all starts with site selection. I mentioned how proximity to workplace, services, and transportation routes is important. I also mentioned how this site was NOT part of a new development on rural land, but instead a vacant lot in an already established neighborhood of more than 25 years old. All of these are important issues to consider when building green. Actually, the MOST green way to build is to rennovate and restore existing structures, but that's someone else's "blog."

Today I've included some images of the site and survey. From my site plan below, you can see a portion of the lot and the placement of the house. You can also see some natural features and existing trees that we'll keep. This plan also shows the orientation of the house to TRUE north/south, and the distances to property lines and solar obstructions (existing large trees). You can see that our neighbor has already provided us with an evergreen (coniferous) windbreak of Eastern White Pines to the northeast along the property line - which we hope to extend to the northwest. (Feel free to click on the images to see them larger).
As I mentioned before, the site is fairly flat. The survey shown below also shows how the house will sit on the land. You can also see the entire lot in this one. (Note the north arrow toward the bottom right corner - sorry about the rotation). You can see that the house sits on an east-west axis and the garage juts out from the northeastern corner. This is the cleared area of the lot, while the far end at the bottom of this picture (the western end) is mostly wooded. This shade at the western end is ideal to block some of the late afternoon summer sun. Most of the woods are deciduous, as you could see from the previous pictures, so there is less obstruction of the sun when we need it most - winter.
The site selection is important for many reasons. Solar orientation, trees or other obstructions, prevailing winds, and views - among other issues - all play an important part of siting in green design. We had to study our site's average seasonal temperatures, average amount of sun light, rainfall, and wind in order to place the home accurately for optimum function and performance.