Why we don't have smaller houses

A great article from this Sunday's New York Times. Why can't we build smaller houses? The wonderful Sarah Susanka is one of the commenters.

Marvin's New Product Viewer

I have often used Marvin products for custom projects. Marvin has just put a great 360 degree product viewer on their website. This viewer lets you look at any aspect of their windows and doors from any angle and you can zoom out or in. I applaud manufacturer's websites that make their offerings easy to understand, specify, and interact with online. I'd like to make a category for this kind of thing but what do you call it? Helpful product viewers? 

Cozy Cottages

A good article from Builder Magazine featuring ten small cottage projects. It's gratifying to see in the past couple of years that the idea of building smaller houses is finally getting some attention from the mainstream shelter media. these projects have some great new ideas and reinforce some of the best ideas already out there.

Appliances at Lumenhaus

As I mentioned, the Lumenhaus website goes into exquisite detail regarding all aspects of the concept. This page describes the appliances in the kitchen and laundry. Notice the Fisher Paykiel Dishdrawer previously recommended in these pages.

Lumenhaus Kitchen

The photo on the left shows another great idea: natural light backsplash!

Concept Home Of The Future

Lumenhaus is the name of the house concept developed and built by a team at Virginia Tech for the Solar Decathlon-Europe competition held last June in Spain. They also built a great website explaining all of the ideas and methods used in the house.

Sound Control

Yesterday, I had a client ask me about sound control. (thanks Stow). Over the years I've done a few projects involving serious sound control including a Film/TV editing and recording suite. There are some new products and techniques out there that are covered in this video from JLC TV. The important thing to remember is that a wall assembly with drywall or plaster on each side acts like a drum and can actually amplify sound from one room to another. Eliminating this "drum effect" is the technical goal of all sound deadening efforts.

You can get much deeper into this topic if you're interested but here are some quick and easy tips:

Vinyl Sound Barrier Sheet Material

• Fill the wall with fiberglass or cellulose (duh)
• Split the studs with a saw kerf down the center (you can leave a few inches of attachment at the ends)
• Install vinyl sound barrier before drywall or gypsum lath, this is a very dense yet flexible material with extraordinary sound-deadening qualities. Can be expensive and hard to find.
• Use sound-attenuating drywall clips
• For a DIY solution install foam weatherstrpping  between the stud and the drywall or gypsum lath
• Use special soundproofing drywall (generally available at home centers)
• DON"T use metal studs!

There is more product information at any of the links above. One stop sourcing for a lot of products and sound-proofing information here.

Two Energy Efficiency Tools You Can Use Right Now

Green Building Advisor's Energy Efficiency Pyramid

At Next Step Living we're always thinking about how to communicate the important points of energy efficiency to homeowners without getting bogged down in technical details. Here's a great article from Green Building Advisor about the fundamentals of energy efficiency and an easy-to understand pyramid chart.

Green Building Advisor is an excellent free site incidentally. It's put together by Taunton Press,publishers of Fine Homebuilding. There is a pay version that goes into more technical depth and has lots of drawings and details. Professional builders may find the pay site worthwhile.

EnergySavvy Online Audit Tool

If, as you look at this pyramid, you get so excited you want to get started making your home more energy efficient right away, you can do an online energy audit . It's quick and informative.

The online energy audit tool is a story in itself: developed by EnergySavvy and initial roll-out by Next Step Living. More about it from TechCrunch.

After looking at all this you decide you want to get something done about it...fast...go here and book an audit.

Panasonic Energy Recovery Ventilator

Panasonic FV-04VE1

For years Panasonic has made the best bathroom fans. Ask anybody who owns one or who has installed one: they make all other bath fans look like cheap toys. Now Panasonic is offering an energy recovery ventilator or ERV : a fan that not only exhausts stale air and excess moisture but supplies fresh air and - this is the important part - keeps the heat from the warm exhaust air inside the house where it belongs. (simple bath fans just blow warm air out, wasting energy)

Like any other quality appliance, this unit is not cheap (online retailers are offering it at around $300.00), but before this unit came on the market most ERVs were about twice the price, bulky and difficult to install, and  hard to find.

Panasonic fans are VERY quiet. I once had a customer call me to say that her recently installed Panasonic bath fan wasn't working: it turned out it was so quiet she couldn't tell that it was on. They are also very well designed with a rough-in housing that allows the working part of the fan to be replaced if necessary without ripping the whole unit out. If you've ever had to replace a bath fan (and most other bath fans fail after a few years), you know what a pain it is.

This fan is designed for continuous use: at 40CFM (that's not much air flow) it would be appropriate for continuous use as mechanical ventilation for a very tight house or for intermittent use as a bath fan with a timer or moisture sensor.

There are many products like this that are not well known...maybe I should create an award of some kind for products like this. What do you think readers?

More for EE nerds: New Water-Blown Foam

The new water-blown "medium density" foam introduced by Icynene earlier this year has significanltly improved the performance of open cell foam insulation. Downloadable MSDS at this link.

1. Water blown, yep w-a-t-e-r...is that toxic?
2. R-value: 5.2 per inch, yep 5.2...change the tables guys.
3. Harder, stronger, stiffer..less onsite damage, stiffens flimsy roof and ceiling assemblies.
4. Recycled content qualifies for extra LEED credits

Warning: For Energy Nerds- Wall Energy Rating

All of us in the energy efficiency business know that building assemblies depending on fiberglass for insulating value almost never function at the nominal R value theoretically obtainable by a given thickness of fiberglass. We see a lot of attics with 5-1/2" fiberglass batts bearing a stamp on the label of R-19 that in fact function at R-5 or less. If you've never seen the BPI guidelines for the value of existing insulation, you might be surprised. (At least in an attic you can improve the situation pretty easily with blown-in cellulose.) But how about an existing stud wall? There's no room for any more insulation. Canadian building scientists are trying to develop a new thermal rating system for walls called, appropriately enough, wall energy rating. The purpose of this rating is to more realistically reflect the thermal resistance of wall assemblies subject to air infiltration.

Huge Impact Expected From Energy Innovation in US

Here's a report from the Whitehouse on the gains expected in the energy, transportation, and medical research sectors over the next few years as a result of economic stimulus. The section on energy makes for some pretty exciting reading!

Green Bath Remodel Guidelines

Here is an excellent article on green bath remodeling from Regreen. The article talks about all the major issues including moisture and ventilation.

Things To Do With Weeds

Laura Spector Rustic Design

Tired of fighting with bittersweet? Here's an idea that will give purpose to cutting down this noxious weed: make beautiful furniture out of it!

Green Masterpiece

I urge everyone who ia interested in green architecture to take a look at this article in The New York Times. Tom that means you! You can also just go directly to the slideshow. This house, built on a lot in Racine Wisconsin with a stunning view of Lake Michigan has many great features including a well-designed small kitchen (notice the 27" Sub-Zero on the right) built of sustainable materials. Some other highlights:

• This is a small house (that's a compliment incidentally), large sections of the cube are occupied by garage and decks. the living space is comparable to a typical suburban ranch.
• The geothermal heating system reportedly cost more than 100K. I love geothermal, but it is not for the faint of heart!
• Innovative cement-board exterior. Cement board (typically used as tile-backer or underlayment) is a very durable, inexpensive and accessible material. It can be used as weatherproof exterior shell. The challenge is to use it in a visually appealing way. Here the architects have succeeded admirably.

Apart from the technological solutions, this house evokes some of the best  principles of "naturally" green design:

• Site specific design
• Well-planned inside-outside transitions
• Not-So-Big (thanks Sarah)
• Extensive use of natural light
• Extensive use of natural ventilation

Another Small Kitchen

Here's a very compact "kitchenette" I built a few years ago using the GE convection/micro and the Wolf 15" cooktop. There is a Bosch dishwasher between the sink and the cooktop.  This arrangement with a small but adequate sink only occupies 84 inches. The cabinets were handmade and hand-finished onsite by your humble blogger. This kitchenette was part of a much larger guesthouse project.

Fabricating and finishing the cabinets onsite can have sustainability advantages if there's room to do it. It allows us to work closely with eco-conscious owners to specify locally sourced, non toxic materials and finishes.

The backsplash is travertine and the countertop is granite. Not shown is a 27" sub-zero refrigerator-freezer  and a 15" trash pull-out. The entire kitchen occupies 10' along one wall but could have been designed as a 7' by 7' galley. The Sub-Z 27" series just came on the market a few years ago and is a good compact choice if an undercounter fridge is just too spartan.

Appliance Tips for Tiny Kitchens

Someone recently asked me for appliance recommendations for small kitchens. This is another of my favorite topics and was I ready! The four appliances below are my favorites for coaxing maximum function from a minimum of space without sacrificing design or quality:

1. GE Advantium over-the range-type combination convection oven/microwave/ventilator  
2. Two-burner Wolf gas cooktop
3.  Subzero under-counter refrigerator-freezer-icemaker
4. Fisher-Paykiel single dish-drawer dishwasher

These are all high-quality appliances (not cheap) but they can save a lot of space  Arranged properly, these appliances can provide you with a high-functioning galley kitchen in the space of a sizable closet: 5' x 7'. Yep believe it! All lined up against one wall they can be arranged to take up less than 7' of wall space. I'll go through them one-by-one:

GE Profile Advantium 240

GE Advantium 240: This is a great appliance, I don't know why kitchen designers don't use it more often. Convection oven, microwave, ventilator...three appliances in one. That's a lot of function in a space that's 30" x 16". What more do you need to know? Used as shown you can put a cabinet above it. If you have more headroom than legroom as apartments sometimes do, you can put a substantial cabinet over it. The fan can be vented or unvented with filters. As a cabinetmaker, I know that this type of appliance can be fussy to install (especially in frameless cabinetry, it depends on the cabinetry for some support and you can easily rack the cabinetry out of alignment if you're not careful) but the results of a careful installation are well worth it. To design a very small kitchen: put the Wolf cooktop to one side of the 30" space below this oven and use the remaining 15" for some of the space needed for a sink. The bad news: it costs around $1,000.00.

Wolf 15" Gas Cooktop

Wolf 15" Gas Cooktop: This is not a toy. the Wolf cooktop is the type of professional-level cooking appliance found in the larger Wolf  stoves but in compact form. It is heavy-duty and well made. It can be shoehorned into a 15" wide cabinet (it takes exactly 15" of space) but you will not be able to put a drawer beneath it. The remaining space in the 15" cabinet is a good place for a trash pull-out.

Sub-Zero 24" Undercounter Refrigerator

Sub-Zero 24" refrigerator-freezer-icemaker: Another triple-play. A well-made, highly functional appliance that is designed to take up a minimum of space. There are other undercounter fridges but they don't play well with others (difficult to integrate into the cabinetry). Save yourself the frustration, get the sub-z. After all you're saving money by having such a small kitchen right? This isn't a dorm fridge. It can give you a refrigerator, freezer, and icemaker in 24".  The best part about this appliance is that it doesn't use up any counter space as most all refrigerators do. This one attribute allows a much smaller kitchen.

Fisher-Paykiel Single Dishdrawer

Fisher-Paykiel Single Dishdrawer dishwasher: This is such a great idea I don't know why it took someone so long to think of it. OK it's been around for a while but it should have been a standard long before now. This dishwasher is 24" wide just like any other but it's only18" high. That means it can have a substantial 12" high cabinet drawer below it for more storage space. The Fisher-Paykiel is also a nicely made appliance that integrate well into either standard American style or European style frameless cabinetry (think IKEA).

So there you have it dear reader. A mini-kitchen that can handle the demands of the most discriminating kitchen designer as well as a gourmet cook. If you want some more tips about how to design with these units just ask.

Cool Stonework

Hope Baptist Church in Boston

I love good stonework. Building with stone is like building with the bones of the earth. It's the ultimate natural building material. In most places here in Massachusetts you can just reach down wherever you're standing, grab a stone and start building something. That's how all these stone walls got here!

 Everywhere I go I stop to study the stonework. Every region has it's particular types of stone and vernacular styles of building with it. It's something you might not notice until you really stop to take a closer look. New England is rich in different types of building stone-granites, limestones, schists, shales, and conglomerates. There's so much stone around here that you don't even notice it after a while.

I want to show you a photo of a church on Tremont Street in Boston. I took the photo walking home after parking my car this afternoon. The stone is local, quarried within walking distance: it's called Roxbury Conglomerate or "puddingstone", a metamorphic stone that's full of little pebbles fused together by volcanic heat and pressure. The more finely wrought corners and window surrounds are limestone probably from the Connecticut valley.

Stop to look at the stones!

I've worked with Roxbury puddingstone and the interesting thing is that although it seems to be completely amorphous (like plum pudding) there is a  grain and it splits very cleanly ( in one direction only) to create parallel faces. I've found the stone to be of widely varying quality and hardness. Some of it just crumbles into pebbles. There are some very interesting old buildings and walls around Boston, Brookline, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain made out of puddingstone. I have a feeling that in days past there were some places that quarried stone of relatively uniform quality. I don't know of anyplace today where you can buy Roxbury puddingstone but if you're excavating in this area you might get more than you want.

In this building the stone is laid with flush joints in random, almost rubble style. You see this style in Tuscan farmhouses. There is a very sensitive balance between rusticity and formality in the way this stone is laid and in the random sizes of the stones. The rustic puddingstone is made to look somewhat formal but the formal limestone details have a rustic hand-hewn look to them.  I wonder if these stonemasons were Italian?

Can Energy Policy Work?

Thinking about energy policy isn't so comfy, but it's cool to see what's happening in Europe. I've been reading the recently published report on environment and energy use in the EU.

For the sixth consecutive year EU-27 energy

intensity (gross inland consumption divided by

gross domestic product) dropped while GDP

continued a general upward trend over the same

period.

The report is full of interesting and fairly accessible facts, figures, and charts about the energy economy in the Eurozone for 2009. Some highlights:

• Energy dependency fell by 5.7%.
• Production of renewable energy rose 8.3% while production of all other energy sources fell. 
• Denmark is a net exporter of energy mainly due to emphasis on renewables.

The "highly regulated" energy policy environment in Europe is working. And this is in spite of some countries where energy intensity remains fairly high.

Comfy Cosy Cool Roman Style

In case you haven't noticed, I believe that the garden is a very important part of every house. Homes need to feel connected to the landscape and the outdoor environment in order to be C-3 (comfy cosy and cool). In the Roman summer, it is a problem to stay literally cool.

Roman Cool

 Louise just turned me on to this great site (can you tell my wife is a landscape architect?). Here you can explore all kinds of gardens large and small, old and new, with some of the best ideas in garden design from the past 2000 years. The most recent post is on the gardens of Roman Empress Livia, an archeological site just north of Rome (the Italians know how to live).Thanks Garden History Girl for creating a truly valuable resource. I expect to spend a lot of time at your site.

What I Almost Called This Blog

Nostrodomus: The House Whisperer
I still like it. :)

Wistariahurst Museum

If you visit this place in the spring you'll see the most spectacular wistaria display in New England. In Holyoke Massachusetts.

Wisteria in Boston

For wisteria lovers: this is a great article about a life-long wisteria project in Cambridge MA. Photos and tips on getting wisteria to bloom. Thanks to Louise! p.s. Why doesn't our wisteria ever bloom?

Small kitchen renovation

Tiny, I mean really tiny, low budget kitchen renovation in an older brick row house in Holyoke Massachusetts. I love this kind of project: no matter how small the space or the budget, thoughtful design is the magic ingredient. Open shelves instead of cabinets is a great idea for small spaces, it keeps the space from feeling closed in and lets light into every corner of the room. See the whole project.

Before

After

Foreign green investment gives up on US

Foreign capital for Green Business investment is leaving the US due to governmental inaction on climate change legislation. Yet many commentators and politicians say climate change legislation is "anti business". Foreign investment has always been a huge driver of growth in the US. After all we used to be a British colony. I guess I'm the only one old enough to remember those days. The article below is worth a read.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67A3JK20100811?type=GCA-GreenBusiness

Moisture: Good and Bad

Moisture inside the house that can range from flowing water (bad unless it's in the shower or sink) to relative humidity in the air (good within a certain range) is a fascinating topic and sometimes counterintuitive. I'm thinking about it right now because I'm about to paint my house and there's an area where the paint never lasts more than a few years. I'll take a picture over the weekend and talk some more about this problem, but right now I just want to give a few of the not-so obvious reasons every homeowner should take some time to understand moisture and the importance of having not too little, not too much, but keeping it "just right".
Too much can cause: peeling paint, mold and mildew, ants and other bugs.
Too little can cause: cracking woodwork, cracking skin and nasal passages, feeling chilly even though the thermostat is set to a nominal comfort level. More about moisture later.

Passive solar home of a different breed:

Passive solar home of a different breed:  Next Step Living has broken ground on an energy efficient house with many radically new features. The house is designed by NSL's own Tom Pittsley who is managing the construction. Follow the link to see pictures and Tom's description of his design goals.

Cheap LED Solution for Downlights Is On The Way

Older recessed lights are a major problem for energy efficiency. They leak air, they hog power, they make insulation retrofit difficult and sometimes impossible. The good news is that there's a cheap, accessible (Home Depot) retrofit LED plug-in on the way.