Posted in Design Projects, Information, tagged Accessory Dwelling Units, Berkeley, Electrification, green, small buildings, Strawbale, tiny houses on May 10, 2022| Leave a Comment »
John McBride and I have two projects on this years tour. A strawbale accessory dwelling unit and a stick framed accessory dwelling unit. We are proud of both projects and put a lot of extra heart and soul into them. The tour is free. you just sign up HERE. I’ll be there to answer questions.
Posted in Design Projects, tagged accessory dwelling unit, ADU, Berkeley, details, green, lighting design, process, small buildings on June 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »
First here is a 3d model we built as a schematic design tool. A few things changed and not all the details are there, but you can get a sense of the overall layout.
This one was a rebuild of an existing garage. (We had to rebuild it to meet the energy standards for habitable space, but we had to keep it the same as the garage in footprint, height, and roofline. ) The owners wanted to keep it simple…and kind of traditional. We think it turned out well.
The heating is a Fujitsu minisplit, the insulation is beyond code including slab edge insulation, lighting is all LED, high efficacy, & high CRI. A spot HRV keeps the air fresh even when the owners are out of town.
Posted in Design Projects, tagged Berkeley, concrete, green, process, small buildings, Strawbale on September 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Design Projects, tagged ADU, air tight ness, airtight, Berkeley, blower door test, Building Science, castle, cottage, decoration, green, green building, net zero, painted beam, pattern, patterns, small buidings, tiny house, tinyhouse on March 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The painted ridge beam went in this week. You can see, if you look closely, another castle post to complement the beam.
We also did a preliminary blower door test to check for airtightness and passed with flying colors
And finally we had a ceremonial sage burning inside the building last night…to bring the good sprits and chase away the bad. Due to the airtightness, the building was still smokey in the morning after the ceremony! (The ventilation system is not yet operational and no windows were open)
Posted in Design Projects, tagged ADU, All electric, Berkeley, cottage, Energy Conservation, flyash, framing, FSC, green, McBride Construction, process, rockwool, Solar on June 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
McBride Construction (and others…foundation by Caliber Structural and rough plumbing by Braco Plumbing) have this 484 SF ADU well on its way . It’s nice to see it take form. You can’t see one green innovation that is hidden under the slab. Instead of rigid foam insulation we used rigid rockwool. Concrete is high volume flyash. The framing lumber is FSC certified. The building will get a blower door test and it must meet a high standard for air tightness. (You can still open the window or turn on the ERV for fresh air, but your air won’t be trickling in through dusty cracks and crevices) Stay tuned for more. .
Posted in Design Projects, tagged framing, FSC Certified, green, process, small buildings on May 22, 2015| 1 Comment »
I am excited to see this backyard studio take shape. Happy to have a skillful framer and a pile of kiln dried FSC certified lumber. I stopped by just in time to help lift that big beam into place. A challenging job for a solo framer.
Posted in Information, tagged California, energy efficiency, green, lighting design on August 3, 2014| 1 Comment »
I was impressed by this little tidbit in a recent Title 24 Seminar I attended. Sometimes the California energy codes seem behind the technology and sometimes overly technical and expensive, requiring expensive gadgets and fixtures, but look at the energy savings!!!
Here is the whole story from the California Energy Commission.
Posted in Design Projects, tagged ash, floor finish, flooring, green, riftsawn oak, rubio monocoat, wood, woodgrain on January 9, 2014| 1 Comment »
My client is choosing between two very different woods for their flooring throughout the house. The samples are both very nice, so I thought I’d share them. Both of these are finished with clear Rubio Monocoat, an environmentally friendly wood finish that is more matte than conventional floor finishes. We are also hoping that since it is not shiny it might not show wear as much. It is much easier to repair scratches in this type of finish.
The first sample shown here is Rift Sawn Oak. It has a very regular grain pattern of tight straight lines. It is a medium warm brown color.
Select Rift Sawn Oak with Rubio Monocoat
The second sample is ash. Ash has a very pretty, much less regular grain pattern and an ash blond color.
Ash Flooring with Rubio Monocoat
They can’t go wrong with either of these, but I am particularly partial to Ash.
Posted in Information, tagged energy efficiency, green, New York, thermal imaging camera on October 29, 2013| 2 Comments »
I stole this photo from the website of Fabrica718. It is an image taken with an infrared camera of a block of Brooklyn brownstones. The blue one is the one they remodelled….blue because its envelope is so well insulated that very little heat is escaping. Pretty cool. I’m not sure why most of the other houses have blue second and third story windows. I can’t imagine that the whole block has been upgraded to triple pane. Any ideas?
Posted in Information, tagged appraisal, appraisals make me grumpy, earth sheltered, green, houses, landscape, underground buildings on October 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Appraisals make me grumpy. It seems brutal to reduce the value of a house to square footage, numbers of bedrooms, and whether the bathroom floor has tile. There are so many intangibles that contribute to the value of a house. For example the two large trees in front of my house that shade my bedroom in the summer with their dense greenery then turn bright orange yellow and red in the fall. Of course there has to be some way to quantify a house’s worth for banks.
One guideline that seems pretty silly is the rule that square footage that is even slightly below grade is not counted as square footage. This realestate agent’s article has some funny comments. One guy actually seems to have hired a bulldozer to unearth his house so that he could qualify for a loan. Another homeowner determined that he has no square footage because his entire house is dug into the earth.
I thought of one of the inspirations of my youth, Malcolm Wells. He was an architect in Massachusetts who built most of his buildings underground. Here are some of his words about this way of building (from his website):
“…By letting our structure hog all the sunlight wherever we go, we stamp out much of the natural riches of our land. Weather is not kind to building materials. They need to be protected by a blanket of earth. Otherwise, ice cracks the freeways, water rusts bridge structures, floods rage because water cannot soak into impervious ground….”
“…We live in an era of glitzy buildings and trophy houses: big, ugly, show-off monsters that stand—or I should say stomp—on land stripped bare by the construction work and replanted with toxic green lawns. If the buildings could talk they would be speechless with embarrassment, but most of us see nothing wrong with them, and would, given the opportunity, build others like them, for few of us realize that there’s a gentler way to build. It’s called underground.”
Posted in Information, tagged energy efficiency, garden, green, utilitarian, value on September 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »
A simple diagram taken from this site….full of a lot of similar concepts for sustainable living.
Posted in Design Projects, tagged garden, gray water, green, grey water, plants on September 15, 2013| 2 Comments »
Yes, my Bougainvillea looks pretty sad, but hopefully soon Ill have some good “after” shots for you. I just installed a bathtub greywater system! (See the green hose attached to the drain line?)
deedsdesign 