moving forward!

Now things are finally starting to move!  Hans has contacted an Engineering friend, John, who is working on that side of the plans.  The plan is to turn the plans in to the building department before Christmas and to start building in March.  We will be using ICF's for the entire structure of the house.  What is an ICF you ask? (I didn't know either)  it is an Insulated Concrete Form.  to build the house these Styrofoam forms are connected together kind of like leggos.  The inside is hollow and reinforced with re-bar.  The concrete is poured into the forms and when it sets, you have your wall.  These will replace standard wood frame construction and will make the house much more quiet while still keeping the high insulation standards we need to be a passive house.  I have posted an image for you.  This is not our house but a building of some sort. Imagine you are above it looking down.

John, our engineering friend loves Hans' fabulous  house design and said it needed only one small touch.  We should take the curved glass wall that faces out to the back and the patio and make it retract to open up the room to the outside.  He is right that it would give us that extra WOW factor.  But I am afraid the WOW factor for me would be my reaction when I see how much that would cost.  Sorry John, gonna pass on that one and keep the french doors!

Posted below is the interior layout - the red colors are the driveway, cars and the patio, the salmon or pink in the kitchen are the appliance (on the right is a wall oven and convection microwave)  We will have a very large island in the kitchen with a vegetable sink and dishwasher below.  The dining section of the island is raised.  The floors will be polished concrete with perhaps real linoleum (not vinyl) on the bathroom floors.  I never realized that real linoleum which is back on the rise, is very eco-friendly.

Update August 24, 2013

I'll bet you, our friends and relatives thought we gave up!  No, the project is slowly plodding along.  Now that Hans has finished participating in the death ride (a bicycle ride that took all of his time for the past year to train for)  he is back to speed with the house.  As you will see in the new images the final design (assuming the HOA agrees) has changed a bit.

Taking Shape!

It has been a fun past couple of months.  Hans is now a Certified Passive House Architect. Through the friends and contacts he has made in the Passive House Alliance, he is learning all sorts of great tips on how to build smarter and more efficiently.  We thank those brave pioneers who built the very first houses so we could all learn from them!  Hans has recently been asked to design a home that will be very energy efficient in Tahoe and is working with another architect as the Passive Consultant for two of his homes. 

Somehow he has still managed to start the design work on our home in what little spare time he has.  Who said Passive Houses are ugly?  Well, they never met my guy!  By the way, the building below the house is Hans' dream man-cave.  A wood shop, auto shop and artists studio.   Some of the Outside features will change a bit, such as stair connections and the back planter areas but the house design is becoming pretty solid.  I love it!  It will have 3 bedrooms 2 1/2 baths , a formal dining room, and a massive kitchen and family space  where a curved wall of glass lets you overlook the greenbelt with its deer and other creatures.  The slope of the land also allows us to have a large wine cellar under the  family area.

Front entrance round window is the dining room location

The curved wall of windows looks out toward the Greenbelt

A birds eye view

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The Land

We found this lovely piece of land on a beautiful street. The highest point will be where the house is built.  The land slopes down to a forest where we have found the creatures visiting the neighborhood on every visit.....Deer, fox, wild turkeys, peacocks and a skunk family (haven't seen the skunks yet and sure hope I never have evidence in the air that they are there!)

The Education of an Architect

Hans decided that before we build our dream home he should attend a course to become certified in designing a passive house.  What is this you may ask?  Apparently we are going to have a very green home. A passive house, which is a concept first utilized in Germany,  is built in a way that it needs to pass an air-lock test when finished.  The windows are as insulating as the super insulated walls.  The end result is a very energy efficient home, more so than pretty much any other type of dwelling.  In Germany these homes are not very attractive but then Hans was not their architect.   We plan to have the very first all new construction passive house in the Sacramento-North part of California and it will look great!

So, Hans went to a class on learning this new specialty and I would get daily phone calls from my very excited fiance telling me every new tidbit he was learning.  "We can heat the house with a hair dryer!" would be an example of an interesting money saving tidbit.  There were also a few less exciting things I learned
1. The windows  are all custom and only come from 3 places- Germany, Canada and Yay! the US. Of course since these are custom I am worried about the $$$$$$
2. No outside venting is great for saving on energy but means my clothes dryer must be a condensation dryer with a drying closet in the laundry room.   I don't know about you, but I have used a condensation dryer. I lived in Belgium for 6 years and at first, had no dryer so I dried everything on a rack in my living room.  When I finally got a condensation dryer it was a Godsend!  However, compared to drying clothes the conventional way, it takes a lot longer.  I am not jumping for joy but it isn't the end of the world  to use a condensation dryer.  $ wise it is not too bad but  it is not easy to find a high end condensation dryer in the US.
3. This has nothing to do with building a Passive House but, the good old state of California has decided all new construction of single and multifamily homes must have a sprinkler system installed as of this year. Crap!!  More $$$$

The Rules:

Per the homeowners association our home must be a minimum of 2,500 s.f.
Per my loving fiance the home must be a Passive House

Goals:
Get the home built for less than $200 s.f.  with the quality and design features we both want
Move in before the end of 2012

The Beginning

October 2011  My fiance, Hans and I decided we need a home both of us can enjoy.  My home is cozy and cute in a charming neighborhood I hate to leave.  Hans' house is well, a batchelor pad-need I say more?  We wanted a home with a large open plan kitchen/family room 3 bedrooms a dining room, great location and space to build a woodworking shop/artists studio. We spent weeks with our friendly real estate agent, Jerry and could not find that elusive perfect house.  Either lots were too small or the homes were too large and needed to much work to get it where we wanted it.

Did I mention Hans is an architect?  That little tidbit is what brought me to that fateful day when I bought  .73 acres in a great neigborhood just east of Sacramento where we will design and build our dreamhouse!  I have agreed to let Hans oversee all of  the design as he knows my non-neogotiables.

I decided to start this blog to keep friends and family updated on our progress as we venture into the great unkown....................