Green Building Three

Green Building Three

3. WINDOWS AND DOORS – Opening in the exterior envelope are the big holes that need to be addressed thru the use of well made quality fillers. Most upper end window manufacturers have made great strides in providing a standardized system by which to judge windows and how they will perform under different conditions. The National Fenestration Rating Council was born of this desire to quantify windows and doors and has been instrumental in bringing the industry up across the board. These fillers work with the sealing of the Building Envelope to create that energy efficient bubble that we are trying to achieve.

4. HVAC – Heat, Ventilation, and Cooling. Which of these is the most important? In a well designed and executed home design they are all equally important. Ventilation may carry the most weight but is often the most neglected. As a home efficiency expert once told me he likes to be able to point to a vent and be able to know that his home leaks right there! By leak he means he knows where unconditioned air enters and/or leaves the home. Because he knows where that is he can condition it by either heating or cooling it as it enters the building envelope. This is generally achieved by using a heat or air-to-air exchanger which draws warm moist air from the bathroom and kitchen areas, thus helping to control latent moisture in the home and depositing this conditioned air into the supply side of the air conditioning system. This in turn allows your air conditioning system to work more efficiently because the air it is conditioning is already partly conditioned. And to continue on that theme, having the air handler in a conditioned space such as the crawl space or a mechanical room inside the home moves this equipment into the building envelope and helps the system work easier and better for its lifetime.

Builders who practice these several items will have HVAC contractors and other Trade Contractors who have bought into the practice of creating an energy efficient home. We built homes that the second floor required that a ½ ton air handler was all that was required to heat and cool the space. Of course a one ton unit was used because we could not get one that small! This is where the real payoff began. The cost of 2-3 tones of heat and air equipment was moved into the sealing of the building envelope which generally created a minimal if any cost at all to the homeowner. Instant payback! Whereas the windows may be a big cost up front these help the building envelope and therefore the energy efficiency and ultimately the cost to heat and cool your home on a monthly basis. There are many documented cases of 3000 square foot homes costing as little as $35 to heat and cool without resorting to drastic building techniques.



Thanks for reading and please visit my website

www.cshadedesign.com

I look forward to hearing from you…

Green Building Two

Green Building Two

I have had two clients recently, two in the last seven years to ask for Green or Energy Efficient qualities incorporated into their home design. This started me thinking about when I became involved in Green Building. A builder that I worked for started me on this path in 1998 when this movement was in its infancy. We had a client who worked for Virginia Power who was looking for Energy Efficient design that Virginia Power was pushing. At the time Virginia Power was looking for ways to increase the use of heat pumps and therefore power but underneath that they were creating better more sustainable homes. From my involvement then and through continued involvement over the past decade I have come to believe that there are a few simple things that can be done to provide superior energy efficiency that will pay for itself in a limited time frame:

1. CONDITIONED CRAWL SPACE – Conditioning the crawl space does several things that are beneficial to the home. Moisture control is probably the top item. Homes are starting to be built tighter but controlling moisture is not generally considered in the building code or by the builder. As humans we create and transport quite a lot of latent moisture into our homes. We need to be able to control this and having a conditioned crawl helps in that the moisture from external sources has one less path to enter the home.

2. BUILDING ENVELOPE – The crawl space is a part of this but equally important is how the walls perform. There are methods to create a wall of windows that is more energy efficient that a solid wall but very few of us live in glass houses. Air-sealing the building envelop thru the use of caulks, foams, and/or blown in batt (cellulose) or icynene (expanding foam) insulation will help to stop air infiltration thru the thousand of cracks that are in the framing. Building wraps, such as Tyvek, do much the same thing but should be viewed as a supplement to these other suggestions not as the cure. The building code now requires a building wrap to be placed under the exterior cladding and in my area 15# tar paper is just as effective as the Tyvek or other high end building wrap. The environment in my locality does not support the literature for the use of high end building wraps because we do not get too warm or too cold for too long.

This is the first installment, please check back for more...

Please contact me at

www.cshadedesign.com

if you have other questions

Green Building

The Green Movement has been building in earnest for many years now. Some simple steps were taken and demonstration homes were built 30+ years ago. Throughout time everyone has been working to build an energy efficient home in order to stay warm in the winter. Recently the global community has been rallying to mitigate the effects of what is now labeled global climate change which in and of itself would help make our winter warmth a bit easier to achieve. To that end home builders and community activists are pushing green building initiatives such as Green Globes, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), and Earth Craft Home certification. These programs seek to achieve energy efficiency thru a variety of check lists and points system and rise to environmental stewardship as well thru the use of sustainable and recycled components. Many of these choices have been incorporated into homes by builders because they last longer and create fewer warranty calls for the builder to have to address. By doing so the building community has begun creating better products for the homeowner and is helping to make the environment better.

What do you want to achieve?

Environmental friendliness? Sustainable building materials? Less carbon footprint? Lower energy bills? Safe worker environment? Low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) allergy tolerance mitigation? These are a few of the areas where a green building initiative can come into play. You can do very simple things that will make the home energy efficient or you can do very invasive things that will go even further. It truly is up to you and making sure that you have a builder that is capable of providing this service to you.

I’ll write more on this subject in the ensuing weeks.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Please visit my website

www.cshadedesign.com

Email me if I can be of further assistance

Caring for Your Home

Most of us as homeowners would like to have a worry free home. There are many aspects of the home that we do not want to have to spend time on and therefore believe that our builder is responsible for day to day maintenance. Most of the large national and/or regional builders have a program to wean the owner from the builder in the first year. Yes it is customary for the builder to warrant the home for the first year but this usually has to do with major facilities of the home like heating and air, appliances, structural items, and overall performance. Because of the nature of a home that it is a living breathing thing sticking doors and settlement cracks are bound to occur. The builder will generally look at these items several times in the course of that year and make repairs as necessary. It is up to you the homeowner to continue this maintenance sometimes during but especially after this period. You need to walk around the outside, look at the caulk around the windows and doors, stick you head or maybe even climb into the crawl space. Look at the attic don’t just store you things up there, if you see a water stain do some investigation and see if you can find the source. Notice if water is ponding outside the home around downspouts or new plantings. Have the shrubs trimmed away from the house so the siding or brick can dry. Make sure the weep holes in the brick are not clogged. Take the time to change you air conditioning filters several times a year. I like to do mine in October, January, April, and July, you can adjust according to your climate but where I live we generally have one month a quarter where the air conditioning is little if any used.
Many a time I had a homeowner ask me for a maintenance free home. I asked them to leave a book of blank signed checks. There are many things that can be done to keep maintenance to a minimum but a maintenance free home is a fantasy. I’ll expand on this as we move forward together.

Thanks for reading and please visit my website

www.cshadedesign.com

I look forward to hearing from you…

Add an Addition?

Placing an addition on your home can be a daunting task. What spaces do I need to create? Are my existing spaces not suitable for today’s styles? Would a future buyer be more likely to purchase this home if we added this…? Can we even put the rooms we want off this area of our home?

Start Here…

Design your own home...

Have a plan that works for your family and life…

Why use someone else's idea of how you live…?

Your needs are unique and considerate…

What do you need?

Play Space?

Storage space?

Utility space?

Family entry?

Home office?

Home theater?

Entertaining?

Great views?

What do you think?

Let’s start with your ideas and build a house that your family makes a home.

Having a builder move into your home for several months is the number one consideration when doing a remodel or addition to your home. I believe that this item is even greater than the price of the addition. You will be living with this person and their trade contractors for a long time. If you are comfortable with them and their style then the process will be much smoother and easier. Everyone though, does reach the breaking point where they just want it all done. But you need to look at it like a long car ride, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” and when you get to the end you say, “Well that wasn’t so bad!” Enjoy the journey because it will make for a more comfortable home that fits your needs in the end and enhances your quality of life. Isn’t this why we started this process anyway?

As far as the spaces to create and the areas to remodel you are making choices based on homes you have seen that have been built recently. Some of the ideas that are incorporated into new construction are spaces that you would like to create and enjoy. You have not thought of adding on a Pool room for nothing more than a Pool table but rather looked at the rooms you have and thought that there is a way to expand upon this and not recreate the home. Many people are adding on specifically because of where they live and the outrageous costs associated with moving to a new home with these amenities. Most recently in Richmond and I’m sure other markets the cost of land his risen so dramatically that the costs of the house is out of whack with the space you would gain by adding onto your home. I have heard many times that the cost associated with my addition would not get me anywhere near the some square footage I will have if I went and bought new.

Taking the time to get you where you are comfortable with an addition and filling your needs are all part of this process. Very few people ask to have an addition designed and have answered every question or thought every thought when we first sit down. Many thoughts and ideas will come up during the process and your builder will even have a hand in this process.

Having some professional advice about how the spaces are to be added and available yard for this addition are the first two items that need to be addressed before we can move forward with completing the design for a new addition to your home. C. L. Shade Drafting strives to guide you in the best possible use of the space you want to create and make sure that this can be added to your home.

Please visit my website

www.cshadedesign.com

I look forward to hearing from you

On Demand Hot Water Heater

My family and I have been living with an on-demand tank-less hot water heater (HWH), or instant HWH for nearly a year now. There are several things that I have learned during this time that I believe are good to share with future buyers.

1. Having a tank-less HWH does not mean that you will have instant hot water when you turn the faucet on. The water still has to travel thru and heat up the same pipes as the tank type water heater that you used to have.
2. The bigger the better. Even in the best of circumstances when the second shower is cut on the first will cool and need a little recovery time. While this is not objectionable it is a bit exciting when you are rinsing your hair in the winter and the water gets cooler.
3. We live in Virginia and have always enjoyed low electricity rates. This combined with what are reasonable gas rates make the payback for the unit about 20 years. I do not believe this to be a deal breaker. In our case there were space issues that the tank-less helped with. It is nice to be able to turn it down in the summer and up in the winter saving gas costs.
4. Summer water temperatures around 115 degrees allowed for cool showers and clean dishes. When I set the temperature below this I noticed that the dishwasher did not work quite as well. The winter temperature is now at 125 degrees and we may move it to 130 as the daily outside temperature drops lower coming into January and February.

SET THIS HIGHER TEMPERATURE ONLY IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE THAT YOUR FAMILY UNDERSTANDS SCALDING AND POSSIBLE INJURY FROM THIS HIGH TEMPERATURE.

5. Environmental friendliness? Maybe. I do know that it is a choice for each family that bears a high upfront cost especially for replacing a tank HWH. My plumber stated that this was the first one they had done as a replacement because it costs 2-3 times as much as a conventional tank gas HWH.
6. Electric tank-less HWH use a lot of power, somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 amps or more. Your panel box would need 6-8 blank spaces to accommodate the breakers and the electric meter would look like an anemometer in a hurricane.
7. The aerator, that's the piece on the bottom of the faucet that makes the water stream pretty, needs to 1.5 gpm or higher. We had a .7 gpm aerator and it did not let enough water pass thru the system to ignite the HWH. You may want to limit your water usage but this can get you in trouble.

Hopefully this will give you some more choices in deciding about a tank-less HWH.

Please contact me at

www.cshadedesign.com

if you have other questions

Cost per Square Foot?

The number one overriding desire of everyone in the home building business is to build a home for the client. To that end the value or cost of the home is foremost in the mind of the builder and their efforts and recommendations are biased to that goal. IT is very rare to meet a client who says just go spend whatever and send me a bill. All clients fall into the cost per square foot trap and believe that if they are at some certain cost per square foot then they are gong to get what they want.

Cost per square foot is probably the greatest misnomer in the home building business. This does not take into account the porches, garages, unfinished basement space, potential attics, screen porches and other amenities that can drive the cost of a home. Also the basic requirements of supply and demand will drive this cost. An owner moving from another city or area of the country may be used to one cost but that cost may not be reflected in the new area. Equally different is the material and building techniques from one area of the country to another

As an example two clients are each building a 100 square foot kitchen. One client wants a Wolf range and the other wants a Kenmore. Virtually the same product but the cost of each is vastly different. The wolf at $5000 costs $50 per square foot whereas the Kenmore at $1000 coast $10 dollars per square foot. How much is the addition going to cost to someone else and how can the cost per square foot be applied to a third party? All though this is not as pronounced in a house because of the magnitude of the square footage the principle still holds the some. Your house and you neighbors house probably are not the same cost per square foot.

Many clients over the years have found ideas thru plan sites and other books that you can pick up at the home center. All of these plans have a square foot number for the plan and some even have some build costs associated with them. In the decades that I have been building homes I have never seen one of these to be compatible with actual square footage of the home. Most plan book plans will only count stair areas once and do not count two story areas in their second floor listing. This provides a misleading accounting f the actual square footage of the home since everyone charges for that “empty” space. In most instances it is harder to not build a floor in a two story hours than it is to complete that floor. Additional beams, bearings, and columns are required to carry what are normally floors that no longer have walls below.

Welcome Homeowners

Good Day and Welcome to A Homeowners Guide to Homeowning. My name is Charles Shade and I have been in the Residential Building Industry for nearly three decades. I have seen and been a part of many changes and ups and downs.
My experiences have led from being a flunky, a carpenter, a builder, a general contractor, and now a home designer.

In my time in this industry I have done everything from digging footings to putting the last shingle on the roof. Now I spend my time designing new custom home plans for builders and homeowners.

I hope that this blog can become a resource for homeowners looking for common sense answers to questions about homeowning. Maybe not how to fix a dripping faucet but how to talk to a builder. What to expect. Where to make the best choices for a home.

Please visit my website at

www.cshadedesign.com

and drop me an email at

yournewhome@cshadedesign.com

Regards,
Charles Shade