Another Potential LEED Home! We're Hired!

January 8, 2010

ANOTHER Potential LEED Home! WE'RE HIRED!

We are hired by a family in Darien CT- the town next door- to help them design a major addition and gut renovation of their exiting house. We had actually met the family before.  A year earlier we had interviewed to be their architect. They had gotten our name from two separate contractors – the two contractors who I would say truly know how to build a green home. We know one of the contractors because we had worked on and off with them since 1999 when I designed my first super energy efficient gut renovation/ addition. They were the only contractor we knew at the time who knew a lot about green building and I would see them at all of the green building conferences both local and national. We know the second contractors from simply being in the same small circuit of professionals who really care about building sustainably in Farifield County, CT.

We are not exactly sure why we did not get the job the first time around. It can be a number of things that lead a client to choose one architect over another Could it be we are women? Could it be that though in our 40’s we look a bit younger than that? Maybe there is just not that perfect immediate understanding? Maybe our fee was simply higher?

FEES

In general architects charge in the neighborhood of 10% of construction cost for a job. Everyone bills and contracts slightly differently- but that is the basic goal. It is extremely difficult to keep an architecture firm running if your fees are less than that. In Farifield County, truly established and well known architects ask for and get 12-15% or more. Then there are many one-man-show architects who ask for 7-9%. I have architect friends in the Midwest who run firms happily on 8% fees. They live very middle class lives. Most architects do not make a ton of money unless they can command 15% fees OR unless they were born wealthy. Architecture truly is the gentleman’s profession. The fees we proposed the first time around were in the neighbor hood of 10% of construction costs. We have a 3 part contract: 2.5% for Design (the creative brain storming and basic drawing needed to find and convey an elegant solution to the problem at hand), 5.0% for Construction Documents (the drawings and specifications, etc needed to get permits, bids and construction completed) and 2.5% for Construction Administration (the weekly job meetings and general over-site of the job construction.).

Last year, this client was deciding between us and one other architect. The other architect- the one they chose the first time- was an older male architect, a one-man-show. He had come recommended to them by some friends. He told them he could design a green home (as this was their major priority). I have no idea if his price was significantly less than our or if he simply had more gravitas. It doesn’t really matter, in the end he wasn’t designing for them what they wanted and he was not responsive when they asked for better.  They called us about a year after our first interview and asked us to step in. As they had already done a fair amount of design with the other architect we changed the first phase of our fee from a percentage to an hourly fee. We knew we would not need to spend nearly as much time in design as the client had already seen the space potential and thought through a lot of the design options by working with the other architect. Actually many architects find that their best clients, is the client who has already been ‘broken in’ by a different architect.

Anyway it was the beginning of what we would find to be an extremely satisfying architect-client relationship. Not only do we all get along well, but we all have the same direction in mind for the house. We each wanted the house to be very energy efficient, clean, healthy and natural. We share an aesthetic direction as well. We found along the way that we all also hold very similar views about lifestyle and environmental politics. We were pretty sure that we would hire one of the two highly knowledgeable green contractors that I spoke of earlier to do the work. This is a great recipe for bringing a green home to fruition. The goal for the house is the same for everyone.

LEED

We discuss the options for rating the house. LEED, Energy Star, NAHB (National Association of Home Builders.) The clients are interested but don't feel an overwhelming urge at this point to put a lot of money into getting rated by anyone. We agree to all think about it as the job progresses.

Design

February 5, 2010

DESIGN

We have begun to design what will be a total gut renovation of and addition to the clients' existing home.

The size of the site is limited and so the house size has to be small. The house as existing is approximately 1800 square feet. The lot is 1/7^th of an acre. They are already over on their coverage as stipulated by the town of Darien. There is a detached garage on the lot that counts as coverage. Including the garage they are at 21% coverage. Allowable for their zone is 20% coverage.

The house is from 1920 and existed before zoning regulations. Though their lot is 1/7^th of an acre their zoning is in the ½ acre zone. So in a way their coverage limitations seem extremely unfair- as the neighbors who are in the ¼ acre zone – who have the exact same sized lot-  get to have a good deal more coverage. The bottom line is that the town is tough on its zoning regulations and if they want to build anything they have to actually reduce their coverage to 20%. So the garage will be town down. We will design an addition that will bring the house to a few square feet less than 20%- to show good effort and to give ourselves a tiny safety net in case we are off by inches in surveying or construction. This is all fine with us.

One of the goals of building green is too build smaller homes and having strenuous parameters in place actually makes the design more interesting and challenging. Though the client may have ideally wanted a few more feet of elbow room they ultimately would not have designed a much bigger house even if they had 10 acres.

(Why DID the client choose to add on to this house instead of moving to a big lot somewhere else? Well actually the answer is a mixture of many things. The house is about ½ a city block form the train station so the husband can walk to the train, take an hour ride into Manhattan, walk a few blocks to his office from Grand Central Station and do the whole thing in the opposite direction in the evening to come home. The guy lives in suburbia but might not touch his car for 5 days! The house is also close to everything in town. Almost all shopping and amenities are within walking distance. So mom and the small daughter can spend their days car free as well, if they like. And thirdly the house is across the street form the town park. There is lots of open space and a beautiful pond right out their front door. You actually cannot find a more perfect example of where you would want to put a LEED certified home and provide a greatly reduced carbon footprint for people who care about just that.)

The existing house is an old simple colonial. It is simple and nice, though not particularly beautiful or unique, but it is in the historic district so we also have to please the town’s historic commission. This is fine because the clients want a traditional home. Though we, as architects, do enjoy designing modern or unique houses, we also love historic homes and see this one as such. We immediately all share a vision of turning this house into a lovely traditional colonial- true to historic in its detailing and proportion. Currently the house is not symmetrical and has none of the trim of a historic colonial. It was probably a less expensive sort of builder home of its time. There are many like it in the neighborhood. So our goal is to bring it some of the design and a bit of the grandeur that it would have had, had it been built by a wealthier family in the 1920’s.

Inside, the clients (like all of our other clients) want open-ness and light. The back yard is very private and we envision the house opening up in the back and the sides toward the back so the family can have an indoor outdoor feeling sort of lifestyle with loads of natural light flooding in. The front box of the house will retain all of the elements of a true colonial and the back box of the house will be more like a garden room or solarium with bigger windows on both the first and second floor . The first floor plan is to include kitchen, dining and family rooms all open to each other in the back/ solarium part of the house with mud room, formal entry and small parlor with an inglenook in the front of the house. Upstairs there will be 3 bedrooms – a master suite and 2 children’s rooms. We will go up one more ½ story and add a third floor guest room, office and bathroom. The total square footage for the new house will be 2700 sf (existing was 1800).  So we are adding 50% more space than they originally had.

LEED

Keeping the ideals of green building and the point system of LEED in mind (though we are still debating whether or not to pursue LEED Certification) we are all aware that we are doing great on both accounts. The lot and location could not be more perfect for meeting LEED expectations. It is a previously fully developed site, close to hundreds of amenities and transportation options. The size of the lot is 1/7 of an acre and satisfies a primary density requirement for single family development. The house size as well will please LEED. The final house will be about 2,700 square feet. In order to not be penalized by LEED a four bedroom house (which this will be) would be 2,600 sf. We will be penalized 1 point but for Fairfield County this is considered a very small house and the decision to add the extra 100 sf seemed worth it to the client. (Most of the houses we have done in Fairfield County CT would be penalized many more points as you are penalized 1 point per every 100 sf you go over the size maximum.) We feel we are doing quite well, especially considering that about 500 sf of this house is basement storage and mechanical space....not habitable living space. (Actually we are not 100% sure we will loose a point because we are not 100% sure that the mechanical space is included in the sf calcs.  If it is not then we are 100 sf under square footage...and maybe get a point!)

CONSTRUCTION PLANNING

March 12, 2010

CONSTRUCTION PLANNING

We have put a lot of thought into space planning for the house- to make it beautiful, practical, and energy efficient. Construction wise we also have a plan. The plan in general is to make the most well insulated, and well air-sealed envelope (basement, walls and roof) that we can. Then to use the most energy efficient heating, cooling and ventilation system that we can. To specify high efficiency windows, lights, appliances and plumbing fixtures and to use only sustainable, healthy, no-voc (or if we must low-voc) materials

We considered a number of wall assemblies that we are thinking of for the house. Often we will frame a house 24” on center instead of 16” on center- thus allowing for more insulation and less thermal bridging. But with this house so much of the existing 16” on center exterior wall framing and floor framing was going to remain and new structure needs to tie into the 16” on center, so it is more efficient -framing wise- to stick to the 16” and not go to 24” on center with the new parts.

The existing house is also 2x4 construction. New houses in our climate are generally built with 2x6 walls to allow for more insulation in the wall cavity. We will build the new exterior walls with 2x6 but we are stuck with the existing 2x4 shell where it occurs (about 1/4 of the final exterior wall area.) We would make these walls thicker to the inside but  there is literally no room in most cases as a large area of it borders the L shaped stair case which is pinned on its other side by a massive masonry fireplace and chimney.  The stair width barely meets code as it is. But we will thicken the walls to the inside anywhere we can.

We decide right off the bat to wrap the house in a continuous rigid insulation. This will help -significantly -to kill thermal bridging (the place where hot or cold can travel between interior and exterior through the studs in the envelope.) and it will also help make up for the 2x4 'thin' walls where they occur. This rigid foam insulation will add about R7 to the exterior of the house and act as a continuous air barrier as well (when the seams are taped).  

(It is sort of 'ironic' that we also cannot go out to far to the exterior- this rigid board insulation cannot be too thick- because we are already on the line for setbacks and coverage with the town and adding an extra inch or 2 around the perimeter of the house will truly anger the zoning board and stop the project. This is also so ridiculous! We are HEMMED IN! Yet another hindrance to building the right way.  Especially when we are doing the town a favor. We are saving the framing of the old house! That is not easy or cheap to do. Demo is easy and cheap! Saving stud walls when everything is gutted around them is not. We are saving recourses and retaining the existing footprint of much of the house. We are building a very small, very conservation oriented home! All of this will reduce impact on the town itself. One would think that the town elders would be happy to have us further reduce the carbon footprint of this house by allowing us another inch all the way around for better insulation. Sigh ~)

Next we need to choose an insulation. When faced with 2x4 wall cavities we usually choose a closed cell blow in foam. Basically the insulation options available are fiberglass batt (the pink stuff we mostly all have in our houses) fiberglass blow-in (a blown in version of the batt, better because it gets in nooks and crannies that batt cannot get into.) Blown-in cellulose- which is recycled newspaper, etc in a blown-in form – again better than batt because of the way it fills the cavity plus better for the earth. (There are actually 2 forms of cellulose- wet and dry. We never spec the wet, it has a history with too many problems with developing moisture problems in the walls). There is a denim batt insulation- thick blankets of recycled  blue-jeans. And lastly there are open and closed cell foams.  Closed cell foam has a higher R-value but also has a higher carbon footprint- basically it is not very good for the earth due to its production, its off-gassing during installation (and after) or… during a fire. Open cell foam has a smaller carbon footprint but also a lower R-value than the closed cell.  

We will leave this decision for now as the clients have a lot of things to think about regardign insulation and it gets quite complicated.

LEED

We have already got a landscape designer on board who is focused on LEED. We know that both contractors under consideration have either built LEED homes before or have built many super efficient green homes that could have been LEED certified. I am serving as the building envelope and construction efficiency expert until we hire the contractor at which point he and I will collaborate for exact technique and cost efficiency measures.

Ideally the contractor is hired in the design phase and travels through the entire design process with the client- architect team. Then the contractor – or the contractor and architect together- would serve as the building envelope and construction efficiency expert. Having designed and built one LEED home before and many other very efficient homes that could have been LEED certified before that, I have a lot of experience in designing a building envelope and nuancing construction efficiencies.  So it works to start without the contractor, it is just not ideal. When we hire a contractor we will meet with them and go through all the details. Fine tuning things here and there to make the contractor happy (some contractors just like to do things one way while another might do things another- the results being the equal. ) Or we may revise to save the owner money or making something work better. 2 heads are always better than one!

What does all of this mean and why does it matter? Basically to build and energy efficient home and to get LEED certification you need to build a home differently than ‘normal’. The walls of the house and the roof and basement (the building envelope) need to be highly insulated and also assembled in such a way to reduce air infiltration and thermal bridging (the ability of heat or cold to pass physically between materials) to as close to zero as possible. Wall assemblies, etc can get highly complicated, I have been attending green building trade conferences for 12 years and have watched the guys who have been doing this diligently for over 30 years still argue vehemently about how to do it best. The biggest dangers of a poorly thought through wall assembly being moisture control and the potential for mold, mildew etc. It is a given that any house built tight will need a method of ventilation and air exchange, but even with great air flow a house can still encounter moisture issues if the wall assembly is wrong. `

WHEN TO HIRE THE CONTRACTOR

JUNE 18, 2010

WHEN TO HIRE THE CONTRACTOR:

LEED

Perhaps one of the best notions of building LEED is the idea of the team. Ideally the full team would be on board to ‘design’ the entire house. From floor plan to structural framing to exact wall assembly. In custom home construction this rarely happens. In custom home construction it is almost always the architect who designs the house to near final design, then the structural engineer is brought on board to engineer the house and then the house goes to bid and the general contractor and sub-contractors get to add their opinions which will be heeded or not. This is standard operating procedure and if you have a thoughtful, experienced and flexible architect it can work out fine. If you don’t then a lot of changes – to the drawings and overall concept or plan of the house may need to take place. This is especially true of green building and even more true of designing a home to be LEED certified.

Why don’t clients hire the contractor to be on the team from day one? Well some clients do and recognize the value of this (but it is rare). Most clients worry about money. They worry that they will get duped or ripped off in what some see as shadowy world of contracting. Say they choose a contractor from the beginning. If that contractor is not honest then the final bid might come in a lot higher than it would have if he knew he had to bid against other contractors. So there is always the fear in some clients that they could be saving 30 or 100 thousand dollars if they had bid the job instead of hired a certain contractor form the get go. And that really can and does happen so their fear are not without warrant.

I know that the two contractors we are considering are both extremely honest and straight forward. There contracts are quite ‘see through’ and the costs of their jobs are always very reasonable. They are not the lowest cost guys but they are far from the highest. They give solid reliable bids that are pretty much true to cost. But still, there is always that unknown. Even the way some contractor’s subs bid can make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars. And this is an honest difference. One guy might simply use a cheaper sub or have a slightly smaller fee for general management or get supplies from a less expensive supplier. This is normal and can make a huge difference in costs to the client. This is especially true in our area: Fairfield County CT. We have towns like Greenwich, New Canaan, Darien and Westport bordering small, poorer cities like Bridgeport or Norwalk or Danbury. All of these places are easily within driving distance for both supplies and labor. OR a contractor could simply go to one of the next counties- barely further away and drop his price by 10-20% or even more.

There is also the contractor factor itself. There are what I call pick-up truck contractors and there are what I call ‘Escalade’ contractors. In our county both are absolutely normal. The guys in pick-up trucks get their hands dirty, often don’t give the client much in the way of paper work and sometimes don’t speak English that well. These guys will usually get the job done pretty well but there will be a ‘suspension of disbelief’ required by the client at some points during the job- meaning the client is going to simply have to look the other way and have faith- it will get done. And it will. It will all be fine in the end but the client might get really nervous. The 'Escalade' contractor on the other hand has nicely manicured hands. He has all of the paperwork you could ever want ready at exactly the right moment. His crew is always on time in the morning and he often brings the client coffee to boot. These guys are good but their prices can easily be double the pick-up truck guys price! Why? Because they have so many layers of management that they have to pay for. And this guy has a life style to maintain. He probably goes to the same parties and is on the same library board as the clients he is working for. He lives down the street and his kids go to the same schools.  We work with the full range of contractor but our most common contractor is the ‘Toyota Camry' or the ‘Toyota Prius’ contractor. He is somewhere in between pick-up truck and Escalade. Either super green or just willing to learn.

The contractors that often know and do LEED are usually the Prius sort. They are truly well intentioned, smart guys who are doing the green thing for a reason. There prices are honest and accurate. There know-how is tried and true and there motivations are very sincere. If we are designing a truly green home- these are the guys we call. And unfortunately there are not a LOT of them.

We- as architects – want to work in a team for the green or LEED home. A team means all parties involved are putting their ideas and know how into the mix. This just makes the job happen more efficiently in both planning and construction, and makes a better finished product.

For example, I know a lot about designing super energy efficient wall assemblies but I always work with the contractor to finalize and refine the exact way we are going to build. A lot of architects don’t work this way and a lot of contractors don’t work this way. On many jobs there is simply the hand off from the architect to the contractor- a passing of drawings and the two never speak again. This to me is a shame. To me that is a huge loss of opportunity to refine the product and save the client a buck along the way.

Plus many architects don’t know anything about building green – just as many contractors don’t know anything about building green. There is often an education taking place on the job site. If a knowledgeable architect draws a ton of energy efficient details and the contractor doesn’t understand them and so does not build them- then they are worthless. If the architect does not know any energy efficient details and the contractor does and tries to incorporate them after the drawings are done this can result in huge wastes of time and money for the client during construction.

In the end I think green building  is really just quality building . Everything about LEED is just ensuring the client has a very well built, long lasting home. Some contractor do not build for quality- they build to make a buck. Some contractors don’t know any better and just build the way they were taught. This is all similarly true of architects. Some architects just build for beauty. Some architects don’t know any better and just design the way they were taught. Both need to evolve. Both will be required to evolve as building codes evolve to meet what is currently LEED standards.

Just one last note about LEED on this subject. It is not critical and some may deem minor. But to me it is important. When one looks at the LEED web site and searches houses that are certified LEED it lists the house, the location, the owner, the LEED provider and the CONTRACTOR. No where is the architect listed. For me- the architect who is very often training the contractor on site as we go how to build an energy efficient house-is imperative to building a custom home in an energy efficient, LEED way. The fact that architects are not listed is infuriating! I do all of the work- often the hard way- by cajoling and yelling and getting exasperated and spending way too much time and loosing way too much money teaching the contractor (and the client) how to do it right and that guy gets all the credit! I know the same can be true reverse. Contractor getting annoyed by the 'dumb architect' and trying to teach them a thing or two. But really the USGBC should be able to acknowledge either or both,

The more energy efficient the house will be, the more team work is required. I love this. The contractors I know who build green love this. We prefer to all be on the job from day one. If the whole team is on the same page and working toward the same goal, we all get a better product and not only do we all get a better product - we all get peace of mind as well as a joyful, interesting and stimulating work environment. A happy team, Architect, Contractor, Client.

Zoning Board of Appeals

JULY 2010

ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS

We have to go before the zoning board to get approval for the addition we are putting on the house. The original house is 1800 sf. Its lot size is 1/7^th of an acre. It is already over its setbacks on 2 sides (front and left side). It is over on its coverage by 1%. Allowable coverage for its zone is 20% it exists at a coverage of 21%. Our proposal is to tear down the existing one car garage (currently being used as a storage room) and we will add that sf to the main house sf. We will also tear down the 2 one story wings of the house. One original – one added in the 80’s. 

The proposed house will meet the 20% coverage – it will be under coverage by only a few feet so we have to really monitor this and make sure we do not go over. Also counting towards building coverage are the equipment pads for the ac condensers and any steps or porches or decks which are more than 18” above the ground. Luckily the lot is extremely flat. The back patio will sit only 6 or 8” below the first floor elevation and be equal to the surrounding grade. The front stoop- which is located at the place that represents the biggest difference between first floor and grade level will be 24” above grade. 

To gain extra space in the house we are going up. We are adding a third floor. Technically the house will be a 2 ½ story house. A true full third floor is not allowed.  We are allowed to have ½ of the square footage on the third floor as is planned for the second floor. The allowable overall height for the house is 30’ to mid roof. The existing house is approximately 23’ to mid roof.  Our proposed height is 29’ from average finished grade to mid roof. 

One of the other factors in our zoning board approval is a historic factor. The house sits in a historic neighborhood. It is not historically significant itself but the any work done in the neighborhood is assessed for its impact on its overall historic tone.  The neighborhood is really one street long. It consists of a row of houses (about 10) that face a small man-made park which contains a small man-made lake. The property all used to be the estate of a very wealthy man who kept exotic animals in the park- like ostriches, etc. At some point the property was divided. The park was turned into a public park – currently much used by the town. The other land was divided and sold and developed as housing. The train line borders the south edge of the park, these houses border the west edge of the park. The north edge is bordered by a road with no houses and the east by a woodland and neighbors back yards beyond.

The Neighborhood is historic but the house is not historically marked. It is a simple house from its era. It is perhaps a ‘builder home’ from its era. It has almost no detailing, and is a very simple small form. There are 3 other houses on the street just like it, there are about 4 houses that are easily labeled craftsman bungalow’s and a few other houses that are small and hard to define in style. But the tone of the street is all the same. Small pastel painted, cute houses. Two of the houses on the street have been recently remodeled. Both were small colonials- like the one we are working on. Both chose to keep the houses as colonials but chose to add traditional colonial moldings and trim that would have been on a ‘wealthier’ colonial of that same era. The trim is not at all elaborate. It is simple and clean. We are planning to do exactly the same thing.

The clients want the house to be traditional in design. They want it to be conservative, subtle, unobtrusive. Inside and in the back of the house we will open things up, provide bigger windows, bring in more light, but the front will look like a very traditional and very simple center-hall colonial. For us- the architects- this is significant Usually we try to get a bit more modern or a bit more designer-y. For this house we are working by the book. All of the details are what would be called ‘stock’ – true to their era, unaltered by time or technology. We are proud of the design restraint we have achieved and we feel the house looks beautiful, traditional and subtle- as requested.

We also feel this house would design would be praised by any historic board. Not so Darien. There is a ‘Town Historian’ who has to give her stamp of approval. The Town Historian comes to the site to look at the existing house and review our plans. She is immediately very unhappy with what we are proposing. She keeps calling the house a bungalow (which clearly it is not)- it is a simple colonial sort of a thing- truly not definable by any style- but yes it does have roof overhangs. But roof overhangs does not a bungalow make. She also points to a neighboring house that is a twin to ours and says ‘see they have done a very good job with their porch addition. They added a craftsman style porch to their bungalow’ Wow! Nothing could be further from the truth. The house she points to does have a porch addition but it is completely of the Victorian style. Tall skinny super curvy columns support the steeply gabled roof which is itself adorned with all sorts of flowery, lattice work brackets and frippery. My partner and I look at each other- clearly this historian may know history but knows nothing of architecture. Next we are told that we need to maintain and honor the exact style of the existing house.

To give this some perspective that would be like a historian telling you 50 years from now that the crappy 80’s vinyl sided awful formless box must be honored and cannot be changed. I understand that she wants to maintain the tone of the street but to honor something that had no honor in the first place is silly. We are opting for honoring the era instead and creating a very beautiful, very small house that will suit the town’s- and the street's- history and style perfectly. The Historian concludes that we cannot put trim on the house that is more elaborate than what is there. What is there is small flat stock window an door trim and a very simple rake board. Nothing else. The Historian passes her recommendations on to the Zoning Official who tells us that we have to change our drawings before we go in front of the ZBA. But we know that the Historian is simply an advisor- not a ‘rule maker’. We choose not to alter the drawings. Our trim is ‘more than what is there’ but truly it could to be more simple and it really makes the house look so much nicer.

Bottom line: the zoning board of appeals easily and happily approves the project. The Zoning Enforcer and the Town Historian both speak out against the project in the ZBA meeting. Their comments are not recorded. The ZBA says there are no restrictions on what sort of trim we put on the house. There is no typed record of the trim comments in the formal ZBA document. About 4 days later we receive the official record of the ZBA meeting in the mail. On it the Zoning Official has hand written his own requirements regarding the trim. He- personally- says that we have to change the trim. This is absurd! He has absolutely no position, no power to claim this or to make us do this. Also it is clear that the ZBA knows nothing of his hand written requirements. They do not see this letter! What is going on over there at the Zoning Department!

We are all wrung out by this experience. It is awful and defies all logic. We have all lost sleep over it, the clients hired a lawyer, we are done. We ignore the had written comments, start the bidding process with the drawings as they are and move on.