Tomorrow we officially start the process of building our house!! Very exciting. We feel very good about our strategy, arrived at over the last week in close collaboration with our architects and our builder. I wanted to share some of the things we learned.
Pick a team you can work with
W
e picked a team that we feel very comfortable with and confident in - architects Kathleen Reardon and John Dazey of RD Architects (www.rdarc.com), and Michael Strong of Green Haus Builders (www.greenhausbuilders.com). Not only do we like their work, but we know that they are very knowledgeable on all things green. They have worked together before (for example on Houston's first LEED certified home) and so we can benefit from their knowledge of what works and what doesn't. You only do this once, so it is hard to do the "control experiment" as we scientists say, but if past performance is any indication of future performance... But seriously, in the course of the negotiations over the past week, we gained confidence that we all shared a common goal - to build the best house we could, within our budget. You can learn a lot about people in how they negotiate.I have to emphasize, that in all the below, both Kathleen and John, and Michael, were very forthcoming with creative ideas on how to make things fit our resources.
LEED or not LEED?
First of all, what is LEED? It stands for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, and you can learn about it in this video from the US Green Building Council (http://www.usgbc.org):
As you saw in this video, to get LEED certification requires, alongside resource saving technology and building practices, time. There are mandated meetings to hone the design, and closer oversight. For example there is a required Charrette (yes, I had to look it up too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charrette) - "an intense period of design activity". And of course, this increases the cost of the design phase. So, one of the debates we had was whether LEED was worth having. What made us decide to include the basic LEED certification was market positioning down the road. We learned from Michael that soon LEED certification would be a searchable characteristic in the Houston MLS that you use to search for a house to buy. In markets that have had this for several years, statistics are beginning to show that houses that have proven green status, such as LEED confers, sell faster and at higher returns: in Seattle 18% faster, and 28-37% higher value (http://www.greenhomeguide.org/features/northwest_green_homes.html). So, for us, this is the only way to go. We are likely to live in this house for many years, but we may well move again, after the kids are grown. So, how to compensate for the cost increase? Two things: simplicity and sweat-equity.
Simple, simple, simple
Design is pretty much all time - the architects time, and as these are highly skilled and creative people, their time is valuable. But when it comes to building, about half your costs are also time - the time of the people actually putting the house up. In both phases simplicity can save time, and so money. As we walk through recently-built open houses we are often mazed (not so much amazed, though) - by the time we are in the fourth bedroom, we often wish we had brought the breadcrumbs to find our way out again... This suggests that simple design is actually hard -
A good example: one of the things we are very interested in, is a white metal roof - good radiant barrier, and durable. The main cost here is the time of the skilled workers who can put these up. And a simple roof line might cut the time it takes to install the roof in half. So, we are aiming, right from the beginning, for a simple outer shell, that will accelerate the design process and the building process.
Sweat Equity
A familiar concept from the world of start-ups, it also exists here. One way we were able to bring the design phase into our budget, was by taking on some of the work ourselves. No, I am not going to night school to get my architect's license :-) But of course there are many decisions to be made, and by getting involved, and learning as much as we can, we can accelerate the work of our architects.
As I posted a week or so ago, we came up with a basic first floor arrangement - this will serve as a jumping off point, eliminating the first phase which typically consists of offering three quite different floor plans. Then, we will do much of the legwork on choosing appliances, fixtures, finishes etc, and get as far as we can without help. What fine tuning we need, we will add to our design package "a la carte". Also, by doing these things in a timely manner, we can allow the architects to design these things into the first draft, so to speak. Then, we have also pledged, to ourselves and our team, that we won't change our mind a lot during.
Back to the team
Another item we constrained in arriving at the budget, is the number of highly detailed builders drawings that will be produced. With less detail, the builder will have less specific instructions - this will mean that more of the parts of the house will be standard - for example the kitchen cabinets might not be very custom. We have no experience here, but having a builder and architect who have worked together before is probably a pre-requisite for this. Of course, we can always add some additional drawings if they are needed, again, a la carte.
Anyway, tomorrow we are having a kick-off meeting here at our house to get the ball rolling!
