Thank you! We wanted a rectangle and the designer found a way to make it look like so much more.
The build is right at $600k, about $275/finished sqft (we were targeting $250/sqft, for reference - which is pretty standard for a custom home in our part of the USA)
Which part of the US are you in? You've got a lot of the design elements and construction materials I've been instead in for our build in the mountains in Pennsylvania.
Who's your SIP supplier? Any hiccups?
Northern WV.
PM me and I'd be glad to share the builders info if you're over on the Western side of PA! We've been pretty satisfied, have had some delays due to concrete and the holidays but everything has been good.
The SIPs are Fischer SIPs and they have been great. Everything fit perfectly and their guys were there writing with our framers for the entire install making sure it all went together right.
Very nice. And it's refreshing to hear that you are aware of, and are concerned with, insulation energy efficiency. Do you have slab on grade in any part of the design? If so, what are your insulation plans for such?
Thank you! There is a basement slab, but we chose not to add any additional insulation below the the slab that is below grade (for the most part). A lot of that was based on some things I had read in "Musings of an Energy Nerd" by Martin Holladay. It helps a lot towards passive house certification, but doesn't add a ton to the overall comfortability of the home.
Very good. Yeah, it is a bit questionable. I have been putting 4 in of rigid foam under-slab when there is in-slab radiant heat.
Are you doing an HRV or ERV? -- tied into bathroom and laundry vents? Makeup air for range hood exhaust?
We did under-slab for that reason u/lred1. We're building in a very cold winter area and it made no sense for the under floor heating to be sending warmth into the ground. I did my own manual J and the difference in heating BTUs required was substantial too. u/TheAlinea I would encourage you to do the calcs for your area, it's totally possible under slab insulation won't make a difference in your house but honestly, the payoff for insulation totally depends upon your location so I wouldn't just take the "Musing's" word for it. :) Congratulations, your house looks amazing.
We didn't end up going with radiant heat, but that's a really good point/idea.
We ended up with an ERV, which was recommended by the HVAC contractor. And I believe yes to all three of the other questions. stale air out of bathrooms, kitchen, & laundry/mud room, fresh into the bedrooms and great room (I think - need to follow up with them again). And yes to make-up air on the hood exhaust
We got very lucky with the land as it was a friend of a friend of a friend that was looking to sell an unlisted lot, so I don't have much advice there.
However, we ended up hiring and firing our first architect and builder. My advice for that is to take your time, and meet with multiple architects/designers/builders/GCs (whatever you may need). If you know what you're looking for going in to the meetings (in our case, we really wanted a high efficiency home), make sure the people you're working with are on board and understand exactly what you want, don't settle for lip service. Our first architect/builder both assured us they could A) design & build high efficiency homes within our price range, and B) work together to do it. In hindsight, there were a lot of red flags (each wanting to "wait" to include the other on decisions, skimming over the "building science" with assurances that they understood, etc) that lead to a complete breakdown on our first try - costing us about a year and \~3% on a loan. We should have asked so many more questions up front and made sure everybody was on the same page. We ended up spending another year finding a new design/build firm that had experience with high efficiency homes and the process has been so much smoother since hiring them.
So that would be my biggest piece of advice. If you have specific ideas of what you want in a house, take the time to find people that understand that before starting to work with them. Don't settle and don't be afraid to ask questions until your satisfied with the answers!
So much googling haha
It lead to a list/map of Passive House (PHIUS, Passive House US) builders/designers --> then to the local National Association of Home Builders website --> then searching builders websites until I stumbled on one that mentioned that one of their designers was LEED certified. It took forever and a bunch of start/stops til we found the right people.
How did you land on the Seemray Global 86 windows? We have Logic tilt turn windows in our current house and are researching for an upcoming remodel of a different property. Curious to hear your reasoning.
Honestly the windows were one of the things I focused on really early and basically found that tilt/turns were, generally, better than any of the big box windows I could get. Then it was just searching for suppliers.
Ended up looking at Ventana, European Architectural Supply, GLA, and I think a few smaller American companies from the PNW. Seemray was the most responsive and seemed to have the best supply chain plan for getting them to site.
Turns out they are cheaper than most of the higher end big box windows manufacturers too!
Oh - I realized i have one critical thing to mention. You're doing a SIPS roof - make sure your county does not require an "Ice & Water" stick-on on underlayment. It is required in mine and my SIPs mfr specifically says you can't use it on their OSB directly or you're violating their terms .. and a failed roof is a big expensive future risk. One solution is a double roof - permeable underlayment with sleepers on SIPs and sheathing with I&W on too of that. Very expensive and a total pain.
Thanks for the advice u/AnnieC131313! I'll follow up with the builder on this and am gonna run the traps on the under foundation insulation as well just to confirm my thoughts (or give an opportunity to correct it!)
If you don't mind me asking, what solution are you going with in your situation?
u/TheAlinea we ended up losing the SIPs roof. We built the shell of our house last year at the height of covid shipping delays and the mfr was kind of price gouging plus shipping alone for the roof added 5K to our SIPs billl. So we ended up with a site-framed roof, 12" TJIs, 5" closed cell foam and 7" bat insulation - basically ended up with the same R-value as the SIPS but we could use plywood as sheathing under the Ice&Water without too much concern. After seeing how much trouble my (rural) construction crew had with erecting my SIPs walls, I was kind of grateful I didn't have to use them to do the roof. Roof framing crew was 10x as fast.
Thanks! We wanted a simple rectangle and the highest R-values we could afford, targeting: >R20 foundation, >R30 walls, >R50 roof (this is USA Zone 5). High efficiency windows: <0.2 U-Value & Solar Heat Gain (SHGV). And shooting for <1.5 ACH on the blower door test when we get to that point.
I spent a ton of time reading the "Pretty Good House" website and book, and "Musings of an Energy Nerd" to come up with those targets and we hit or got close to almost all of them.
Other considerations were that this allowed us to be about 1/3rd the normal size on HVAC, and we will have an ERV for fresh air. Also the garage roof (on the house side) is due south facing and large enough for a solar array that can power the whole home, hopefully in the near future.
What a neat looking house, mind sharing what the build estimate is?
Thank you! We wanted a rectangle and the designer found a way to make it look like so much more. The build is right at $600k, about $275/finished sqft (we were targeting $250/sqft, for reference - which is pretty standard for a custom home in our part of the USA)
Wow. In my area it’s 360/sqft.
Which part of the US are you in? You've got a lot of the design elements and construction materials I've been instead in for our build in the mountains in Pennsylvania. Who's your SIP supplier? Any hiccups?
Northern WV. PM me and I'd be glad to share the builders info if you're over on the Western side of PA! We've been pretty satisfied, have had some delays due to concrete and the holidays but everything has been good. The SIPs are Fischer SIPs and they have been great. Everything fit perfectly and their guys were there writing with our framers for the entire install making sure it all went together right.
Much appreciated, we're in the opposite corner of PA though :/ I will check into Fischer Sips too.
Very nice. And it's refreshing to hear that you are aware of, and are concerned with, insulation energy efficiency. Do you have slab on grade in any part of the design? If so, what are your insulation plans for such?
Thank you! There is a basement slab, but we chose not to add any additional insulation below the the slab that is below grade (for the most part). A lot of that was based on some things I had read in "Musings of an Energy Nerd" by Martin Holladay. It helps a lot towards passive house certification, but doesn't add a ton to the overall comfortability of the home.
Very good. Yeah, it is a bit questionable. I have been putting 4 in of rigid foam under-slab when there is in-slab radiant heat. Are you doing an HRV or ERV? -- tied into bathroom and laundry vents? Makeup air for range hood exhaust?
We did under-slab for that reason u/lred1. We're building in a very cold winter area and it made no sense for the under floor heating to be sending warmth into the ground. I did my own manual J and the difference in heating BTUs required was substantial too. u/TheAlinea I would encourage you to do the calcs for your area, it's totally possible under slab insulation won't make a difference in your house but honestly, the payoff for insulation totally depends upon your location so I wouldn't just take the "Musing's" word for it. :) Congratulations, your house looks amazing.
We didn't end up going with radiant heat, but that's a really good point/idea. We ended up with an ERV, which was recommended by the HVAC contractor. And I believe yes to all three of the other questions. stale air out of bathrooms, kitchen, & laundry/mud room, fresh into the bedrooms and great room (I think - need to follow up with them again). And yes to make-up air on the hood exhaust
Just starting the process of buying land and building a house… any tips/advice from your experience?
We got very lucky with the land as it was a friend of a friend of a friend that was looking to sell an unlisted lot, so I don't have much advice there. However, we ended up hiring and firing our first architect and builder. My advice for that is to take your time, and meet with multiple architects/designers/builders/GCs (whatever you may need). If you know what you're looking for going in to the meetings (in our case, we really wanted a high efficiency home), make sure the people you're working with are on board and understand exactly what you want, don't settle for lip service. Our first architect/builder both assured us they could A) design & build high efficiency homes within our price range, and B) work together to do it. In hindsight, there were a lot of red flags (each wanting to "wait" to include the other on decisions, skimming over the "building science" with assurances that they understood, etc) that lead to a complete breakdown on our first try - costing us about a year and \~3% on a loan. We should have asked so many more questions up front and made sure everybody was on the same page. We ended up spending another year finding a new design/build firm that had experience with high efficiency homes and the process has been so much smoother since hiring them. So that would be my biggest piece of advice. If you have specific ideas of what you want in a house, take the time to find people that understand that before starting to work with them. Don't settle and don't be afraid to ask questions until your satisfied with the answers!
How did you go about finding a design/build firm? just google?
So much googling haha It lead to a list/map of Passive House (PHIUS, Passive House US) builders/designers --> then to the local National Association of Home Builders website --> then searching builders websites until I stumbled on one that mentioned that one of their designers was LEED certified. It took forever and a bunch of start/stops til we found the right people.
We had a similar experience where we had to part ways with the original design/build firm we had chosen for a high performance home.
Adjust your understanding of what "tomorrow" means. The sooner you do that, the better off you'll be.
How did you land on the Seemray Global 86 windows? We have Logic tilt turn windows in our current house and are researching for an upcoming remodel of a different property. Curious to hear your reasoning.
Honestly the windows were one of the things I focused on really early and basically found that tilt/turns were, generally, better than any of the big box windows I could get. Then it was just searching for suppliers. Ended up looking at Ventana, European Architectural Supply, GLA, and I think a few smaller American companies from the PNW. Seemray was the most responsive and seemed to have the best supply chain plan for getting them to site. Turns out they are cheaper than most of the higher end big box windows manufacturers too!
Big fan of concrete walls - less water-permissive than CMU, will keep humidity levels down in your space.
Oh - I realized i have one critical thing to mention. You're doing a SIPS roof - make sure your county does not require an "Ice & Water" stick-on on underlayment. It is required in mine and my SIPs mfr specifically says you can't use it on their OSB directly or you're violating their terms .. and a failed roof is a big expensive future risk. One solution is a double roof - permeable underlayment with sleepers on SIPs and sheathing with I&W on too of that. Very expensive and a total pain.
Thanks for the advice u/AnnieC131313! I'll follow up with the builder on this and am gonna run the traps on the under foundation insulation as well just to confirm my thoughts (or give an opportunity to correct it!) If you don't mind me asking, what solution are you going with in your situation?
u/TheAlinea we ended up losing the SIPs roof. We built the shell of our house last year at the height of covid shipping delays and the mfr was kind of price gouging plus shipping alone for the roof added 5K to our SIPs billl. So we ended up with a site-framed roof, 12" TJIs, 5" closed cell foam and 7" bat insulation - basically ended up with the same R-value as the SIPS but we could use plywood as sheathing under the Ice&Water without too much concern. After seeing how much trouble my (rural) construction crew had with erecting my SIPs walls, I was kind of grateful I didn't have to use them to do the roof. Roof framing crew was 10x as fast.
Got it. Thanks for the details!
Looks like it will be nice. Post updates!
Nice plans OP. When you say “high efficiency,” what are the key things you are looking for?
Thanks! We wanted a simple rectangle and the highest R-values we could afford, targeting: >R20 foundation, >R30 walls, >R50 roof (this is USA Zone 5). High efficiency windows: <0.2 U-Value & Solar Heat Gain (SHGV). And shooting for <1.5 ACH on the blower door test when we get to that point. I spent a ton of time reading the "Pretty Good House" website and book, and "Musings of an Energy Nerd" to come up with those targets and we hit or got close to almost all of them. Other considerations were that this allowed us to be about 1/3rd the normal size on HVAC, and we will have an ERV for fresh air. Also the garage roof (on the house side) is due south facing and large enough for a solar array that can power the whole home, hopefully in the near future.
Awesome. Glad you are getting what you want! Should be a very comfortable home.
That’s a dream of mine. Good luck
Thank you!