Home Design Room Layout: Sketches Work Great!

Sketches on tracing paper in the preliminary design phase come in handy to see alternate room layouts and spatial relationships. Clients love the artistry involved and the human element to their design. The client was unsure about whether to have the wood stove centered on the gable endwall or in the corner. The sketches were quick and extremely helpful in showing various...

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Current Home Design Trends

Trends in home design are moving away from specific rooms and space to materials and energy efficiency. This delightful (and beneficial) competition between neighbors, communities, and states to become more energy conscious and less dependent on fossil fuels has resulted in thousands of people reducing their carbon footprint.Here are some of the current trends in home design:1. Reduce, reuse, recycle: More and more homeowners are looking to purchase recycled building materials to use in their new home. Timbers, siding, decking, trim, doors, brick,...

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Keeping a Green Home, Remotely

As seen in a recent online issue of The New York Times, soon you will be able to monitor the energy efficiency of your home on your cell phone, wherever you are. The soon-to-be-released tool, called TREE (Tendril Residential Energy Ecosystem), will allow homeowners to turn appliances, heating, and cooling systems on and off from work, the theatre, or the kids’ soccer practice....

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Lakefront Home Plans - NH

Here are green home plans for clients building a vacation home on their lakefront property located in rural New Hampshire. The property has an existing cottage, which will be torn down.The new energy efficient home will be just shy of 2500 square feet, with 1530 square feet on the first floor and 950 square feet on the second floor. With three bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths, the...

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Five Reasons to Use Solar Energy in Green Homes

Here are five good reasons to utilize a solar energy system in your new home: 1) Solar energy is clean and sustainable, which helps to protect the environment and does not contribute to global warming, acid rain, or smog2) Solar energy reduces our dependency on power companies 3) Systems can be configured to meet virtually any power demand load 4) Advancements in solar energy...

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Small Green Home Design

I met Pat and Andy at a Log and Timber Frame Home Show, and shortly after, they asked me to design their vacation / retirement home on their property in northern Maine. While they like timber frame homes, they thought it might be too much for this modest project.Their project goals were: Small footprint to minimize carbon footprintEnergy efficiency in all four New England...

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