Seattle - Criteria

Long before our mental gymnastics over philosophy, we were gathering ideas on what a house should be from every source possible, but mainly from years of learning from people in the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild (without whom, this project would be impossible) and a growing collection of green building books.    We view our list of design parameters as a work in progress, that ultimately will be modified, or even rejected by future builders.   What we believe is important is that we ask additional questions, in hopes of inspiring others to do likewise, and to inspire deeper green buidings.

Expanding on our philosophical goals, we added goals that would make the house a good place for us:

1. Attractive – not a piece of art, not perfect, but a place that is visually inviting and says “home”.  No particular style is necessary, and a wonderful house should be build able in any style.  The particular style is like clothing on a person in that the house must meet all the other criteria first; style is just put on top of everything else
2. Comfortable- it should feel good, the spaces had to invite you to stay in them.  In addition to having environmental benefits, good insulation it critical to comfort since it prevents cold surfaces and drafts.
3. Functional – the house needs to meet our needs and support the processes of living: cooking, sleeping, bathing, entertaining, privacy, quiet, and a sensible flow through these activities.
4. Healthy – the indoor air must be clean, and steps taken to prevent mold, dust & toxics in the house.
5. Reasonably priced- we are willing to pay more for quality materials, but not a lot more.  If our house isn’t affordable, no one will want to replicate our experiment.  This is a difficult criterion, since many people can’t afford any house, and Seattle is one of the more expensive cities to live in.  As a fair comparison, we only compare our cost to similar houses, but built the common way, without our additional criteria.

And of course meet our philosophic goals of wise use of resources.

Given this list, it should be immediately obvious that virtually no houses are built that satisfies these criteria.  Instead houses are typically built to satisfy the demands of the market and building codes.  For the consumer, the choices, and often expectations are driven more by what is commonly available, than by what is possible. Consumers rely on building codes to enforce a reasonable level of safety, quality and performance, because those issues require significant knowledge. While there are many nice houses in existence, almost none have the energy efficiency we desire, almost none take advantage of solar energy, and almost all have a variety of other layout problems that most homeowners ignore.

But, the sensible house isn't about a particular house: its about changing the process of designing and building one as well as education people about what is possible.  The following sections describe the applications of the principles in the tutorial, and explains how we applied them to our particular needs and our particular location.