Life At Villa Boswell

A colleague of mine, who is significantly remodeling his house, said to me, "I am continually amazed at how complex this process is turning out to be."  Most people tend to visualize building a house in sweeping "mental gestures" that over-simplify each phase of construction, and I was no exception. It all seems so simple in your mind. This post describes work that was completed by the beginnning of August, 2007.

Clearing the Lot

Let’s start with the lot itself.  As you could see in my earlier post, the very "building envelope" was weird.  But that’s a 2-D view, and if you’re not so good at interpreting ISO contour elevations, this post will give you some idea of the lot.  You can see the easement lane sweeping to the left, and all the Eucalyptus trees in front that had to come out.  The materials in the foreground were supplies that our neighbor had placed there. 

The first thing was to get the materials out of the way and clear the trees. Here you can see the view from the "driveway."

Continue reading Preparing the Land

Chris’s software, Chief Architect, does everything that professional CAD architectural software does. It creates detailed professional blueprints for all the necessary plan submission requirements: plan, elevation, electrical, plumbing, and grading.  In addition, though, it renders 3D views of your design and provides great tools to get you prototyping quickly.  Below are just three early examples (done in 2005) of the many 3D renderings we’ve done of the house.  I just checked out the Chief Architect website, and since we first purchased the program, it’s really improved because the photos look quite realistic and there are more tools and materials available to help you achieve realism in your 3D renderings.  I will say though, that it took a heck of a long time to make even these simple renderings here, and the more detail you want, the more work you have to put into it.  Chris and I just did what we felt would be sufficient for the county, since we weren’t developing these plans for a client.

San Mateo County really liked these views, and it helped the planning/permit process greatly to have them.

Lane View

The representation of the view of the coast and the ocean is quite realistic.  We were wondering if we’d have such a spectacular view, but today I can say without a doubt that we do. I can also say without a doubt that we will NOT be having a swimming pool/spa in the back yard!

Continue reading Chief Architect 3D Views

After understanding the full impact of the "buildable envelope" for our lot, our planning began in earnest in the fall of 2004.  Chris got a software program called Chief Architect and began designing the house.  The results you see in this post are the culmination of 2 years of … well, certaining not "back breaking" work, but "neck breaking" work.  Chris would work during the day at Brocade Communications and then every evening until about 1 a.m. and most weekend days, he’d be at the computer, working on the plans. I’ve never known anyone with such incredible, dogged, diligence.  Here are the key points about the plan creation:

• One year to design approval.  Design approval entails making sure the basic architectural structure of the house meets county standards and will also pass review by neighbors.  We submitted our plan for formal review 5 times with San Mateo County and probably did 2 revisions for each submission.  We received approval for our design from the El Granada housing association, largely comprised of neighbors notified of the intended construction.
• One year to structural approval.  This was harder, because in order to have structural approval, we had to have a structural engineer sign off on our design.  The issue is that our house would be built using ThermaSteel SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels), which is a green-friendly design because they are so very energy efficient.  The problem is that many structural engineers are not familiar with SIPs construction, so even though ThermaSteel Corp can provide very detailed data sheets on the structural integrity of their panels, the SEs are typically very cautious or just plain unwilling to work on any project but standard "stick" built ones.  So, we found a good structural engineer and were finally able to move forward.
• The house design/architecture was done solely by Chris…. with lots of my input on the floor plan. We had no help from an architect in this plan. I’m highly inspired by the architectural works of Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, so many of the principles put forth by Alexander were employed in this house.  Additionally, we visited quite a few new home models in the Bay Area to get more ideas and a sense of the design elements that are standard in a house of this size and caliber. But the credit all goes to Chris for some truly inspired design, that you will see in my next post that shows the rendered views from Chief Architect.

The Garage Floor Plan

• 605 square feet
• 216 square feet utility area

Click on the thumbnail to view the PDF.

The Main Floor Plan

• 605 square feet
• 216 square feet utility area

Click on the thumbnail to view the PDF.

The Upper Floor Plan

• 605 square feet
• 216 square feet utility area

Click on the thumbnail to view the PDF.

Continue reading The Lot

Many people consider eco-friendly design and building to be decidedly un-friendly on the budget.  We have had numerous conversations with various builders who consistently say to us, "Oh, I would love to build green, but I just can’t afford it."  So, when we committed to building our El Granada House using green-friendly materials, we were suprised to learn that this wasn’t necessarily true.  For our house, the cost per square foot of "stick" building was actually more than building using SIPs, or Structural Insulated Panels. 

We are using ThermaSteel SIP panels for our framing and expect to come under budget, even though these panels will be shipped to us from the East Coast.  (Note: we realize that shipping is not green, but because of our lot requirements, we needed the lightest panels possible.)  If memory serves, the panels are equal in cost to lumber, but the real savings comes in labor costs.  The panels are pre-engineered and when delivered to the site, assembly is achieved without the need for skilled carpentry.  We’ll keep you posted on the final numbers.

In the meantime, check out this fabulous video by Michelle Kaufmann from Dwell. 

http://www.dwell.com/daily/video/9298406.html

This video shows the use of Sketchup within Google Earth at the end of the video, which is way cool.  What also excited me was the notion of building using highly efficient processes, and the water reclamation portion of the design as well.  I’d also like to see "softer" designs achieved with the same efficiency, as well as multi-family sites designed as a whole entity.  Imagine!