Happy New Year!

As construction activity returned 2015 was a busy year, but it only marked the return to interest in house plans. This is why things have been so quiet on the blog. While we were very busy all year there has been little customer construction activity.

The last construction activity we reported on was the Pennsylvania Plat House. The house is now occupied while the Owner puts on the finishing touches, but we have not received any new photos to post.

While the construction front has gone quiet, we’ve delivered modified Construction Prints for a new Plat House in Michigan this year which should begin in 2016. And other Design Print customers from Michigan seem close to making a start, suddenly making Michigan into a Modern House Plan hot spot.

But the remarkable thing is a clear return to interest - questions and emails from site visitors, and a parallel rise in web traffic indicates that people are once again feeling confident enough to begin to plan a project. We also see rising interest in our Builder Portal on the site and we are hoping that 2016 sees our first builder/developer partners adopting modern as a focus in their local markets.

So for this coming year look forward to images from Michigan to begin, and with some luck an update from Pennsylvania, and news of new customers, maybe you?

In the meantime we are going to begin sharing a new series of illustrations of our designs that we have been creating over the second half of 2015. These images are made from our existing 3d models and use a simple ray-tracing rendering application to create a new visualization of our house designs. These are less sketch like, and while not photo like, they have more atmosphere and a more natural sense of light. We hope you will enjoy them and take it as an opportunity to get to know our house designs all over again.

Here is to a good New Year for all of you, and good things to come!

Continue reading "Happy New Year!"

Real Life in the Xhouse1

The home owner sent me a new photo today - a remarkable panoramic view of the multi-level open living space of the XHouse1 he built over this past year in Indiana.

In his note he apologized for the signs of daily life, and not “staging” the image better. But I reassured him that there could be no better testament to the home than evidence of everyday life within it.

I am really not one for the staged pristine kind of magazine like photography that is usually done to promote home design. Smart people are not fooled by careful staging. People who are, I suppose are doomed to chase an idealized image, one that real life rarely cooperates with. I think people that appreciate the kind of design I am promoting through our house catalog see through cosmetics, and are able to imagine their own lives in these homes. For them, and for me, there is nothing more affirming than actually seeing real life in these built houses.

A real photo gives you insight into real life. Its not theater, not a stage set, and I believe that this is what our customers also believe and have chose to persue. At a fundamental level our kind of modern design rejects the theater of historic pastiche and phoney ornament that are typical of status quo traditional based housing designs.

Check out a larger version of the panorama on the house’s Flickr page.

Continue reading "Real Life in the Xhouse1"

The Swedish Standard House receives recognition!

Faithful readers of my blog will remember the Swedish Standard House in Rockford Illinois. This is a home built by Swedish and American high school students, built with walls and framing that approximated Swedish building standards, hence the name. The house is done, the students have finished it, and the project is receiving an award from their local Renewable Energy Association.

On Friday the 8th of November the Swedish Standard House team will receive an award at the Winnebago County Renewable Energy Expo. The Expo's theme is to learn about renewable energy options and funding, network with industry experts and local businesses already utilizing renewable energy practices, and gain a better under­standing how renewable energy practices can be applied in the real world!

We have written about the Swedish Standard House before. We gave the background for the project, described its construction in detail, and made a short video showing the wall build.

The house was recently completed after two rounds of visits by Swedish students this fall. Since the work proceeds at the pace of the academic year of the American and Swedish students, the project stretches out even though the work proceeds at the same pace as conventional construction. I'll repeat my message from earlier posts. The Swedish Standard House represents a way forward for home building in the US, because it achieves a high level of performance with very ordinary construction materials. There is very little learning curve to build a house this way, and builders all ready have the skill set to do this. It does not require new methods or materials, and it enables builders to use the same sub-contractors and suppliers they already use. And most important they already have the experience to reliably price the work, which means there is very little in the way of additional risk required for a builder to adopt these methods. This is why this kind of building points the way forward, and why the Swedish Standard House is the Most Important Green House in America.

So check out those links and join me in a tip of the hat to the Swedish Standard House. Here is hoping it is the first of many more all across the country.

Continue reading "The Swedish Standard House receives recognition!"

Plat House influence in Arkansas - amazing!

The Arkansas contractor who built the second Plat House in Arkansas has built a spec house that is modern and clearly influenced by his work on the Plat House! It is currently for sale now.

Well, I have to hand it to him after all - if I did not know the influence, it would just seem a contemporary house. Look what has happened here: Its likely this house would have never been built in this style if he did not know of the first Arkansas Plat House and had built the second one. This is exactly the kind of influence we wanted to create with the house plans. This is how tastes are influenced. I take it as a victory!

Continue reading "Plat House influence in Arkansas - amazing!"

Presenting our Research into Swedish Housing, continuing

Back in September 2012 Scott Hedges and I presented a summary of our research into Swedish building techniques at the Fall conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. That conference was focused on off-site construction. Part of the fall-out from that conference was an invitation to present at another conference, this time organized by Pennsylvania State University's Pennsylvania Housing Research Center and held towards the end of February 2013 in Allentown, PA, and at a Conference on Pre-Fab building in New Zealand in March 2013.

PHRC organizes several conferences each year, notably on Land Development and Housing. These conferences are attended by Developers and Builders, both coming to present their work and to hear about the work of others. This year PHRC for the first time held a conference on Residential Design & Construction which is where our research was presented. The subject matter was broad on all manner of research.

The conferences on Housing and Land Development were held concurrently at the same venue, and there was some mixing of the groups who were free to attend talks in the other events. And these events are annual, so the same kind of gathering will take place next year as well.

Continue reading "Presenting our Research into Swedish Housing, continuing"

Interesting + Informative dialog on implementing USA New Wall & Swedish Platform Framing

We had this dialog via our Facebook Page this week, and I thought it hit on several common questions about building with USA New Wall & Swedish Platform Framing today, as in right now - not some point in the future when all that is wrong with house building in the US is fixed.

NM: I am a small builder and am interrested in the Swedish Platform and USA New Wall framing. I am curious though if you have any photos or information on how the electrical is installed in the electrical space. Does the electrician need to do any special? Thank you for any information.

LamiDesign: Nothing special really Nathan. If you are using a 2x wiring space then you would use a 4x4x1.5" box, with a switch plate reducer cover - that will extend the 1/2" to the surface of the drywall. The 4x4 box actually has a bit more room inside than a typical single gang new work box, and being shallow makes the electrical work a bit easier IMO. The boxes can be screwed through the back to the main cavity studs, or through the sides into the cross furring - so there are actually twice as many options for where to mount them.
Continue reading "Interesting + Informative dialog on implementing USA New Wall & Swedish Platform Framing"

Guest blogging today at Modular Home Builder

I am guest blogging today at a modular industry site called Modular Home Builder

MODULAR HOME BUILDER: An Architect Speaks Out About Modern Prefab

This interesting site gathers a readership from the industry side of modular home building. These factory owners and officers often don't understand why Modern PreFab vendors chase after this seemingly narrow slice of the market while it is obvious that most people buy traditionally styled homes. I wrote in to offer my observations on why a business might chase after this seemingly niche market. Check it out.

Ultimately this strikes on the very reasons why we have developed a catalog of modern house plans. There is a small but strong interest in homes like these, and it is an interest largely ignored by the market. Serving this niche is just a smart strategy.

Continue reading "Guest blogging today at Modular Home Builder"

Hurricane Sandy Recovery

ReBuilding Communities Damaged by Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy has devastated miles and miles of shore communities, destroying homes, businesses, public infrastructure, and displacing thousands of residents, merchants, and communities. The state of New Jersey is currently under a state of patch and repair that has created a state wide rush in real estate for displaced citizens, and a mini construction boom in emergency repairs and board-ups. Incredibly this has gone completely against the prior trend and has hit a depressed construction community off-guard and unprepared.

What lies ahead is an unprecedented need to restore these communities, to rebuild with vision, and clarity, to restore the salient qualities of these much loved communities, and an opportunity to correct and improve deeply entrenched deficiencies. Thankfully it appears all involved are committed to taking a long view to these restorations, and it appears regulations and planning will be well considered before anything is rebuilt with haste.

Gregory La Vardera Architect has completed many projects at the New Jersey Shore, and thankfully none have been washed away.  As we look forward to the work to come it is our sincere hope that this can be an opportunity to improve the energy performance of all the damaged and affected buildings, and that a higher performance standard can be applied to the homes and light commercial structures that are rebuilt in the affected areas.

We are eager to apply our work in energy performance building systems to the work that is coming, and we offer our service to Home Owners, Builders, Code Officials, and other Architects that may be working on the ReBuilding. Working together we can implement a wide spread improvement to the building stock in these affected communities. We look forward to the challenges ahead.
Continue reading "Hurricane Sandy Recovery"

Letters from Sweden - Bringing the Message Home

At the end of September Scott Hedges and myself made a brief presentation of our research into Swedish residential construction systems at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture's fall 2013 conference in Philadelphia. The subject of the conference was Off Site Construction. This was the first formal presentation of our research, and the first step in what will become a more active effort to distribute information about these building techniques.

The conference was well attended mainly by Architecture Educators presenting research into Off Site building techniques. We were among a smaller group of professional and industry speakers invited to talk about current and ongoing practices in the field. The conference did coincide with a meeting of the Modular Building Institute so we did have a small spill over of attendees from the MBI industry meeting.

Continue reading "Letters from Sweden - Bringing the Message Home"

Open Call for a Case Study Customer

We have a unique opportunity for a customer willing to have their LamiDesign Modern House Plan home serve as a case study for the application of USA New Wall and Swedish Platform Framing.

This customer can be an individual home owner, but the publicity that will surround the project will likely be beneficial to a small developer or builder interested in building their credibility as a provider of energy efficient and green building systems. Ultimately a home owner/developer pairing will provide the greatest benefit to both, a sold home being the most obvious one.

the LamiDesign Lagom House series - a perfect energy efficient case study subject

The benefits to the home owner and builder will be several. First off, the home plan you choose from our collection will be updated to include USA New Wall and Swedish Platform Framing even if the stock plan sets do not include it, at no extra charge. This would be a rather extensive modification service on any of our plans, so this represents a several thousand dollar discount in modification services.

Second, there will be a significant discount in insulation products incorporated into the USA New Wall system due to a informal sponsorship offer that we have received from Roxul. Again this may represent a significant dollar amount, and will take some of the edge off the extra cost of an energy efficient home.

Third, the home will incorporate a new energy efficient floor slab foundation system based on Swedish techniques we have studied. These products will be offered at fabrication/shipping cost, forgoing the typical product mark-up.

And we are working to identify other sponsorships which will benefit the owner and sponsor. Ideally we would like to see this opportunity go to a developer working on affordable housing, either subsidized, or non-profit developer, because we believe strongly that the owners of modest homes, of modest means, are the people that most need energy efficient construction that costs less to own and operate over a lifetime. Clearly further sponsorships will be easier to develop with a non-profit developer.

As a Case Study you can expect an unusual amount of documentation to be done of your home. This may involve photography and videography, as well as interviews on the progress of the work, the outcome, life in the house for a set period of time following completion.

Contact me to discuss your interest, which house design would suit your market, your location, time frame, etc. The time has come for this. This is the very beginning of a wholesale change in the way we build. Its time to lead rather than follow, and by leading here now you will set the stage for your mission to be ahead of the trend. We want to help you do that. We want to prove that it can be done today.

Continue reading "Open Call for a Case Study Customer"

Learning from Swedish Home Building - Part 4

Today we published a new video in our series about Learning from Swedish Home Building, this time about the Rockford Swedish Standard House that I visited back in March, 2012. This house has a very interesting background story. Its the product of a circumstances that probably had a one in a billion chance of aligning with the research Scott Hedges and I were doing on Swedish House building techniques. But there it was, right in the heartland of the USA, somebody was building a Swedish house.

This project will continue in the Fall of 2012 when the schools' academic years begin again, and we will follow up with more information about its progress then. But in the meantime, this video introduction to the project includes more footage I shot when I was there.

This video piece is about a house in Rockford Illinois being built by a team of American High School Students and visiting Swedish Vocational School Students. They are building a Swedish wall system using American materials that is very similar to the prototypes laid out in our USA New Wall. The USA New Wall is our recommendation for applying Swedish building techniques to American home building.

The walls in this Rockford house will have approximately R35 worth of insulation in them when done. Two layers of 1.5" stone wool at approximately R6 each, and the main stud space with 5.5" or stone wool at R23. The furred layering on both sides will reduce thermal bridging and improve the averaged R value performance of the wall.

This Project is the result of a unique economic development relationship between Rockford, and Swedish sister city Lidköping. It is being built as an effort of the Swedish American Foundation of the Rockford Swedish American Health System which is engaged in urban renewal in the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital. The Swedish American Foundation sponsors teams of students from the Construction Program at De la Gardiegymnasiet, a trade school from Lidköping. Together with the students from Rockford East High School, and under the coordination of East High School Instructor Matt Walling the house is constructed on a site a few blocks from the hospital.

We have more background on this project here including a detailed analysis of the wall system they are using:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/03/all-about-swedish-standard-house.html
http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/03/visiting-most-important-green-house-in.html

As recommended for the USA New Wall, the Swedish Standard house shown in this video will use use Stone Wool insulation rather than fiberglass. You can read a detailed article about why we prefer Stone Wool on our blog:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/01/what-you-don-know-about-mineral-wool.html

You can read the entire Letters from Sweden series on our blog which tracks our research and applications of into blog post's into Swedish House building, and its application in the US:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/search/label/letters%20from%20Sweden

The USA New Wall, and Swedish Platform Framing are an outgrowth of our research into Swedish building practices. Again, you can find details of the USA New Wall here:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/usa-new-wall.html

And Swedish Platform Framing here:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/swedish-platform-framing.html

If you need assistance implementing the USA New Wall or Swedish Platform Framing in your projects, we are here to help. Please contact us.

Continue reading "Learning from Swedish Home Building - Part 4"

Learning from Swedish Home Building - Part 3

Its friday so it must be time to show the latest video in our Series about building high performance walls like the Swedes do. In our first video we explained why it makes sense to look to Sweden for a direction for our house building techniques. The second video we reviewed the Good/Better/Best model for easing builders into high performance wall building. Today we look at Swedish Platform Building, the best advancement in house building since the Western Platform Frame. Wow, is our house nerd showing here or what?

I've been trying to keep these videos short, and make them just an introduction to the ideas presented. But for the Swedish Platform Frame I was not able to do a short video. What happened was I ended up making a 3d model of the prototypical Swedish Platform Frame, and it was obvious that this was such a good way to explain this that I decided to just go ahead a make a detailed description of the framing system. So it is almost 20 minutes long - my apologies. Stop at the restroom, get a large popcorn, turn off your cell phones, note the exits, and prep yourself for the Director's Cut of the Swedish Platform Frame...

This video piece is about how Sweden has modified the Western Platform Framing method for better energy performance in residential construction. We call this modified framing method Swedish Platform Framing.

This video is quite long, and we apologize about that. If we figure out how to say all this in a shorter video we'll produce a new version. In this video we make a very breif review of the history of stud framing systems - Balloon Framing and Western Platform Framing. Then we proceed to look in detail at the differences between Western and Swedish Platform framing.

Swedish Platform Framing is explained in much more detail on our web site, and you can read that on this page:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/swedish-platform-framing-info.html

As with the USA New Wall, the walls shown in this video use Stone Wool insulation rather than fiberglass. We mention in the video that this is because Stone Wool offers higher insulation values - R23 for 2x6 stud spaces, and R30 for 2x8 stud spaces. We also mention that it allows for better installations. You can read a detailed article about why this is so on our blog:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/01/what-you-don-know-about-mineral-wool.html

Not covered in detail in the video is the Vapor Retarder membrane. We prefer a Variable Permeability Vapor Retarder membrane. There are several sources for this unique vapor retarder, notably Certainteed's Membrane:

http://www.certainteed.com/products/insulation/mold-prevention/317391

And Intello Plus, and DB+ by ProClima:

http://foursevenfive.com/product-category/air-sealing-system/interior-membranes-air-vapor-control/

You can read the entire Letters from Sweden series by clicking on the respective link under the the above blog post's title's.

The USA New Wall, and Swedish Platform Framing are an outgrowth of our research into Swedish building practices. Again, you can find details of the USA New Wall here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/usa-new-wall-info.html

And again Swedish Platform Framing here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/swedish-platform-framing-info.html

If you need assistance implementing the USA New Wall or Swedish Platform Framing in your projects, we are here to help. Please contact us. Continue reading "Learning from Swedish Home Building - Part 3"

Learning from Swedish Home Building - Part 2

Time to look at Part 2 of our video series on building Nordic style walls in the US. Today we look at the USA New Wall, and its Good, Better, Best versions which make it easier for American builders to step into high performance building.

In the first video, you may recall, we briefly reviewed why we would look to Sweden to inspire the way we build houses in the US. This next video shows how we can apply the lessons from their wall construction to building here in the US. We offer these improvements in easy to achieve steps. First get familiar with better insulation, then introduce a wiring space to your walls to make it easier to keep the house air tight, then complete the picture with an exterior insulation layer that makes a good thermal break for the wall framing. Here is Part 2:

This video piece shows how to go about building Nordic Style walls for residential construction, like the walls used in Sweden. We call these American versions of Nordic walls the USA New Wall.

The wall systems have been broken down into Good/Better/Best subsets in order to offer builders a gradual path to increasing the performance of the walls they build. The video starts off with a detailed look at a typical Swedish wall, and then walks you through the Good, Better, and Best versions of the USA New Wall.

The USA New Wall is explained in much more detail on our web site, and you can read that on this page:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/usa-new-wall-info.html

You will note that all of the wall variations feature Stone Wool insulation rather than fiberglass. We mention in the video that this is because Stone Wool offers higher insulation values - R23 for 2x6 stud spaces, and R30 for 2x8 stud spaces. We also mention that it allows for better installations. You can read a detailed article about why this is so on our blog:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/01/what-you-don-know-about-mineral-wool.html

Also mentioned in the video is the Variable Permeability Vapor Retarder membrane. There are several sources for this unique vapor retarder, notably Certainteed's Membrane:

http://www.certainteed.com/products/insulation/mold-prevention/317391

And Intello Plus, and DB+ by ProClima:

http://foursevenfive.com/product-category/air-sealing-system/interior-membranes-air-vapor-control/

You can read the entire Letters from Sweden series on the blog.

The USA New Wall, and Swedish Platform Framing are an outgrowth of our research into Swedish building practices. Again, you can find details of the USA New Wall here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/usa-new-wall-info.html

And Swedish Platform Framing here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/swedish-platform-framing-info.html

If you need assistance implementing the USA New Wall or Swedish Platform Framing in your projects, we are here to help. Please contact us.

Continue reading "Learning from Swedish Home Building - Part 2"

Learning from Swedish Home Building - A video series

I've decided to make a series of short videos about our research into Swedish home building, and my recommendations for how to apply the lessons here. Namely the USA New Wall, and Swedish Platform Framing.

I don't love being in front of the camera - eek, have you ever done this? But I think its a great way to reach more people. If you want to show these ideas to somebody, they can watch a short video to get a good introduction, rather than reading a long web page, or many blog entries.

So in that spirit we present the first video which is about why we would look to Sweden for a model for improving the performance of our homes in the US.

Notes:

This video piece explains the premise of why we in the United States can benefit from adopting house building techniques developed in Sweden. Specifically this video series will focus on residential wall systems.

The video touches on many ideas which are explained in greater depth in entries to the LamiDesign Modern House Plan blog, in a series of posts tagged Letters from Sweden. Here are links to some specific topics touched on in the video:

This post "Letters from Sweden - Europe is different, Sweden is not, sort of.." elaborates on the similarities and differences between the housing industries in both countries:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/2008/01/letters-from-sweden-europe-is-different.html

The book "Coming in From the Cold" makes a detailed account of Sweden's response to the 1970's oil crisis. This book was written in the 1980s when it became apparent to scientists that Sweden was using much less energy per household than the US. This was 25 years ago. Sweden has gotten even better at it since then. US, not so much. We describe the book here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/2010/11/coming-in-from-cold-story-behind-story.html

We also made a fairly detailed examination of the typical construction of a Swedish residential wall. This will expand on the very brief description in the video, and you can find that here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/2010/12/letters-from-sweden-closer-look-at_31.html

You read the entire Letters from Sweden series by clicking on the respective link under the blog post title.

The USA New Wall, and Swedish Platform Framing are an outgrowth of this research. You can find details of the USA New Wall here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/usa-new-wall-info.html

And Swedish Platform Framing here:

http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/swedish-platform-framing-info.html

If you need assistance implementing the USA New Wall or Swedish Platform Framing in your projects, we are here to help. Please contact us.

Continue reading "Learning from Swedish Home Building - A video series"

All About the Swedish Standard House, Rockford, Ill

I spent a few days in Rockford last week visiting this modest house. I'm going to show you what I saw, explain why I believe this house is important, why it should be important to you, and why it will be an important model for any home builder hoping to improve the performance of their work.

Continue reading "All About the Swedish Standard House, Rockford, Ill"

Visiting The Most Important "Green" House in America

Next week I travel through Chicago to Rockford Illinois to see a house being built by a team of American and Swedish high school students, and their instructors. They are adapting Swedish techniques to the available American building materials. Does that sound familiar? It sounds a lot like the USA New Wall.

So where did this house come from? What are Swedish students doing in the USA building houses? What's going on here? A little back story is in order.

Rockford Illinois has a strong Swedish heritage, with many Swedish immigrants settling and founding industry in the city. The Swedish history and culture is still strong today and Rockford maintains a Sister City relationship with Lidköping Sweden with whom they promote economic development for both cities.

Ok, so there are Swedes in Illinois - but how about this house? The SwedishAmerican Health System in Rockford has a Foundation that among other activities helps develop and redevelop housing in the neighborhoods surrounding the Hospital. They've completed dozens of projects in the neighborhood, many with the local Habitat for Humanity. The vocational program at the local High School has been involved with working on the builds of these projects, so at one point the connection was made to form an exchange program where by Swedish students from Lidköping could come to the US and participate in building a house here, and the American students could do the same in Sweden.

Ok, we see it now. House building, exchange students, but how did they come to build a Swedish house? Well soon after the first group of Swedish students and instructors arrived they were on the site of the first house project. As the Swedes were being oriented to the American construction a question came up, the kind of question that in retrospect strikes closer to the heart of the matter than you realize at the time. And the question was "Where is the rest of your wall?"

Of course there was no good answer for this. What happened in the intervening time is that the instructors have conducted an exchange of ideas and technology, and have applied them to a series of three houses built by the students in this program. The first house they worked on was dubbed "The American Standard House" which was built largely as we do here. The second house was "The Swedish Influenced House" which began to apply the Swedish lesson in insulating and air sealing. The current project is "The Swedish Standard House" which will apply the lessons cumulative to date, and is even being made to look like a traditional Swedish vernacular house.

So next week I'll see it, learn about the technical details, talk to the instructors and students, take pictures and video I hope, and report back.

I can't say strongly enough how I believe that the techniques used for building houses in Sweden are the best and most relevant solutions for turning around our housing industry in the US. The techniques are practical, they use a similar skill set to our current practices, and in fact have grown out of the same tradition of stud framed house building. I believe that this is the way we will build houses here in the US, whether I told you about it or not, its the natural evolution of our status quo toward greater energy efficiency. This simple house in Rockford Illinois is the future of American home building. And as the first house built this way in the country, I have to say that this modest house is the most important Green house in the USA. And they weren't even trying. Modest. Unassuming. Lagom!

Continue reading "Visiting The Most Important "Green" House in America"

Mid Century style addition points way to Blueprints

Points the way to our Blueprints Plan Collection that is. Yes, we are gearing up to address the long dormant Blueprints Collection of our plan catalog.

We've been slow to add any new designs to the Blueprints Collection. If you recall this plan collection is intended to directly evoke the architectural style of the much loved mid-century modern style of American homes. I've been concentrating on filling out other portions of the catalog and so for some time this collection has not seen any development.

This project from my local practice has actually provided a platform to vet certain ideas about how to build a mid-century looking house today, with today's building codes and today's common materials, without it becoming prohibitively expensive for those of modest means. There are some technical issues to conquer that play out in the aesthetic. The thin roof line of period mid-century homes is difficult to reproduce today because we need thicker roof assemblies to accommodate adequate insulation. The post and beam framing of many of these classic houses is hard to get around. It will simply cost more than conventional framing. But can we get around the precious large dimension lumber and and planks that are so identified with the style..?

We're working on it.

Continue reading "Mid Century style addition points way to Blueprints"

What you don't know about Mineral Wool will make you look stupid.

If you are interested in green building, or call yourself a green building expert, then you should know about Mineral Wool insulation. If you have not seen Mineral Wool handled and installed, then you need to read this. If you think that Mineral Wool batts are similar enough to Fiberglass batts that you already know what you need to know about it, then you are a fool. And you still need to read this.

image Randek AB

If you are a regular reader here you know I am an advocate of using Mineral Wool insulation to improve the energy performance of the way we build houses in the US. There are many reasons why I think Mineral Wool is the best insulation for us here. Recently I find myself making my case for this repeatedly, so, I thought it would be worthwhile to get it all down in one place and just point to it in the future.

Continue reading "What you don't know about Mineral Wool will make you look stupid."

Radio Show Interview - all about Sweden, Prefab, USA New Wall & Swedish Platform Framing

Sunday afternoon I was on an internet radio program called Burning Down the House hosted by architect Curtis Wayne and discussed the broad range of topics that have been covered in our Letters from Sweden series.

Burning Down the House covers all matters of Design and Architecture and appears on the Heritage Radio Network - essentially an internet broadcast, the show went out by live stream on Sunday afternoon and is subsequently available as a Podcast. Heritage has a bunch of great shows on cooking and food, wine and beer, so all you foodies following out there may enjoy some of the shows they offer.

Curtis had done his homework and proceeded to lead us through the broad range of topics that we have covered in the course of our study of Swedish housing. As you might expect, we were not able to plumb the depths of all this content, but we did speak in some detail about many points. Curtis suggested I come back for another show where we could delve into some of these areas in greater depth, an opportunity I'd welcome.

There are several ways to listen to the show. Its on iTunes if that's your thing. Or you can listen online on their site, or download the audio file. If you are looking on the list it is show #81 from 11/13/11. Its best if you up the volume a bit since I was mumbling - I really got to work on my radio persona!

Continue reading "Radio Show Interview - all about Sweden, Prefab, USA New Wall & Swedish Platform Framing"

Raising our standard of care

One of the foundations of how the Swedes build houses is the air tight barrier created at the vapor retarder/barrier plane of the wall. There is a movement about in the US to push that air barrier to the exterior of the wall, and the vapor retarder with it which raises a whole host of other problems. One of the issues is that its well known that its nearly impossible to seal an air barrier around the floor joists of a two story house. Well how do the Swedes do it? Simple, they use this:

Doh! Why didn't we think of that? Why not is a good question. Its because our standard of care is too low. Builders everywhere in the US use fiberglass batts with asphalt impregnated craft paper as their vapor retarder. This is trimmed loosely around obstructions and never achieves an air-tight barrier. Now that more builders are thinking about this I see decent air barriers installed, but the space between joists - spray foam is recommended. Another subcontractor, another process, another reason for a builder not to bother. So that's why the Swedes have these clever folded vapor barrier sheets - so they can quickly wrap and tape off a penetration by a floor joist or beam. They don't need a special insulation for between the joists or new trades or subcontractors.

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