Well, will see what happens, but Joey is hoping I might actually motivate to blog on a regular basis now that we are starting our next project: a new home in Fifeville for Joey, Eleanor and yours truly.

Today Digs brought over a track hoe and took down a junk tree and some overgrown brush. Hopefully, tomorrow we will start cutting out the foundation.

This is stating the obvious, but having a baby can certainly change things.  We’re really excited about this house as we’ve really focused on designing a house that will help facilitate how we want to live as a family.  It’s sort of embarrassing, but there are so many child and family related things that I never really thought to incorporate into the designs of our houses until now.  I’ll try and go into that as the house takes shape.

Because this is our own house, we are also taking a few more chances than we normally do. One example is that we are working with John Semmelhack of Think Little to design and build our house to the Passiv House Standards.  I’ll go into more details later, but the basic goal is to build a house that uses 60 to 70% less total energy, and 90% less in space heating without relying on things like solar hot water, photo voltaics or geothermal heating.   This is accomplished with a well thought out design, a super tight building envelope, ultra efficient windows, extra insulation, and an energy recovery ventilator among other factors.

Part of our inspiration was from Bill Jobes who is closing in on wrapping up the first Passiv House in Virginia.  Check it out: http://lankfordpassiv.com/

All told, I think there are less than 20 completed houses in the US.