One of the most exciting things going on in our household is what we call "Future House".  While most people who know me personally know that silliness is the core of my being (by contrast, on-line my persona is stuck as crutchety stereo type authority figure), I do take major life plans serious to the point of insanity. When my wife and I got married, nearly 15 years ago, we had a plan. We would have 3 houses in our "effective lifetime" (only an engineer comes up with a term like that)....

As seen here, our future house is under construction.  Some of the general goals were in that first article but to quickly summarize what we are looking to do: This will be our "last" house until old folks home. Needs to be completed while our children are young so that this will be their "home" when they go away to college or sugar mines or whatever they are going to do. Needs to be "green". I.e. I am willing to spend extra to make the hous...

Well friends and family who are keeping up on "Future House". The plot plan has been largely completed. Click to enlarge We have the plot of land. It's a little strangely shaped. It's about 3 acres overall. We've settled where the house is going to sit on the property.   Here is a closer up view. Click to enlarge. The driveway is subject to change as I am trying to avoid cutting down trees (though, sadly, we've cut down a lot of tr...

I sometimes wonder what the various greenie sites I visit would think when they realized that I was using their info on how to build a green home to construct a 22,000 square foot house that is, technically green.

The basement is about to get covered up…

Backof house (future back yard)   Where the house will eventually be (rocks)

Okay, yesterday I whined about how hard it is to go green.  So let me give you a bit more info... So I'm building a new house for our family. I decided early on that I wanted to go green.  I happen to be in the fortunate position to go all out here. So let's go over the techs: Wind generation Geothermal power solar power So there you go, the three main renewal energy sources you can use on a new house. So what's the problem? Let's start with ...

So we're building a new house, I've got 13 acres of land.  I'm looking into all kinds of different ways to be green. Geothermal, solar, and wind power.  It's not going very well so far.  I think a lot of these people who are saying we need to use renewable energy haven't actually seriously looked into this.

My wife and I just purchased 10 acres of land. Today we're going to go explore. Yippee!

My wife and I are trying to have our cake and eat it too. A large house that relies largely on renewable energy.   The house is jammed full of both open and closed cell foam insulation.  Every wall and ceiling is filled with this stuff. Even with the house unfinished, it’s had a major effect on keeping the place warm this winter.  This turned out to be a pretty significant investment because of the space involved. But the long-term cost savings will be enormous ...

 

Future house continues to move along and we’re using a material called “SEALECTION 500” for the insulation.

Basically, it’s like having your house filled with styrofoam (at least, that’s how it tastes..).

Here’s the FAQ on it.

http://www.advancedinsulationla.com/faq.html

Once in, it looks like this: