Introduction - How This Blog is Organized

ORIGINAL INTENT

This blog, as we envision it going in, will have five major sections.  

• Timeline
• Design
• Construction
• Performance
• Odds 'N Ends

Section I:  Timeline

Our journey into sustainability and green building began eight years ago.  This section recaps the important milestones leading up to the actual construction of the house. Most of the posts explain the pros and cons of various green building options and why we chose the ones we did.  We were able to follow through with most choices but did have to alter or substitute for others at the time of construction.

Section II:  Design

This section discusses the final design of the energy neutral home that we will start building in the summer of 2014.  

                    Update, 2024:  A look back at the "Design" posts, is to realize how naive some of the                             content was and how much it deviated from the final result.  However, beyond a few                             "updates" such as this one, I leave them untouched as a way of conveying the complexity                         of such an undertaking by a DIYer.

Section III:  Construction

This section takes root in late summer of 2014 and will discuss major accomplishments, problems, solutions, frustrations, surprises, disappointments and who knows what else in conjunction with building a house and working largely alone.

Section IV:  Performance

Since construction will take between two and four years, this section will likely commence sometime in 2017 or 2018.  Our intention is to report on the positive and negative outcomes of our non-standard design, particularly its thermal performance over a period of years.

Odds 'N Ends

This is really not a "section".  Interspersed throughout the blog will be posts covering topics that do not fit nicely with the other sections.

ADDITIONS

After several dozen posts, it became apparent that a quick link to Annualized GeoSolar, on which our passive solar build is based, would be helpful for the casual viewer and for easy referencing in future posts.  Consequently, the addition of............

  

Featured Post
In the right column of each post, there is a heading, "Featured Post".  The most unique feature of our project is the use of Annualized GeoSolar conditioning in lieu conventional heating and air conditioning.  A click on "Timeline - Annualized GeoSolar" under "Featured Post" is the quickest pathway to the posts that explain AGS.

LEVEL OF DETAIL

My overarching goal is to contribute to the dialog on sustainability.  My secondary goal, in light of the lack of information on earth sheltered passive solar construction, to offer a resource for other green builders.  Therefore, I am writing the blog as if the reader is seriously considering a passive solar build.  I want to share the thinking that goes into even the most minor decisions and explain what went well and what did not.  I want to detail construction so thoroughly that anyone can emulate it to whatever degree deemed useful. The downside to this level of detail is that it will be overkill for the casual viewer.  But I am hoping that even quick and infrequent page-viewers can become ambassadors for sustainability.