The new house I bought is the first one I am gutting by myself. I have been in construction all my life but this is the first big job where I have all the responsibility (planning, crew, funding, timing, design, all of it).

It is fun. There were plans submitted to make it into a three family but we (me and Loretta) have decided to make it a two family instead. The top three floors will be ours. The ground floor and basement will be a rental.

Here are some photos of it in the gut stage.

Below is the front. I have gutted all floors except the third floor where I am living. I also cut out a large window on the top floor that makes for great views and light. The concept of green is a complex one. Tearing down an old house to make a new green house is a waste if the old house worked just fine.

But green is more than numbers. Green is also a spiritual thing. So tearing down a dark and gloomy house to make a happy bright house is good for the soul and that is a good thing. I tried to find a balance here. I ended up replacing almost everything but will reuse a lot of the material. I am also replacing the perfectly good but very energy inefficient fuel boiler with a new efficient one. There is waste by throwing out a good boiler but the new efficient one is better over time I have rationalized.

Below is the back of the house. In the back yard you can see all the wood beams I bought. They are salvaged from another house. I want to recycle as much as possible. The salvaged beams will be used for all my floors and ceilings. They are old growth and old, so they come from trees that are hundreds of years old and they were cut about a hundred years ago. They are old and worn but the wood was stronger to begin with so it evens out. And no new trees were cut to make my house new - it is recycled.

I want to separate the toilet water from the rest of the house and pass the gray water (sinks and shower) into the back yard to water the plants. If you use biodegradable soaps the water is harmless and nutritious for the plants. It would pass under the ground via tubes with holes so you wouldn’t actually see the water except through the resulting lush greenery. I am told that laundry detergent has a lot of the same ingredients that a good fertilizer has. A friend does this and his tomatoes are legendary.

Below is the top floor which will, like most of the house be a large open space with light. There will also be stairs to the roof which is going to be raised to offer higher ceilings. The roof will be a green roof with about six inches of earth and various low succulent plants that need little maintenance, suck up the rain water and keep the roof temperature constant. I will plant some low maintenance wild flowers to help feed the bee hive I will have on the roof. I am very excited to have a bee hive. I am not a big eater of honey but I definitely like fruit and without bees pollinating our flowers we would have no fruit or vegetables.

On the roof will be a bulkhead that is enclosed in glass to offer warmth and views for sitting. The air conditioning units will be placed on the north side of the bulkhead in the shade so that they stay cool and don’t have to work so hard. On the bulkhead roof I will place solar panels to power low voltage things like garden lights. I have to look into the solar thing more to see how much I can actually power.

I am betting that NY will get hotter and energy prices will get pricier. So I am building a house that will still be practical in 20 years. I am removing the double front doors that work great for cold winters but are not needed otherwise. I am getting rid of the monster of a boiler and replacing it with a small efficient heater and air tight insulation. I am definitely finding eco friendly cooling solutions (fans, energy efficient air conditioners etc) to keep cool. And I want to take the electricity as much off the grid as possible. Solar panels are a must and maybe a wind propeller. We get good wind on the roof from the ocean.

Below is the second floor which will be one open space for kitchen and living area. The back wall (seen in the photo) will be opened up and replaced with a glass wall. It will help warm the space in the winder since that is southern facing. In the summer we’ll curtain it. All glass will be high energy efficiency to keep constant temperatures.

The third floor will be bedrooms and I’m not renovating it since it was renovated two months before I bought the house. It is where we live now - very small for us but it keeps things cozy. That covers the top three floors, which we will live in.

Below is a photo of the ground floor and basement, which will be the second apartment. We had to take out the whole floor because of termites. The ground floor will have part of the floor cut out to create a balcony that looks down onto the basement thus creating an airy space that is more usable on the basement level. The cut out of the floor is on the south side of the building so that the sunlight will stream into the ground floor and basement all day. The back wall will also be taken out and replaced by a large glass wall to increase the light streaming in. It is really going to be amazing.

The stairs from the ground floor to the basement will be made out of the thick recycled wood to increase the organic feel. The floor cutout will also be rimmed with a walkway for access to the garden. The walkway will be slats of metal to maximize the light going to the basement. The slats also make cool shadows on the floor similar to the shadows that the raised Brooklyn subway creates on the street below (think Godfather or Do The Right Thing movies). The walkway will actually be the recycled fire escape that you can see on the back of the building. Since it is a two family code does not require a fire escape any more.

Below you can see the ground floor and basement without a floor.

These are the plans for now. This too shall change…..

Tags: construction, family home, green house

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 1:34 am and is filed under Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.