The Philosophy of Our House Design
Our philosophy in designing this home was to create a beautiful comfortable place to live, while keeping in mind that any house built today will outlast the supply of inexpensive fossil fuels. To this end, we had designed a home that does not directly consume any fossil fuels. While we will connect to the local electrical grid, we plan to generate most if not all of our electric needs from a micro-hydro-turbine located about 1000 feet from the house. In the future, we plan to add photovoltaic solar panels to provide our electrical supply during summer droughts. Our goal is to generate enough electricity for our needs without having to buy any from the grid.
In the design, we wanted a flexible indoor space, that could be used in multiple ways to accommodate not only our needs today, but also our future needs, and the needs of future occupants of the home. If a home is well designed, it will last a very very long time and need few changes to suit people in the future. We love to entertain, and designed a home that can easily accommodate a large gathering of family and friends, and yet still feel intimate when only a few people sit by the fire in the living room. It is our hope that we are building a home that will last for hundreds of years, like many old homes in Europe that continue to meet the needs of people today. We feel that building a home that, for whatever reason, will not remain in continuous use for hundreds of years, is an irresponsible waste of the materials needed to construct a home.
David and I love gardens and the outdoors. Because the winters can be long, we wanted to create outdoor spaces that are protected and can be used early in the spring and well into the fall, so we designed the house to protect the garden to the south. Also, the design features deep overhangs over porches, allowing us to use the porches in rainy weather. We want the inside of the house to flow onto the porches, and into the garden, so that, in warm weather, it is one continuous space with differing degrees of shade and enclosure.
Finally, David and I love art. We have paintings that we wish to display but need to protect them from light, heat, and other dangers. We have designed our home to provide lots of protected wall space for paintings and have designed many locations for statues and other three-dimensional art to be displayed.