Entries from December 2007 ↓

I just came across this article by Daniel Akst in the Metropolis magazine via the LamiDesign Modern House Plan Blog. It is very relevant to this project and the difficulties of building, financing and developing modern homes in the US right now. The text is a bit small but it’s worth scooting your face a […]

While not directly related to this project I wanted to give a shout out to Brian Phillips, principle of Interface Studio Architects, for appearing in the current issue of Dwell magazine. Brian, ISA and their low-income Sheridan Street Housing project are part of Dwell’s ‘Nice Modernist’ section of the February 2008 issue, currently on new […]

A few days ago we received our second quote on a radiant heating system from Don Vance at Radiantec. The quote was for an Open Direct System whereas the first quote was for a closed system that would require a bit more hardware. Radiantec came in at just over $1,200 for everything but the heat […]

We received our first quote today from Steve Haldi at Hannel RadiantDirect.com. Steve quoted pretty much everything needed for a closed system using an electric water heater. The entire package came in at just under $2,500 and included the following items:

1 – PaceMaker E3R electric water heater)

1 Trim Kit

2 Loop Supply and Return Manifold with […]

I mentioned in our last design meeting, we had decided that radiant heating was definitely a necessity and no longer a want. Well, I did a bit of research last week on various radiant heating systems and just received my first call back from a company called Radiantec who confirmed that radiant systems can in […]

Ever since Nick Allen posted the comment below earlier today I’ve been obsessed with the concept of turning ISA’s “Core” concept in their design into a prefab element.

While we gave up on prefabbing entire homes long ago due to cost and the constraints of Philly’s narrow infill lots, there could be something to the combination of SIPs and locally prefabbed “ISA Cores” that could be “dropped” into the shell of a house to expedite the construction timeline…

I just stumbled on this site in a bit or research for affordable, modern siding. It’s got some great project examples of modern homes built for under $100K using a lot of salvaged and discount materials as well as a bunch of sweat equity. Their projects are a bit unconventional compared to ours but I imagine a lot of people checking on our progress would be interested in doing a project themselves in the future. Salvage and sweat equity will be key to any project you are doing yourself!

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One of my taks from the last design meeting was to research local SIP manufacturers and get quotes to pass on to our builder to formulate into his calculations for the rough estimates of the construction costs. We do not have a detailed builder spec package for quote so I can not get official quotes […]

On Friday we had our second design meeting for the 100k house. This time we invited Scott from Level 5 to join us in order to give initial feedback from a cost standpoint on our initial design. Overall the meeting went very well and we all agreed that we got a lot accomplished. We left […]

This weekend I was hosting an open house as part of my realtor duties when the builder/developer of the property stopped in. It was cold, rainy and the Eagles were playing so no one else was there and we had some time to chat about building and development. The developer was actually a builder who […]