Entries Tagged 'planning' ↓

It took a day and a half, but our plans have now officially been submitted to the City of Philadelphia for zoning approval. We filed for an accelerated review of the plans in order to get an answer within 5 days so if all goes well we will have zoning approval for both homes from […]

I arrived at the topic of this post in a round about way today. It started with a search for the best refrigerator for our project on the energy star website. While we obviously need an energy star model, the range of energy usage ranges from roughly 400 - 700 kWH / year on […]

In our last design meeting we decided to shorten the footprint of the house from 42′ to 36′ and to remove the half bath on the ground floor. This has caused us to rethink our floorplans a bit. I have been struggling with the kitchen and ground floor layout over the past few days. Below […]

Today I ordered an estimate for soil and environmental testing for the lots from Ambric Tech Corp. Ambric is an engineering firm recommended to me by Brian at Interface Studios. The testing basically consists of drilling a few holes at least 10′ deep in each lot to determine the content and quality of the soil. […]

Yesterday afternoon we had our much anticipated budget review with the entire team for the 100K House. Scott from Level 5 Construction had taken the past two weeks to come up with a comprehensive estimate based on the most recent design of both homes in the project.
I knew we were exceeding our $100K budget with […]

I am heading out the door now for a weekend getaway but have a quick update on SIP quotes for the project. I have received quotes from four of the seven companies I requested bids from. I have agreed not to disclose exact pricing from each vendor at this time so for now I will […]

As you know we are focusing our budget on the major guts of the home that are not easy to upgrade in the future. Probably the biggest organ of all in the home is the insulation or quality of the shell. I can’t believe all of the home improvement shows I have seen lately that […]

Last night I met with the zoning committee from the East Kensington Neighbors Association which is the local neighborhood group for the area our project is in. In Philly, each neighborhood is represented by an association of neighbors that appoints a zoning committee from its members to assist developers and homeowners who require zoning variances […]

You may recall our Preliminary SIP Mfg Evaluation in early December. After speaking with the various manufacturers about their basic process, product and market differentiators I owed them more detailed plans to give us a quote for the two homes. I just finished contacting the manufacturers and delivering the plans to each of them for […]

As promised here are our updated plans from ISA for both houses that we have just released to Level 5 to give us an estimate on construction costs. ISA named the corner house next to the 100K House the “120K House” and I like it. Once they come back with budget and comments we will […]