Gloria and Christopher Demers came to me with a simple idea, build the "greenest" house that was allowed for in their budget.  They had purchased a lot in near driftwood on Zyle Road, and wanted to construct a very site specific, properly oriented, sustainable home. In addition, they were interested in using an alternative wall system, rainwater catchment, low-voc paints, etc. 

Another strong factor in their favor is that they had done some research on their own, so they were flexible and familiar with the materials and terms used in designing a sustainable residence. 

Christopher had worked on numerous ideas, as well as having some specific requests in mind for his family's new home.  The Demers were fans of  Sarah Susanka's concepts in The Not So Big House.  One of the most important of these being the "small home concept."  Although currently the Demers have four children living at home, they did the unconventional, and designed the home for their current and future needs. 

After the initial meeting with the Demers it was apparent to me that they were very fond of Southwest Design. I met with Christopher at their lot and discussed with him their ideas for the property. I worked on an initial sketch for the plans and elevation and presented it to them within about a week of our initial meeting. They both loved it. We worked as a team, along with Doug Garrett of Home Performance Testing to produce the design that they were looking for. After about five weeks we had the plans about finished. 

During this time I also encouraged them to begin looking for a builder that they could be comfortable with, they ended up choosing Chuck Watkins, also a City of Austin Green Building Member. We worked along as a team to assure that the budget was were the Demers needed it to be. 

An important design consideration that the Demers were keen on utilizing was a Rainwater Harvesting system. The proposed system was in the process of being design, when it was realized that for a family of six the roof area of a 2,600 square foot home would not be enough to keep the tanks full. The lesson from this is that even though this sustainable feature works for other people it may not be appropriate for everyone. The Demers still plan on utilizing a Rainwater system after some of their children have left for college. 

One system is for the master bedroom suite, the office and the sitting room. This system will be located over the master bedroom and will be a one and one half ton system. 

The main body of the home will be served by a two and one half ton system located in the attic over the loft. This system will have a Therma-Stor Ultra Air APD located next to it to provide the home with a constant supply of fresh, HEPA filtered, dehumidified outside air. This unit will also recirculate, filter and dehumidify the existing air inside of the house. 

The air distribution system is designed to use rectangular metal trunk ducts and round metal runouts to each supply grille. The ducts will be insulated to R-6 and will be sealed using latex, water based mastic for air tight construction. Balancing dampers will be installed on all runouts to aid in fine tuning the air distribution system. 

The trunk ducts for the downstairs will be fitted with flow control dampers that will redirect up to 20% additional air to the upstairs ducts to avoid the problem of the upstairs being too warm, while the downstairs is too cold. The upstairs duct sizing has been done with this in mind. The return grilles have been sized to allow the systems to operate very quietly.