Week of January 15, 2010

Finally, after a couple of months being too busy to actually join the discussion here I made it back. The new idea sounds really interesting and I am looking forward to see it work out. Being in Europe I think it will get hard to post good or bad …fast or slow designs from those areas already mentioned. But I am looking forward to see the idea grow and develop. It really sounds like the next logical step and will be fun to be part of.

Keep on going!

This is very exciting, to be able to rant about the successes in the home marketplace is awesome. Do we have a Slow Home award?

Will there be opportunities to offer examples from smaller urban centers?

Jenny,
Welcome to the site. It is great to have someone from Australia join in the conversation. As I mentioned to Volker above there are lots of ways of participating and we have decided the whole project so that anyone can do it from anywhere. I look forward to working with you on it.

Great to see SlowHome growing and thriving.

I hope this doesn’t mean you’ll be losing the back material. While you have a core of graduate students eager to move on, we freshmen need basic materials to learn on, need the backlog of detail by detail. I understand much of this becomes irrelevant as the Slow Home concepts evolve, as checklists and other paraphanelia become more sophisticed.

As it is, I’ve been looking for an Archive button that would take me to a day-by-day list. Today I found the “More Slow Home reports” link under your bio, unfortunately this shows page after page of broken links.

Some of us still need the old stuff…make it available somewhere

I have yet to try this out extensively but on the surface it appears to be a good US based new home search engine.

http://www.newhomesmatch.com/

BradW,

Thanks for voicing the concern about the new format. Matthew and I are also going to be participating in the search and test process so we are all in this together. Aw with most things on the site we will see how things go and then adjust as necessary. We may need to come up with a different process – splitting the tasks of finding and analyzing for example. I certainly don’t want the site to become onerous.

We have been doing some testing for the past week and it didn’t seem to take too long for us. Let’s try it out next week and see how it feels. .

This sounds like a great project.

I’m a little concerned that we are only going to be looking a new homes. Isn’t that against one of the slow home principles, to reuse existing resources?

John:

Thanks for hosting the Design School over the past. Even though I have not always commented it has been an incredible learning experience.

Interesting change from design school to real world examples. There are a few examples out there done by designers that are worthy of highlighting. Many of which you have already displayed in your “project catalogue.” Finding them is the hard part. Applying the Slow Home Test to them will allow us to rank them and learn “what is RIGHT with this house.”

I would like to suggest that sometime in the future you consider a “Slow Home Team” design project(s) to design the “Ultimate Slow Home” using the specific client criteria (800 SF one bedroom condo, 1000 SF single family, two bedroom, etc.) for a specific type of site, climate, and orientation. This would allow you to tap into the considerable talent and insights of the team and create a number of Ultimate Slow Homes (USH).

These USH’s could then be taken from plan into the elevations and sections with the ultimate goal of making them into a set of off the shelf house plans (maybe by tapping into Louis’s or other participant’s great graphic presentation skills). These plans could then be made available to Slow Home viewers and builders.

Jane,
Thank you for sharing your experience. This is the first time I have heard of someone using the test to help them make a real estate decision. FANTASTIC !

It is great to hear that it was useful. We are still trying to cope with the diversity of residential types and other design issues. Hopefully we can incorporate them into the debate more properly in the future.

John:

A design competition sounds like a fun way to put our design school knowledge and real world slow home investigations to work. The online collaborative review also offers the potential to improve the quality of the our Slow Home designs.

Look forward to continuing my design education here at Slow Home University.

John
I learned about your website through (of all things) a real estate publication from Century 21 last week. I started watching that very day. I was blown away by the content of your site. We’re on our second home (purchased in 2006) and have been renovating to correct what I think are some design flaws. What is interesting is that I’ve been using Slow Home criteria since we moved in, not knowing that such a philosophy existed beyond my door. I am a psychologist by trade but have an eye for functional and aesthetic qualities of residential houses.
Since finding your site I have watched everyday and looked at archive cases. My husband even offered to buy a simple CAD program so I could play around with home design. Would you recommend a program for the novice?
I look forward to your new program format starting next week. I’m not sure how much I can contribute but I’ll be following along everyday just the same.

I finally got around to applying the new weighted Slow Home Test posted on yesterday’s blog to our own house and found that:

1) Having multiple points assigned to a question seemed to make it easier to assign partial points. For example I awarded my house 1 out of a possible 2 points for Services, as it does have lo-flo toilets and showerheads, one wall with exceptionally good insulation (ie. the connected house next door), lots of south-facing glazing, some energy-efficient lighting and 2 rain barrels, but is certainly not a “net zero” house or anything like that. Of course, some questions still have a point value of 1 so under Entry I was forced to assign our house 0.5 points for having a very good front entry but only a so-so back entry.

2) Since there is no separate category for “Basement”, I still tried to factor our finished basement into the test by taking it into account when answering the House as a Whole questions and taking its individual rooms into account when answering the Room by Room questions. This seemed to work OK, except I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the house likely would have ended up with the exact same score even if the basement had not been finished or did not exist at all. I guess the way to look at it is that the test is attempting to evaluate the quality of the space, not the quantity, and that test score comparisons are only meaningful if the homes tested are of a similar size and have a similar complement of rooms/spaces.

3) I still wonder about the Study question. Does including it in the test mean that a 1-bedroom plus den condo will effectively have a 1-point advantage over a 2-bedroom condo, even though the only difference between the two is whether the room in question has a closet? In actual fact, a 2-bedroom condo should be considered the slower of the two condos as its second bedroom would have the flexibility of being used as either a bedroom or as a study, whereas it may not be possible to use the den in a 1-bedroom plus den condo as a bedroom.

4) After getting only partial points for several Yes answers as described above, including half a point for the Study question because we happen to be using our extra bedroom as a study, our house ended up with an overall score of 23 out of 30, which would suggest that it is Moderately Slow. Now we just have to figure out what changes we can make to gain at least 3 more points!

Molly K,
Thanks for the head up. A pleasant way to end the week.

Mid Mo,
You bring up an excellent point. The Slow Home Test can also be used to assist people make better choices about where they should rent. I am very glad to hear that you will be using it in real life in this way. Please keep me informed and good luck with the move.

Sorry, I forgot to say that after some thought, I’ve come to agree somewhat with one of the other Slow Homers who suggested that outdoor living be a category on the test. I’d modify it to say “Is access to outdoors adequate?” Many plans that we’ve seen on WWWTH, the access is pretty much non-existent due to a tiny balcony or patio. Maybe this element doesn’t need a separate category but could just be included with a line…maybe under the Context category?

John,

I (along with Terri) will miss the design exercises. Although I didn’t submit many, I generally worked on most of them. But your new challenge sounds interesting too. I’ll have to listen to your description again, and think about how to start on this one.

Thanks for all your stimulating ideas, John and Matthew!