The Nightmare Phase

It has been a looooong time since I last wrote about my house building plans.  I haven’t written because I didn’t have much good to report. My dreams turned into something of a nightmare.  Let’s just say, to put it nicely, the architect failed to deliver on his promises and apparently there isn’t much I can do about it. 

Lessons learned--

1.    Make sure your contract has some details in it, including--

a.    A payment schedule such that the final payment comes after the work contracted for is completed.

b.    Some kind of deadlines with penalties if they are not met.

c.     Legal remedies for breach of contract.

d.    And the ability or foresight to modify or append the contract if things change.  

2.    Insist on references and don’t rely on what you read and see.

3.    Use a local designer/architect that you can sit down with to work on your plans.

4.    If you are in California, make sure your architect is up on the latest Title 24 requirements as it can affect the design of the building and/or hire a good Title 24 engineer.  Work with the Title 24 engineer sooner than later.

5.    Don’t get the engineering done until the plans are finalized—including Title 24.  

The stories behind the lessons--

1.    My contract for the “schematic design phase” is one page long, which is unheard of these days. It is obvious that my architect wrote it without the help of an attorney.  Being the trusting person I am, and not having done this before, I didn’t question it.  

a.    The contract has a dollar limit which was reached and paid in the first year of this 2 year process so there was no incentive on the architect’s part to complete the work stipulated in the contract.  

b.    The contract says this phase is “anticipated” to take 3-4 months—far from a promise or commitment.   In actuality it took 26 ½ months.

c.     My attorney tells me that I cannot recover the cost of a lawsuit because such a contingency is not in the contract and the cost of a lawsuit would be more than my damages.

d.    I did make some changes to the original design.  At the time, Peter was encouraging and supportive of the changes and said they would negligibly affect the cost and time of the project.  Since then, he has blamed the delays on the changes.  If the changes I requested would impact the time and cost, he should have told me at the time rather than using them as an excuse for delays, etc.  I could have chosen to forgo the changes or we could have amended the contract.  By the way, I do not believe for one minute that the changes significantly impacted the delays.

e.    My architect had only 2 of the 5 things the architectural licensing board requires in a contract.

2.    When I was considering hiring the architect to build my house, I based it on several things. The first thing was the design, second were the details of the cost and construction process on the LogicalHomes website, and finally he won me over with his charm and enthusiasm.   At the start I asked to see some houses he had built and questioned why there were no pictures on his website of actual houses—rather than just renderings.  He never responded to my questions and had excuses for not showing me the factory or finished houses.  I regret now that I did not press for more information.  I have to admit I was also swayed by his media presence, which includes being written up in Dwell magazine and appearing on the news as a promoter and builder of shipping container homes.  If he has actually built a prefab house as described on his website, I have yet to see it.

3.    The great majority of our communications have been via email and phone.  In the 2 plus years since I first contacted the architect, we have actually met face to face only 3 times.  We met the first time in a Starbuck’s where we discussed my goals and discussed the placement of the buildings on my lot.  I thought that was extremely helpful.  The second meeting was when he came up for the design hearing. While the hearing went smoothly, there was no time to review the plans because he was off to another meeting.  The third time we met was Nov 2016 when I flew down to LA to actually see a custom house (not one of the prefabs) under construction and the factory he wanted to use.   While both were interesting, my request to sit down with him and go over the plans never happened.   I’m curious to know how many architects never go over plans with their clients in person.  My guess is very few, if any.

4.    Title 24 is worthy of its own blog.  In short it is the California code for energy efficiency standards of a building.  It takes an energy modeler or Title 24 engineer to determine a building’s compliance.  Apparently there are good energy modelers and not so good ones.  The cheap ones manipulate the report to get compliance, which is what we had, but the inaccuracies were caught during plan check. When we went back to the person who did the report, he said he couldn’t do it and to find someone else.  The energy modeler we hired next worked with us to modify the building to get compliance.  The architect’s design included metal studs.  That along with the metal shipping container walls is not good news.  We had to change to wood studs and up the insulation to get compliance.  These were changes he blamed on me.

5.    The cost for the engineering was not included in the contract.  After the engineer did the structural drawings and calculations, he had to go back and make changes on 2 occasions, for which I had to pay extra. The first time was for a condition in the design approval that the floor of the house be 12” above the crown on the street.  The engineering was already done before I was aware of the impact of this condition. Because my lot slopes slightly down from the street, this meant the house would have to be 3’ above the ground. The idea of having to have steps out all the doors was very disturbing to me.  I looked around the neighborhood and could not find one house on my side of the street that met that requirement.  I went to the city planners and asked them to explain to me the purpose of it and to show me where it is in the building codes.  They guessed it had something to do with flooding, but could not find it in the codes.  The requirement was eventually waived and the foundation plans had to be redrawn.  The second time the engineer had to make changes was during plan check when the plans had to be changed to get Title 24 compliance.  We could have avoided those changes and associated expenses had we not rushed to get the engineering done.  Thinking back on it, that was the only thing the architect did not delay in getting done—probably because all he had to do was send the plans to the engineer.

People ask me why I did’t fire him and find someone else.  At first I told them that I thought he was a good guy and well intentioned and I wasn’t ready to give up on him.  Later on I felt I had too much time and money into this to start over.  The closer we got to a building permit, the harder it was to quit.  I kept thinking it is just around the corner—it will happen any day now—but the days become weeks and the weeks become months and the months became years.  When I did talk with other architects, they told me they didn’t want to get involved with another architect’s plans.  It would have meant starting over from scratch.  

We did finally submit for a building permit in the end of March 2017 and got the plan check comments back on April 19, 2017.  Almost every communication we had after that, the architect told me the plans were almost ready.  We were finally ready to resubmit in early August.  The second round of comments came back in a couple of weeks.  The corrections were minor.  I was able to figure out solutions for some of them, the engineer was quick to make his corrections, but the architect’s corrections weren’t ready until the end of September.  

When I knew we were close to finally getting approval, I realized that I didn’t have the fire sprinkler plans which are required for the building permit and are also required for the water district to sign off on the plans. Back in March when we originally applied for the building permit, I had obtained several bids for the sprinkler system, but the architect told me to hold off.  First he told me that we should wait until I had a contractor because he would have someone to recommend.  Then he told me to hold off because the fabricators could take care of it. Needless to say he didn’t follow through with either option so I had to go ahead and hire a company to do the sprinklers.  This ended up delaying getting the actual building permit until the middle of January 2018.  

And after all this time, over 2 years, and repeated promises, the architect failed to help me find a contractor and to give me any firm cost estimates, which were also requirements of the contract.  As you might guess.  I am DONE with the architect and would warn everyone to not do business with him.

Since January I’ve been scrambling to find someone else to build my house. I finally have a good prospect, but that is a story for another day.

The best part of this entire experience is how much I’ve learned--and not just about what NOT to do.  I’m getting better and better with SketchUp, I’ve learned a ton about Title 24, and I’m constantly learning new things about the design/build process, as well as, green products, technologies and certifications.  If I ever get the house built, it will be better than ever!!

On Rainwater Catchment

  

While waiting for my new house to be built, I have been fixing up the old house--keeping to my sustainability principles as much as possible.  Like many Californians I’m very conscious of saving water.  One of the first things I did was to purchase and install 4 rain barrels for rainwater catchment.  BTW, if anyone is interested, the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA) (quite a mouthful) offers rebates of $50 each for the installation of up to 2 rain barrels.  As you can see from the fact that a rebate is offered by BAWSCA, water catchment is encouraged.  This wasn’t always the case.  It used to be illegal and still is in some states, like Nevada.  Crazy!!

While rain barrels are nice, I wanted to do more.  An interesting statistic is that the amount of water that can be collected from 1” of rain on a 1000 sq ft of roof area is 600 gallons.  So you can see, a 50 gallon rain barrel is barely "a drop in the bucket."  In fact, here in Half Moon Bay, the summer fog drip can fill it up.  Rather than add more rain barrels, I decided to look into a larger tank.  I met someone while I was on a garden tour who sold and installed tanks. Unfortunately, he was not interested in coming to Half Moon Bay, so I started doing my own research and decided it was a reasonable DIY project.  Little did I know I would have so many problems—mostly due to poor advice and lack of information--the tank salesman was reluctant to give advice because of liability issues and I had trouble finding the answers I needed online.  I had to learn a lot the hard way, by trial and error.

First I needed a tank.  They come in all shapes and sizes.  The bigger the tank, the less the cost per gallon, so it makes sense to get the biggest tank you can afford and have room for.  I also wanted one from California so I could save on shipping costs.  I ended up ordering a 2500 gallon tank from Tank Depot and shipped from Ukiah.  To give you an idea of size, it is approximately 8 ft high and 8 ft in diameter.  Tanks with a capacity of 2500 gallons and more have to be shipped on a special truck, but I was able to get a special deal combining it with other deliveries and pick ups.  I actually went ahead and ordered 3 additional tanks for the new house for no additional shipping charge.

One of the first problems I ran into was the conflicting information people told me.  Three different tank salesmen told me 3 different things about how to place the tank.  One told me it had to go on a 6” concrete slab; another told me to put it  on a 4-6” bed of sand; and the last one told me it could be placed right on level ground.  For the new house I will put it directly on the ground because it seems reasonable and is by far the easiest way to go.  But for the old house, I just happened to have an old concrete slab in the backyard, which I didn’t know what to do with, so that is where I put the tank. 

If you put a tank next to the house and downspout, you can run the downspout straight into the tank.  That is called a dry system since the pipe or downspout is dry when it is not raining.  If the tank is away from the house, as mine is, you need to run the pipe underground. The pipe goes down the side of the house, underground to the tank, up the side of the tank and into a hole on top.  As long as the gutter is higher than the pipe at the top of the tank, the water will flow into the tank.  I like to think of it as working like a syphon, using gravity and atmospheric pressure.  This is called a wet system since the pipe stays filled with water. 

Other things in the system include a large access hole in the top of the tank and a screen to filter the water and keep mosquitoes out.  There is an overflow pipe on the side near the top of the tank which can run to wherever you like.  And finally, it is recommended to have filters at the gutter downspout and some sort of a first flush mechanism.  You can purchase the first flush attachment or make one yourself.  It is basically a place to collect the dirt and debris that comes with the initial runoff from the roof.  It consists of a pipe that comes straight down from the gutter with a cleanout at the bottom.  Somewhere on this pipe is a T joint.  Once the water fills the first flush pipe, it spills over at the T joint into the pipe that goes to the tank.  The water in the first flush pipe slowly leaks out so that it is empty for the next rain or it can be opened, drained and cleaned out at any time.

Once I had my tank and had done my research, it was time to put it all together.  I hired a handyman who admitted he had never done this before.  While he and his 2 helpers dug the ditch for the pipe, I went to the store to buy the pipe.  I couldn’t find anything online about what size pipe to use, so we decided on 4” pipe.  I guess we were thinking that bigger is better.  I went to the local business that sells landscaping supplies and explained what I was planning to do and ended up buying 4” solid drain pipe.  The handyman glued all the pipe together with an assortment of PVC cement he had on hand.  Then the workers filled the ditch back in.  We got this all done just before a big rain event was expected.  It poured hard that first night and I couldn’t wait to see what was in my tank.  But, unfortunately, the next morning the tank was still empty.  Upon inspection, I found one of the above ground pipe unions had come completely apart.  I glued it back together and waited for more rain, which came again that night.  The tank was still empty the next morning and I found another joint that had come apart.  I then tested and re-glued every joint I could access and it still didn’t work.  Thinking that the problem was underground, I began digging up sections of the pipe and re-gluing.  When that didn’t work, I dug up the entire pipe.  Not only was the tank not filling, the “wet” pipe was not holding water.  It was slowly leaking out.  When I tested using a hose, I could get water to go into the tank, but first it had to fill up the pipe, which should have been holding water.  I went back to the store that sold me the pipe, explained the problem, and he said he had never heard of such a thing and sold me “the best” PVC cement and I again re-glued every single joint.  When the problem still existed, I knew it was time to go to plan B.

Drain pipe is not intended to be pressurized, but I thought the pressure was so minimal that it would work.  (An engineer friend of mine calculated the pressure to be 4 psi. )  But it just wasn’t working, so I removed all the pipe and replace it with 3” Sch 40 PVC which is made for pressures up to 250 psi.  A tank salesman recommended Sch 80 but I thought that was way overkill.  One of the main problems with using the drain pipe, as I did, is that it is not PVC, so PVC cement does not work as intended.  Perhaps if we had glued it with something that actually worked, it wouldn’t have leaked.

By the time all this was done, the rainy season was over.  It wasn’t until the rains came in October that the system was given a real life test and the tank quickly filled up!!!!

One of the biggest mistakes I made in this process was having the workers fill in the ditch before the system was tested.  Of course it was done for expedience and convenience.  The workers were only here for the day.  However, I ended up having to dig the dirt back out myself and digging the dirt from around the pipe was actually harder than digging the original ditch.

While my system works great with the 3” pipe, I’m still not sure how to determine what the optimal size pipe would be. The larger the diameter of the pipe, the more expensive it is and the harder to work with, so putting in a larger pipe than needed is a waste of money.  While writing this blog, I did find a chart from the Uniform Plumbing Code for sizing vertical downspouts.  The pipe size is based on roof size and maximum rainfall per hour.   They don’t include any pipes under 3”.  For my roof size of 1600 sq ft a 3” pipe is sufficient to collect rainfall of 4”/hr, which is more than sufficient for my location.  Check out harvestingrainwater.com.  Maybe I could have gotten by with 2” pipe, or at least  2 ½”.

My 1600 sq ft roof has 5 downspouts.  Two of these are hooked up to my catchment system.  The pipes come together underground.  I tried to block the other downspouts to get as much water as possible to go into my large tank, but haven’t had much luck.  It seems like it would be easy to do because downspouts get clogged when we don’t want them to—a kid’s toy gets washed into the downspout, etc.  Until I get that figured out, I am placing buckets under the extra downspouts to collect at least some of the water.

So now that I have all this rainwater, how am using it?  The obvious answer is for plants.  And don’t forget the houseplants, they love it.  That is all fine and good when it isn’t raining, but right now the ground is saturated and the outdoor plants do not need water.  So how else can I use it?  It hasn’t been properly filtered for human consumption, but I’ve been using it for my chickens.  The other day I used it to wash my windows and it worked quite well.  I filled a bucket and added some vinegar and sponged and squeegeed my windows.  But mainly I’ve been using it to flush my toilets.  I keep buckets full of water ready on the porch.  Unfortunately, the new low flow toilets don't flush as well with a bucket as the old toilets did.

I am using gravity feed to access the water in the tanks.  The rain barrels have a spigot near the bottom.  I use that to fill buckets or a watering can.  My large tank has a valve and hose bib at the bottom for the same purpose.  You can attach a hose to get the water where you want it to go, but, remember, the pressure won’t be what you are used to and a spray nozzle might not work very well.  You could use a pump, but I haven’t found it necessary for what I am doing and I like low tech systems.  My biggest worry, though, is that I will accidentally drain the tank.  Let’s say I attached a hose to my tank and let the water run into one of my planter boxes.  If I forget to turn the water off, it is possible that all the water could run out of the tank.  That is not a huge problem with a rain barrel because it holds a lot less water and fills back up much more easily.  I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this problem, but since my tank is only now filled for the first time and I have not needed to use it, my ideas have not been tested.  For a mechanical solution, they make timers that can be attached to the hose bib and set to shut off after a specified length of time.  But I’m not sure I’d want to trust that.  What if it didn’t work?  Another option would be to put your smart phone to use.  Every time you turn the water on and leave it, set your timer to remind you to turn it off.  A really old “no tech” trick would be to put something like a rubber band or a Scunchy on the valve on the tank.  As you turn on the valve, transfer the Scrunchy to your wrist.  The Scrunchy will remind you that the water is on.  I plan to put a shut off on the end of the hose so I don’t have to go back and forth from the tank to turn on and off the water, though my intention will be to turn off the water at the tank, as well, when done.  And I may find I do not need to leave the water running unattended.  To be on the safe side I might plan to utilize more than one type of reminder or timer at a time.

It is looking like the drought in California will be officially over this year.  But that is no excuse for going back to wasting water or not continuing to conserve.  I’ve lived my entire life in California and there have always been droughts and always will be.  Conserving water should be a normal part of our lives, not just when there is a drought or the water district enforces restrictions.  Unfortunately, people have short memories.  It reminds me of what goes on around gas prices.  When gas prices go up, the sales of fuel efficient cars goes up, but as soon as prices go down, everyone starts buying big cars and trucks again.  We need to think about tomorrow today.

I wish I had bought a trailer load of tanks.  When people see the tanks sitting on my vacant lot, they ask about the tanks--if I am selling them and where they can get one.  I wish I had tanks to sell to them and could get more people harvesting their rain water.

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The Feasibility and Design Phases

The next step in the journey to fulfill my dream was the Feasibility Study.  This entailed a visit by the architect to Half Moon Bay where he met with the HMB Planning Department to get a handle on all the local building requirements and to see the building site first hand, after which he provided me with a report with all the information he obtained, as well as the projected costs and time frame.  Most noteworthy was that he said "It is the easiest site we have ever had to deal with!!"  And we could “leapfrog” over the second part of the Feasibility Study. 

The projected time frame for a completed house was 10-16 months.  That was September 2015.  Unfortunately, things are taking longer than expected.  It is now December 2016 and we have yet to get a building permit or break ground.  In hindsight the biggest mistake I have made so far was not starting the process sooner.  After I bought the house and lot, I was in no hurry to get the new house built.  Since I plan to sell the old house when the new one is built, I wanted to stay in it for 2 years for the tax benefits.  And because I thought a prefab house could go up in a year or less, I didn’t see a need to start the process immediately.  I spent the first year doing some research, but mainly fixing up the old house. 

What we did accomplished in the last year was the Design Phase.  This began by tweaking the house plans and deciding where to place the house and garage on the lot.   Peter and I met to discuss my wishes and to look at an assortment of possible site plans he had created.  Anyone who knows me will tell you that I can have pretty strong opinions on some things—and how I imagined the house would sit on the lot was no exception.  Having lived next to the lot for a year I had given considerable thought to it and had played with numerous layouts on Sketchup.  So, not surprisingly, none of Peter’s renderings were anything like what I envisioned.  As in the Half Moon Bay Design Guidelines, he wanted to put the house in the front of the lot and the garage in the rear.  While this does look more attractive from the street, in my opinion, it has some serious drawbacks, the main one being the long driveway.  But I had other concerns as well.  On the existing house the kitchen is in the front behind the garage.  It faces east and gets the lovely morning sun (when we have any).  If the new house was in the front of the lot, it would block the sun and the view out the kitchen window.  Even though I plan to sell the existing house, I didn’t want the new owners to have to look at a big wall.  My solution was to put the house in the rear of the lot and the garage in the front, which would make for a nice courtyard in between.  Also, all the big windows on the new house will face south, toward the street.  If the house was in the front, there wouldn’t be much privacy.  My way, the windows will face the private courtyard.  

The other challenge was how to add an accessory dwelling.  Half Moon Bay recently changed the zoning rules to encourage homeowners to add additional living units to help with the housing shortage.  It is also a way for seniors to downsize by moving into the smaller unit and renting the main house.  Logical Homes has several small house designs made from single containers.  Using Sketchup, I tried placing one of these on the lot along with the house and garage.  I had trouble finding an arrangement I liked, given the narrow lot and the setbacks.  The only other option was to put it on top of the garage.  We tried a number of different designs ending up with a 320 square foot studio apartment above the garage made from two 20’ containers placed side by side.

I made a few other changes, as well.  For one I was worried that 2 bedrooms was not enough.  While it would work fine for me, I won't always be the one living in the house.  I decided to add another 20' shipping container to the side of the house which will contain a third bedroom and bath.  It could be used for an office or a bedroom for someone unable to go up the stairs.  The roof of the container now becomes a deck off the master bedroom.  I also made some changes to the kitchen layout.

During this design phase, I made numerous visits to the HMB Planning Department.  They were extremely helpful and encouraging from the beginning.  Having never done this before, I had lots of questions and they walked me through everything.  By the time we were ready to submit the design review application on May 16^th, 2016, it went right through.  The public hearing, a normal part of the process, was then scheduled for August 17^th.  A notice is mailed to the neighbors and published in the paper so any interested parties can voice their opinions of the project.  Peter was more worried than I was about the hearing.  He has experienced a mix of reactions to his container projects due to this unconventional building technique.  In order to be fully prepared for any negative comments, he had his assistant, Andrew, build a model of the new house and they brought it to the meeting.  Not only did Andrew make an amazing model of the new house, he also did a less detailed model of  the existing house which made it easy to see how they would look together.

As I expected, the meeting couldn't have gone any better.  Only 2 interested parties showed up and they were friends and neighbors expressing their support.  The Planning Department officials were also totally supportive.  They commended my efforts to build a sustainable house and were open to the innovative and modern design.  Needless to say, Peter was surprised and amazed.  After the 10 day comment period expired, the design was approved and we were ready to move on to the next step--finalizing the plans for the building permit!!

Getting started

I’ve begun my dream to build a house, a very “green” house.  Because of the interest I’ve encountered in my project, I’ve decided to try to document the process with a blog.  For those of you who like to read the ending of a book first, here is a hint at what my house will look like.   It will be built from 7 shipping containers.  In the front is the garage with a studio apartment above.  In the rear is the main house.

Street view

Aerial view

So now let’s go back to the beginning to see how the dream began.  BTW, it is not only a daydream.  I have dreams at night about houses—ones with secret rooms, large gardens and ocean views—and sometimes nightmares about houses in terrible states of disrepair.

My desire to build a house goes all the way back to my childhood.    I guess you can say it is in my blood.  I was born near the end of WW II.  After my father got out of the army, he knew he did not want to go back to doing office work so he went to work as a carpenter for a friend he met in the army.   It wasn’t long after that that he purchased a building lot and a kit house from Sears.   Several nights a week, after he got off work, he would work on building our house, then sleep on a cot in the yard before going back to work the next day.   We (my mother, father, baby sister and I)  lived in that cute little house for several years.  Then my parents bought another lot and built a bigger house, this one from scratch.  I can even remember my mother helping to nail down the subfloor.  Sometime after we settled into that house, my brother was born and my father got his contractor’s license.  After that, he built us one more house, but mostly built homes for other people.  The last house he built was his dream house in the mountains where my parents retired. 

So I grew up with the assumption that everyone built their own house.  Well, not necessarily pounded the nails, but at least helped to design a house and contract with someone to build it.  It was something I just expected I would do some day.  Then one day, when I was about 65, I thought to myself, “I have never built a house.  Time to get to it!!”

The first step was to find a building lot.  I have always been interested in real estate.  I used to drag my husband all over the state looking at properties.  Actually, I didn’t have to drag him because he was happy for any excuse to travel and explore new places.  Unfortunately, he had no interest in actually purchasing a property or building a house.  He said we were too old to do that.  So we eventually parted company.

No sooner was the divorce final when a house came on the market that had an adjoining, buildable, vacant lot, in a great neighborhood in Half Moon Bay, blocks from the beach and town and close to my grandkids.  It was just what I wanted!

Once the purchase was finalized, I started thinking about what kind of house I wanted to build.  As an avid environmentalist (something else I inherited from my parents), it had to be “green”.  It is sad to have to say that, because I think all houses should be “green.“ There is no reason why any new house these days should be built without taking sustainability, energy efficiency and other green principles into consideration.  Fortunately building codes are moving in that direction.

I didn’t want to start from scratch and design it from the ground up….maybe another time.  For this house I wanted to experience the process and make it as simple as possible—kind of like our first kit house from Sears.  When I started looking at house designs, I immediately thought of prefab houses.  They are supposed to have reduced construction time and cost, have less construction material waste, and can actually be better built that houses built on site, after all they have to be able to be hauled many miles on the back of a truck without coming apart.

The next step was to find a company that made green prefabs.  I started searching online.   There are actually quite a few companies claiming to do this.  I eliminated the ones that were not on the west coast, trying to find something as close as possible.  Then I looked at their plans to find ones I liked and would work on my lot.  My lot is what is known as an infill lot, a vacant lot surrounded my existing structures.  It is 45’ wide and 150’ deep, pretty standard for my neighborhood.  I went to the city and talked with the planners about the building restrictions.  The setbacks are 5’ on the sides so the house could be a maximum of 35’ wide.  The front and rear setbacks were less of a concern because the lot is quite deep. I really wanted a 2 story house, thinking that it is more efficient to build (less roof, etc) and would leave more land for a nice yard and garden.  Unfortunately, in addition to setbacks and height restrictions, there is something called the “building envelope” to account for the “daylight plane.”  It is basically to keep you from building too high near the property line and shading your neighbor’s property.

I looked at numerous websites and numerous plans and kept coming back to the Kara1512 design at Logicalhomes.com.  I loved all the windows and that they would be facing south since my lot is on the north side of the street.  The house has a wonderful open floor plan with living, dining and kitchen downstairs and bedrooms upstairs, which I was looking for.  I find myself drawn to modern designs for their simplicity.  And did I happen to mention that it is built from shipping containers?  One of the greenest principles is to reuse materials.  Shipping containers are piling up in storage yards because of our trade deficit (more containers are coming into our country than going out) so people are starting to think of other ways to use them. This house is made from 4 shipping containers.  

  

Of course, nothing is ever perfect.  My main concern with this design was would it fit inside my building envelope?   To find out I had to talk with the architect, Peter DeMaria, because the height of the building was not specified on the website plans.  He was charming and very helpful.  The house as seen here, would not fit, but by lowering the house and removing the overhangs, he determined that he could make it work.  So I was hooked--on Peter and on the design, concept and building material.