The New House Rules

A few weeks ago, Alex Wilson asked me to write a foreword for his new book, which is simply titled Insulation: The GreenBuilding Guide.  Writing the short foreword was a harder task than I imagined. The stakes felt high, both because it’s such an important topic, and also because it would affect a good friend’s book. It paralyzed me for a bit before I finally got some words to stick. As it turned out, I haven’t done any other writing for the past few weeks because of an intense work schedule for our company these days. Therefore, I’m posting this little foreword to get something up here, but also because Alex’s book will be a must-read and I’ll be promoting it in every way I can.  Here’s a start.

We instinctively know that insulation is the obvious solution to a very common problem, but low energy costs have allowed us for too long to give it short shrift. We are certain to grab a good coat when we go outside on a cold day, yet most of the buildings we inhabit are themselves poorly dressed for the weather they inevitably encounter. Despite having readily available and effective insulation materials for over a century, we’ve failed to address the insufficient thermal coverings of our buildings, having opted instead to hook them up with all sorts of high-tech mechanical devices to manufacture artificially tempered living environments no matter the necessity. And no matter the energy costs.

Frank Lloyd Wright probably best summed up the oblivious rationale for under-utilizing insulation when he said that insulation might be worthwhile for roofs, “…whereas the insulation of the walls and the airspace within the walls become less and less important. With modern systems of air conditioning and heating, you can manage almost any condition.” Armed with that unfortunate logic, we spent decades equipping our buildings with the necessary equipment to “manage almost any condition” instead of pursuing better insulation. Wright’s opinion and the long-prevailing paradigm it represents is the major reason the energy consumption of buildings rises well above that of both the transportation and industry sectors as our nation’s number one fuel guzzling, polymorphous beast.

But the building construction piece of the energy sector pie has been decidedly sedentary, an unproductive sloth in comparison to its unending appetite for fuel. Unlike the transportation sector, which must both transport us and condition our indoor environment, buildings need only be designed and constructed to serve us while steadfastly stuck in one spot. They can simply sit there, securing their space on the earth, serving best by being stalwart immovable objects. They don’t take us places by land, sea or air; nor do they do any industrial tasks or produce things for our benefit. As such, buildings haven’t been designed to provide that sort of tangible return for the spent fuels. Instead, the largest proportion of that energy is delivered for the sole purpose of creating habitable (i.e. “comfortable”) environments.

Finding ways to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels is a mighty problem; one that now pulls at us with ever increasing urgency. Some facets of that predicament appear to be overwhelmingly difficult to solve. Ocean freighters and airplanes burn fantastic quantities of fuel to perform their tasks, as do steel mills and chemical plants. It’s hard to imagine how these things ever lose their energy-hogging ways.

Buildings, on the other hand, are easy. Nearly half of their energy demands come from heating and cooling, and most of that usage could be cut dramatically–even eliminated–by making the building envelope tight and adding lots of insulation. So there IS some good news: our biggest energy consuming sector also has the lowest hanging fruit, and lots of it.

We can literally insulate our way to a much brighter energy future while insulating ourselves from the ever-higher cost of energy. Every highly insulated building is an energy miser forever. Every building weaned from fossil fuels is weaned forever. We can keep warm and cool without resorting to the energy-sucking equipment Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to rely on. The new paradigm shift recognizes that if we DON’T insulate sufficiently, we’ll probably be saddled with big, thirsty equipment running constantly at exorbitant financial and ecological cost.

This is one of those world-changing awakenings that doesn’t stem from any kind of brilliance, but instead comes from stupidity having a little less dominance. But it’s important change nevertheless, and it’s at least beginning to overwhelm the reign of ignorance. Builders, architects and homeowners across the country are proving that with enough insulation (including air-tightness) we can use smaller and simpler equipment and eschew fossil fuels entirely.

Insulation is, therefore, the obvious and simple answer to a big problem. Understanding insulation and using it effectively are key to achieving passive comfort and energy independence. There are no technological barriers to insulating our buildings more effectively and thereby lowering our national energy usage dramatically. You’d think that would be the end of it. We’d employ it, solve that problem, and move on to the next one. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, nor that simple.

First, it’s not that easy because the general public still has little interest in insulation. It’s invisible and boring. Like reinforcement in concrete, it’s often seen as kind of a cost nuisance rather than something you’d want to consider improving. Similarly, “out of sight, out of mind,” aptly explains why people don’t give much consideration to insulation. Knowing too little about the subject, people are often proud to announce that their home meets code requirements, as if that was like acing a test, instead of what it is: the lowest possible passing grade. Where “minimum” sounds like “maximum,”  “better” sounds like overdoing it. So we’ve been stuck insulating most of our buildings at the C- level or less for a long time.

Knowing that, consumer awareness is critical to implementing the massive energy reductions we can achieve with our buildings. President Obama tried to encourage people to have a little more respect for insulation when he jovially declared that it is “sexy stuff,” and “I get really excited about it.” Of course, that was fodder for many days of derision by the critics and comedians. But it’s no joke. We have a ways to go before people will commonly trade their noticeable A+ features for hidden A+ insulation.

Second, it’s not that simple because insulation is a deceptively complicated subject. And that’s the reason for this book. As Alex Wilson points out, “No other building element offers such a diverse range of materials, and complexity of considerations–environmental, human health, performance, and building science.” There are myriad materials, old and new, promising to be the better way to insulate—even as newer “innovative” products are coming out all the time. Attempting to understand the benefits and potential in all these options can easily get confusing and overwhelming.

Like the canoe adventurer (and canoeing author) that he is, Alex is our perfect guide. He’s been exploring both the quiet and turbulent waters of this subject, and delivers here an accessible guidebook that clarifies the issues in his typical objective, authoritative way. With the information packed into this small volume and Alex’s reassuring guidance, we’ll all feel just a bit more comfortable as we continue to chart our own routes toward a steady current of true sustainability in building performance.

Look for Alex Wilson’s important new book from BuildingGreen soon.

Good buildings can’t be made without skills and knowledge. But where does one acquire those skills? And where does the knowledge come from? One of the reasons I like the “Old Audels” is that its four volumes give a wide spectrum of basic building education in a manner that is readable and easy to understand, but more importantly they reveal how much more one would need to know to master the craft of building. Too many in the building trades these days are afflicted with what Pythagoras called “compound ignorance,” or ignorance of ignorance. The reason for this is simple. There’s little in the way of training requirements for almost all of the trades; there are precious few active master builders around to teach; and so few places where one can learn anything about building trades in an organized way. The void is just too big. People involved with building in America often assume they know what they’re doing when they don’t. With a serious lack of mentors, teachers and schools for at least the past 50 years, American builders are often lost in their own fog.

The situation is very unfortunate for our floundering industry. Houses are more complicated than ever. With every hurricane, earthquake and tornado, we learn something new about how to make buildings perform better structurally. In addition, the need to make our built environment more energy efficient has raised that particular ante many-fold in just the last decade. The craft of building right now involves a lot of science. Making good buildings now more than ever requires builders to be capable, determined learners, not just good with their hands. In opposition to compound ignorance, the main thing every builder needs to know is that there’s more to know, and the present accepted standard isn’t nearly good enough.

Bridging the divide between our deficient building industry culture and the one we wish would be more dominant is a challenge. In the current context, we can’t reasonably expect our new employees to come to us already educated and trained, making our training obligations pretty substantial in the first few years. While we strive to fill in the all learning requirements for our associates, it’s often hard to find the time and maintain the budgets for the education we know to be critical. Therefore, we sometimes rely on our associates to “learn on the fly” while working with the “job captains,”  team leaders and their co-workers.

Without schools and without industry requirements, we have to depend on our own resources for education and training. We’ve developed a good curriculum, and in our midst we have good teachers for most of the requirements, but we’ve come to realize that the most important ingredient is our associates’ innate desire to learn, and to continue developing their skills. If they don’t want it, we can’t cram it. And if they do…well, it can be a really incredible, unstoppable force.

When I was young, the thing that excited me was being in the presence of master builders whose accomplishments and skills was only matched by their humility and respect for the tradition of which they were a part. You perhaps have never thought of carpentry as the “noble profession,” but when I heard that phrase from a practicing carpenter in his late 60’s, it didn’t sound like hyperbole because of his demeanor, and his explanation about how much buildings matter in the lives of people, and therefore how important it is that we build really well. That was Oliver. He was one of those who inspired me to want to be a carpenter and to learn how to build well. I needed his example for a standard, for a goal.

Since then, I’ve wanted people in our company to have the same opportunity to be inspired and pulled toward a higher standard by example. We spent our early years trying to accomplish that on our own, but while we had the passion and desire, there were some missing links in our craft lineage we were striving to overcome, and the dominant homebuilding culture was going in the other direction. We were swimming hard, but against the tide.

In 1984, we fell into the opportunity to have a Japanese temple builder, Masahiko Ishikawa, work with us for a year. He was at the end of a 10 year apprenticeship and wanted to spend a little time in a different place before going back to officially begin his career. Ishikawa was a 28 year old Oliver from a different place in the world, but from the same disciplined, reverential building tradition. He learned from people, who learned from people, who learned from people…going back 2000 years. When the thread of knowledge is that long and deep, it brings with it grace and confidence.

Ishikawa’s training began when he was a teenager. The path he took through the years of apprenticeship was a rigorous combination of classroom, workshop and field work. They emphasized the mental and physical discipline of the building crafts, but also humility and respect. It sounded like a combination of training to be a Marine and a Monk, while pursuing a PhD in a very specialized form of construction. There was little he didn’t know or couldn’t do if it involved wood, tools and building.

It was transformational to work with Ishikawa that year. We learned an immense amount, became a little bit Japanese, but perhaps most importantly, we had a living example to show us where the bar should be set. It was the starkest of contrasts with the non-caring, cynical building environment we often saw on American job sites. We all knew where we wanted to be on that spectrum. It was an experience and influence that deeply affected and directed us at an important time.

In the early 1990’s, I developed a good connection to the Compagnons du Devoir of France. Their training and building tradition is very similar to the one that Ishikawa was a part of in Japan in nearly all respects. Jon Senior, who lives in France commented on my last blog and pointed us to a web site about the Compagnons. I wrote back to him excitedly because for the last 20 years, we’ve had a regular flow of Compagnons working with our company as a part of their formal training.

The first Compagnon to join us for a period was Boris Noel. At the time, he had finished his decade of training and had accomplished his Masterwork, making him a true “Master builder” as formally defined in their training program. He did for us in the 90’s what Ishikawa had done before: he was an example of the education and skill level we wanted to be our own standard. He reminded us about the “noble profession” in his attitude, work ethic, and skills.

Boris Noel

As an interesting side note, Boris now works for Jean-Louis Velentin, whose story is highlighted on the Compagnon web site. Since Boris’ time with us, he has been our connection to other Compagnons who have joined us for periods and helped to make us a little bit French.

It’s hard to the fathom the difference between a building culture that requires no training with those from Japan and France that require 7 to 12 years of education and apprenticeship.  Having worked with these people and having used their standards to help develop ours, we know why it matters in every way.

Oh yes, we’re also a little bit German and Swiss. More about that later.

Emmanuel Jego

Julien Worms

Remi Chardon

Bruno Sutter

Recently, I was working with Rick Reynolds (learn about him on our People page) to edit our company Timeline, now up on our website. The Timeline rightfully starts in 1973 when our company was founded, but of course there were certain catalysts before then that pulled me in the direction of carpentry and building. One of those seminal events was the discovery of a volume of books known back then as “The carpenter’s bible.”

When I came to New England, I discovered that my carpentry apprenticeship in Colorado wasn’t a good calling card. In fact, “Colorado carpenter” was a common phrase used by East Coast builders as a contemptuous epithet to describe any hack with poor skills and a bad attitude. While I realized I had some preconceptions to overcome with my new workmates, this was one unfortunate stereotype that had been borne out by my own experiences. I was actually relieved to hear that I might have seen the worst. It seemed that way.

One of the first indications that New England builders were different was their sense of pride about their profession. Those guys liked being carpenters and were challenged by its demands. They cared. And they had skills. I knew I had a lot to learn and asked them if they had any ideas about how I might do some off-work hours learning. There was a quick answer: “Just get a copy of the old Audels and start reading.”

It turned out the “old Audels” was a four volume set that had been out of print for about 20 years at that time. I would have to search old bookstores to find it. In the meantime, one of my workmates brought a set in for me to see what the fuss was about. I turned to the first page of the first volume and what I read I had a big affect on me. It still does.

The Ruskin quote was the frontispiece in all four volumes and set the tone for an amazing construction manual that intends to communicate something about the right attitude to go along with the knowledge and skills. After all, you have to do a whole lot of things well to “build forever.” There’s something inherently audacious about pushing construction into raw earth and building up toward the sky, using tons of raw materials, massive amounts of energy, and “by dint of severe effort.” Ruskin was saying that the act of making buildings is one of those things that if done at all, should be done as well as humanly possible.

I eventually pieced together my old Audels set. It’s been with me ever since. The “bible” reference not only comes from the fact that it was quite obviously the trade reference for quite a few decades, but it is also inspired by the fact that they are black and leather-bound. You feel just a little more reverent having these books in your hands.

Authors Frank D. Graham and Thomas J. Emery put together what they called “A Practical Illustrated Trade Assistant on Modern Construction For Carpenters-Joiners, Builders-Mechanics, and all Wood Workers.” Theo. Audel Co. was the publisher and the original copyright was 1923, with re-printings up until about 1947.

The scope of the information is impressive. It covers a complete curriculum from tools, math, strength of timbers, estimating, and foundations all the way to exterior and interior finish work and furniture.

Volume 1: Tools – Steel – Square – Saw Filing – Joinery – Furniture

Volume 2: Builders Mathematics – Drawing Plans – Specifications – Estimating

Volume 3: House and Roof Framing – Laying Out – Foundations

Volume 4: Doors – Windows -Stair Building – Mill Work – Painting

In my first hours alone with my Audels volumes, I can remember blissfully discovering the extent of my ignorance. There was something comforting about knowing the trade required so much knowledge and skill development. It was extremely daunting, but it was also exactly what was missing from my Colorado carpenter days. Those guys knew nothing, but thought they knew all that was necessary. The New England carpenters knew a lot, but at the same time were fully aware of how much more there was to know. (Why is it that ignorance breeds arrogance and knowledge breeds humility?)

Needless to say, much of the information in the old Audels is outdated, but its intentions, attitude and objectives are timeless, making it a good instruction manual even now. Here’s a quote with advice for builders and clients as relevant now as then:

“In the early days when people were content to live natural lives, and before the ruthless destruction of forests had reached its present stage, houses were built as they should be–substantial, well put together, and lasting. Conditions of today, however, preclude such construction. Houses are now usually built with a total disregard for lasting qualities and this is not always the fault of the builder, but of the purchaser who will not stand the expense of first class construction.

To those contemplating building a house the best advice that can be given is to keep the cost down by reducing the size of the proposed house rather than resorting to cheap makeshift construction.”

The word “makeshift” comes up in these volumes pretty often and is synonymous with “cheap” and “objectionable,” and if the authors really want to make the point, they use them all. They clearly had nothing but spite for balloon framing:

“…makeshift framing of the balloon type..having come into general use to reduce cost.”

“This is a cheap and as usually put together a more or less objectionable construction. A well built balloon frame is satisfactory for a moderate sized house, but how often is one well built?  Since the balloon frame is a type which invites poor work and a certain class of builders cannot resist such a temptation, it has a bad reputation.”

At the time, those words rang quite true to me because I’d seen first hand the “certain class of builders” who couldn’t resist the temptation to cut corners, (nor did they resist most other temptations) and consistently made the simplified construction form an excuse to not just be cheap, but to cheat.

Reading the old Audels was, in fact, the first time I became enamored of timberframing. That edition had good illustrations and reasonably good instructions about joinery and particular framing techniques. The joinery section of Audels mixed furniture joinery and timberframe joinery in the same chapter, leading me to the fun conclusion that timberframing was viewed as just extra-large furniture.

Later, as our Timeline points out, I dismantled a 18th century barn, which was further instruction and convincing evidence about the tremendous attributes of timberframe building. I knew I eventually had to try timberframing and it was Audels that got that ball rolling.

In the 1950’s and 60’s, a new edition of Audels came out. It was the same four volumes, organized in the same way. The information was updated, but the opinion and attitude was gone. There was no “makeshift” sneer from the authors. The Ruskin frontispiece quote was gone too.  The leather was replaced with cloth; black became 1950’s orange. It was very modern. And dull.

Dispassion has its place, but my feeling is that to remove values from a discussion about professional practice in an important trade was a huge mistake. “Just the facts sir” does nothing to arouse one’s spirit to get involved too. When you’re learning from mentors, you want their information, but even more importantly you want to feel the power of their passion. You want to know why they care.

The old Audels was one of my mentors. I could filter the information through the contemporary changes and I could filter the attitude through what I had learned and what I believed, but because I heard the attitude, I was stirred to learn.

The new Audels was flat, cold information. I could use it as a resource to look things up if I needed to, but there was no good reason to sit down to read it. The personal mentor side of it was gone.

The new Audels didn’t last long.  By the late 60’s, there was no Audels.

What’s left for a carpenter/builder to learn from today? A few textbooks and a raft of trade magazines. That’s it. And it leaves a gaping void that has sucked the life out of our industry. We need much more instructional information to be accessible to all tradespeople and we need it to come packaged with a mentor who will talk like John Ruskin and harangue about poor practice like the Audels authors.

So I wonder if it’s a coincidence that the very worst of American building practice was simultaneous with the end of the original Audels, “The carpenter’s bible?”

I’m not sure, but I do suggest you find a copy of the four volumes of the old Audels. They’re pretty much available online and you won’t regret the purchase. It would be worth it if only to hold a black leather-bound book and read its first page. If you go further than that, you might want to become a carpenter.

Respect the sanctity of houses you are building
with your attitude and language.

A few weeks ago, I received a nice call from a client who mentioned, among other things, how civil and well spoken our crew was during the job. He remarked about it because he knew that kind of behavior is unfortunately unusual in construction. His comment reminded me of where I started.

Before I knew anything about homebuilding, I learned a lot about swearing. My Christian upbringing didn’t prepare me for the extreme, low level of human behavior and language I encountered in my first construction experiences. The production homes being built were noticeably bad, even to a novice, but the crudity that came out of the mouths of people was even more unsettling. I didn’t know there were people who couldn’t say anything at all without stringing together multiple obscenities, and it was amazing how consistently job-site banter always spiraled into the lowest gutter-thought the group could conjure. One guy whose name was Deke usually got to the bottom the quickest. He thought he was funny.

Lunch break was particularly awful because there was enough time for the discussion to not only sink to the lowest depths, but also get into lurid detail. I hated having to hear it, particularly because I knew some of their stories were true and probably accurately described. It was disgusting, angering and sad. The best of the crew were smart enough but lost; the worst were deviants and actual criminals.

One day we were eating our lunches inside a newly constructed house. It was still only rough framed and sheathed, with open stud partitions shaping the future rooms. To me, the spatial transformations were pretty exciting; as for the other crew members, I got the sense there was nothing to see and feel but a hateful job. As usual, the conversation drifted toward crude jokes and cynical epithets. Then, it got worse.

Finally I had to speak up, and what came out was something like: “Stop it! People will be living here soon and your talk is turning this place into a cesspool. It will take years to clean this place of the garbage you’re throwing around.” Of course, it didn’t do any good. I was the young, goofy, straight-laced kid who was badly in need of the education they were trying to give me, which had nothing to do with building. They laughed at me about that for days afterward and continued to trash the homes we built with their mouths.

I’m more world-wise now and less of a prude, but the young me was right on that subject. My stumbling certainty came from growing up in a home in which the security and integrity came from both inside the people (my family) and the standards of demeanor expected in the place. I knew the sanctity of place mattered. Even those hardened guys wouldn’t have talked that way in a chapel, nor would they have been so crude in a stranger’s finished home because that’s another kind of chapel people instinctively respect.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed something like my early experiences being repeated on jobsites across the country. My workmates in those early days were perhaps extremely debauched, but the norm for construction behavior today isn’t something most people would want their kids exposed to.

But if your kids are not there and you don’t hear it, why would it matter? First, it matters because civility is the mother of quality. Good work comes from good attitude, and it’s pretty hard to maintain a good attitude while also spewing obscenities.

The other reason is essentially what I was trying to say to the vile “carpenters.” What we think is who we are, and who we are matters to what we make. That’s why in all the craft and trade traditions going back thousands of years, personal discipline and integrity are emphasized as much as the skills. The essence of craft is in the character of the craftsperson. Discipline and care are also optimism, just as non-caring short-cuts and bad work are cynicism in action. When hopelessness and acrimony are being built into a house, you can hear them tumbling into the cavities. It sounds bad and it’s not funny.

Having told that bad story, I need to offset it with several good ones. The first is the general comment that one of the surest ways to identify a good quality construction crew is to listen to them. They usually don’t need to talk a lot, almost never raise their voices, and are typically capable of expressing themselves without resorting to the low adjectives.

Some years ago, we had the job of replacing the roof of a church in New York City after a fire. Our team of timberframers worked alongside quite a few other trades people as the job was on a tight schedule to recreate the weather protection for the building as quickly as possible. The guys on our crew reported that it was by far the most curse-absent project they had ever been on. There were no rules set. It was just apparently automatic to not hurl profanity while standing directly between the sky and a sanctuary.

Finally, there is a story about a Habitat for Humanity blitz build I led a few years ago. We had over 500 volunteers and we worked several shifts over an eight day period and in that period completely constructed a new home for a large family. At any given time, the site was nearly a riot of activity. The energy level was high, but there were also plenty of reasons to be frustrated with people, process and certainly my attempts at coordination and leadership. Yet I never heard a word in anger and certainly no bad language. People came in the right spirit and knew that what they were giving was the gift of their higher selves as much as their physical effort. Nobody diminished the building with a bad attitude and therefore what we built was a simple, sturdy home that was also constructed with confidence, hope and love.

In my previous post, I referenced our company vision statement and wrote about how it has been pulling us toward higher objectives. As it’s rather an unusual model, I thought I’d show it and say a little more about how it came to be and how it is used. We are a company with many tools, from simple hand tools, to powerful CNC tools to some very high-tech software tools, but no other tool is as powerful as our Shared Vision.

It developed from a mid-course correction that happened in the late 1980’s, and has been continually evolving ever since. The correction came because I began to recognize that my leadership wasn’t as inclusive as it needed to be to create a great company. I wanted to work in a place in which the best outcomes in service and products emanate naturally. I knew we couldn’t achieve our full potential unless everyone pulled and pushed with the same intensity.

When I put myself in the shoes of my fellow associates, I realized my management methods weren’t going to lead to the future I wanted. Essentially, I came to understand that I needed to release my personal tendency to control because passion and commitment can’t be commanded, but instead can only grow in a more natural and organic way within each individual.

When it comes to what happens in the hearts of people, I had learned the hard way that we can only control some of the context, but none of the content.

With these hard-won realizations, I brought the company together and thanked them for doing their best to help me realize my visions over the previous years, and then went on to express my interest in starting a new era in which I could join them in pursuit of our collective vision.  In order to do that, though, we’d have to find a way to agree about what it was, and express it in a way that we could all work toward its fulfillment.

It started with pieces of paper pinned up to big bulletin board, each one with a statement about principles, values or actions each person thought we should be working toward or doing. We then divided them up in categories, worked on the wording and then worked to find consensus about what they meant and what we could do to make them a part of our efforts.

It took a long, long time! We had to find time to meet. We had to learn how to communicate and listen as we never had in the past. We had to reach agreement on important principles, though we were then and now anything but a monoculture of people and attitudes. The Shared Vision existed in bulletin board form for several years, with very much the organization you see below, but for quite some time it was also separated into several groups by color, with green being the statements that had consensus, yellow the ones we were currently working on, and red being the outliers.

Here’s a slightly out-of-date edition. You can click on it to see more detail.

As you can see, what we eventually came up with is anything but a linear document. We came to feel that our principles and company values should be the drivers of our actions. We organized the statements and the actions to show us graphically that there is consistency between what we do and what we believe.

Like any good vision statement, this one is a bugger. It mostly reminds us that there is still are still gaps; we’re still falling short on this and that, and there’s more work to do. Because of that immutable fact, most of the editing in the past ten years has been in the action area, not the principle/value core of the document.

Of course, a good Shared Vision does not automatically make us a great company, but it does make us a better company. I also think it makes me a better leader. I can point to our values, not my own, when pressing for a new initiative. It’s also empowering because our collective vision is bigger than mine was.

The other obvious benefit is that what it does for me, it also does for everyone else in the company. If you can reference the Shared Vision with your idea (or complaint), you’ve got our attention. We always have more work to do, one more thing to improve or change or do. Which is why I always say…onward!

I met with a couple (I’ll call them the Smiths) a few days ago who just a week earlier had lost their home in a fire. They were still very emotional about their loss, but as no one was home at the time, they were very thankful that they and their children were never endangered. They were also thankful their children only had to deal with the post-fire acceptance of loss, not the horrific event itself. It is interesting how tragedy begets a more nuanced and heightened sense of gratitude.

Speaking for myself, hard times and personal tragedies have also recalibrated my own under-utilized thankfulness meter and sorted out true priorities. In that same context, what I learned from the Smiths about their home was instructive. My purpose was to learn as much as I could about their house to help us get to a conversation about the time, logistics and the estimated cost of replacing it. But for a few minutes, we were somewhat disconnected. My questions were about how well the building functioned for their needs, and about finishes, equipment and features that were important to them. The Smiths’ answers, on the other hand, were about how it made them feel, and its deep effect on their family.

So my questions were superficial, but their answers were profound. I listened for a few minutes and was reminded again what a home often really means to people:

“It held us tight”

“There was plenty of space, but it still kept us close.”

“We were so secure there. It felt good to be there together.”

“It was well built, and made me happy and proud.”

“It was beautiful, simple and comfortable…just good place for living.”

“That home made us forget about the world’s problems and remember our family.”

“For the kids, it was a paradise…and so much fun.”

It isn’t a very big insight to realize that homes are not just about their boards, bricks, ducts and pipes; what mostly matters is their effect on improving the quality of lives. Yet we so easily forget, or perhaps we get sidetracked by the building basics, including technology, engineering, building science and all the attention that’s paid to style and stuff.

I’m happy to say the Smiths and I ultimately connected in the conversation and we were able to talk about the deeper aspects of the home they lost, but we also got into some of the physical details so that I could start thinking about what it might take to replace the building as soon as possible. Of course their comments also raised the ante about what needed to be replaced. I know we can build a very good quality building, but as designers and builders, how do we go about trying to build a home that will have that sense of deep meaning and purpose?

In my experience, I think the “sidetracked” perspective is the professional norm. At the center of our work are the mechanics and logistics of creating the physical environment, and we often give no thought to the emotional and psychological effects of the places we build. Even designers and architects often get more involved with the basics of form and function and aren’t typically openly aspirational about the deeper impacts on lives. At least they don’t talk about it much.

I don’t intend this as a criticism, because that higher bar is about the human interaction with the built environment, and we’re only involved with the context, not the daily living content. But as architects and builders, I think we could be much more tuned to the things that deeply matter in people’s lives, not just the built environment. How do our buildings affect how people feel? What impact does a living space have on relationships? One thing is certain: physical context and life content are not disconnected.

At least that’s how I’m thinking today as I contemplate how we can rebuild what obviously had become something really important in the Smiths’ lives. How do we go about trying to build a place that will “hold them tight?” What can we do to ensure that the house helps return them to a place in which they are “happy and proud” again? Though these things are fuzzy, elusive and intangible, can’t we still strive for them?

It’s an important question and challenge, which we accepted years ago, when our company was working on our “Shared Vision.” We engaged everyone in the company in a process to define our principles, values and actions. We wanted the former to guide the latter. What came out of that effort has been a living document that we’ve been able to use as a basis for our ongoing improvements and new initiatives ever since.

The core concepts haven’t changed, but functionally we’ve reconfigured ourselves substantially several times as we’ve pursued our higher goals.  We realized 20 years ago that our clients seek us out for something far more important than simply a good quality shelter, or a timberframe, or even something as functionally good as a zero net home or a Passive House. Those things may be in the conversation, but the real goal for most people is bigger still. Therefore, at the heart of our Shared Vision, it says:

“Through process and product, we will strive to improve the quality of lives.”

It’s a simple statement, but took some collective digging to uncover. Coming from a group of people who get a thrill out of making things, it was an acknowledgement that our constructions are secondary to the lives of those who inhabit them. Therefore, there’s necessarily a deeper purpose–as emotionally discussed with the Smiths–about what a home can and should mean to peoples’ lives.

For our company, that objective has been a guiding ideal for our constantly unfolding improvements. It’s not as if we can ever essentially achieve it because we don’t exactly know what success means for each individual. Still, pursuing that goal has changed us in fundamental ways. Now everything matters. We won’t impact lives deeply if we do only one kind of thing well. We have to do everything well. Cost and budgets matter immensely. So does the building experience itself; it shouldn’t be a trial of stress for the owners. Materials matter. And of course fit and finish. It also matters immensely that we try to create places that enhance life and living in ways big and small.

Tall order. But what does that mean exactly? I’m certainly not going to try to answer that question here, but I will say that just the realization that the ultimate value of our work goes way beyond the physical products we create is a critical beginning. Attitude impacts performance. We can either see ourselves as prosaic mechanics just plying our building trades day after day, or we can see ourselves as involved with a high calling that at its best results in the building of sacred personal cathedrals for common people.

Now I have some important work to do for the Smiths. They need their sacred cathedral restored.

My blog has been inactive for awhile. I’ve been made more aware of my silence because concerned readers have recently been sending me messages like these:

“Are you all right?”

“This isn’t like you. Will you be writing again?”

“I had been worrying about your silent weblog for these months, though I know you have been regenerating your company in the recession.”

The last comment is accurate, but to put a better spin on it, I’ll call my writing absence a sabbatical. The time of not keeping up with the blog, while indeed caused by excessive work for our company, has also been helpful. The space and time has given me new perspectives and new energy. I’m now ready for a return to regular reporting, though I realize I surely lost some readers who had every right to give up hope.

While some people have been worried about me through the fallow period, our marketing team has been breathing a sigh of relief. They know I will always say the truth as I see it, and it gives them some concern at times that I might write with rather too much unhappy honestly. They rightfully worry that my unfiltered words might tarnish our image. I’m gambling that honesty and good soul-searching are better than the hyping and preening just for positive effect.

Therefore, for better or worse, I’m back, and you can continue to count on me to write what I think without concern about whether it’s a benefit or pitfall for our marketing.

My blog sabbatical began at the end of December when my site got hacked. In the place of my posts, a dark, satanic creature appeared with dripping sharp teeth and a foul mouth. It was shocking. My IT experts couldn’t get rid of this guy, so after multiple attempts we pulled the site down. I took it personally, even though I was told my site was almost certainly the victim of mass attack, not a personal vendetta. I still felt violated.

Eventually, we put the blog site back up with a different host, but by that time my focus was on trying to maintain our company’s health and vigor in the midst of the feeblest housing market for 75 years, compounded by realities of a typical New England winter, which is usually our slowest time of any year.

I can report that we are prevailing despite the slings and arrows of the persistently tough economy. With thanks to the hard and creative work of our team, and with further thanks to the many clients who have demonstrated their faith in us, we’ve been able to push through a long, cold winter. We’re even beginning to develop strategies for increasing our production capacities rather than shrinking.

There’s no doubt I have some battle scars from the home industry depression, but they don’t include laying off any associates in 2009-2011, and that’s something about which we can be very proud of considering the dire circumstances.

As I renew my conversations with you here, I’ll remind you that the themes I care about remain those that have been the focus of my 38 year effort to improve homebuilding in America. On the building process side, the elements of craftsmanship are key, but when that is in place, it must be supported by good design, the art of structural engineering, the technology expertise required in mechanical engineering, and the fast-emerging field of building science. But on the product side, we must never lose sight that the end goal of homebuilding is for and about enhancing and ennobling the lives of people.

I believe we homebuilders can do a whole lot better. We’ve set our bar too low. Anything we build will eventually move in the marketplace because people need shelter. But that fact has blinded us from a correct vision of what we we should try to accomplish in our profession. With that, I guess I’ll spend the next 38 years (hey, I’m an optimist!) working on raising the bar.

Homebuilding is most of all about our aspirations for humanity. Expressed in every seemingly mundane construction there are also loud statements about what we value and what we believe.

Here’s what I believe:

• We can build homes that deeply matter in the lives of people. Such homes are not commodities; they are the context for security, love, beauty, sacred relationships and cherished memories. The best attributes of good homes are its intangibles; the stuff that inhabits dreams and is a source of hope and inspiration. Homes are both a refuge of comfort and security and a prospect for action and engagement in the world.

• We can build homes that represent our highest values, that display the hopes and ideals of our culture and reveal our best ambitions for the future.

• We can build homes that are durable and flexible enough to pass from generation to generation for centuries, sometimes many centuries. When we are at our best, our homes age like fine wine, not like raw milk.

• We can build homes that are the pride of their communities and cities that define the place where they are; that honor the past, vibrantly live in the present, and project a stalwart attitude about their important role in the future.

• We can build homes that extract little from the planet and give back in relation to the resources used in a way that is worthy and sustainable.

• We can build homes that use less energy than they make.

• We can completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels for the heating and cooling of homes.

• We can build homes that exhibit a reverence for the natural world of which they are a part. We can build homes that inherently renew the natural connections to the places they inhabit.

• We can build homes that are a tribute to 21st century craft of homebuilding, showing once again the critical contributions of our historically proud and noble profession.

• We can highlight the advancements in workmanship and technology that are the hallmarks of our contemporary civilization. We don’t need to choose between honoring the past and embracing the future. However, we do need to choose from both wisely.

• Finally, we can and we must make these kinds of homes accessible to the broadest possible sector of our society. Our brightest destiny requires that we pursue ways to allow all people to live in homes that elevate life.

And so, onward. With many thanks for your understanding and patience, and especially for your kind words of concern and encouragement. Please join the conversation as my “sabbatical” now ends.

My lack of blog posts these last few weeks can be explained by simply saying these are tough times in my business and my thoughts haven’t been the sort you’d like know about. Remembering the classic refrain from your mom and mine, since I haven’t had anything good to say, I haven’t said anything.

For those of us in homebuilding, the word recession trivializes what we’re going through. This is a Depression. Our industry has nearly come to a full stop. Housing starts are down a full three quarters compared to better times, and profit margins on existing projects are nearly non-existent. Every day there are fewer homebuilding trade survivors. For those of us who remain standing, there is no joy even in the loss of our competitors, for many are also friends and colleagues, people whose work and integrity we can ill afford to lose. And of course, we cry for the stress and agony imposed on building tradespeople and their families throughout the country. Their modest incomes are shrunken or gone; their tools and skills are idle and wasted. Hard working people are suffering while the homebuilding dreams of an entire nation go unfulfilled.

As we helplessly watch the industry around us shrink, our company resolve to maintain our strength and resilience increases. While there’s a natural tendency to retrench to lower levels in Maslow’s hierarchy* (pyramid illustration below), our team knows how important it is to stay on the levels where our collective support, intelligence and creativity can remain in play. Only by being at our collective best can we hope to continue to maneuver our way out of this housing depression. There’s no room these days for waste and error, but there’s also no mercy for lack of confidence and courage. Survival goes to the bold.

At times like this, we’re fools if we don’t pay attention to nature’s lessons. They aren’t exactly abstract metaphors for us to learn from, even as organizations. Organizations, commercial and otherwise, are organisms in a complex ecology just as surely as molecules, trees and beasts. Unless we think that our dust will be different than that of a mite, or a mouse, or a moose, or an extinct megaloceros, we would be wise to learn from the experience of other life forms, whether past or present. Nature’s been naturally selecting for quite awhile. If you can figure anything at all about how it works, your a step ahead.

Megaloceros? I didn’t know about it either until I read its story in Mahlon Hoagland and Bert Dodson’s beautiful book, The Way Life Works: The Science Lover’s Illustrated Guide to How Life Grows, Develops, Reproduces, and Gets Along. I’ll get back to the megaloceros. It’s just one of the “life lessons” in this easy-to-digest book. For those in business, the subtitle should be changed to “How to Steer your Business toward Improvement, Growth and Continual Adaptability in a Beautiful but Brutal World.”

In Chapter 2, the authors present “An Overview of the Basic Concepts of Biology” in the form of what they identify as sixteen patterns, or rules, that life uses to build, organize, create, and re-create.

The Sixteen Life Patterns

Life builds from the bottom up
Life assembles itself into chains
Life needs an inside and an outside
Life uses a few themes to generate many variations
Life organizes with information
Life encourages variety by reshuffling information
Life creates with mistakes
Life occurs in water
Life runs on sugar
Life works in cycles
Life recycles everything it uses
Life maintains itself by turnover
Life tends to optimize rather than maximize
Life is opportunistic
Life competes within a cooperative framework
Life is interconnected and interdependent

I find this stuff fascinating, and as good a place as any to go to look for clues to new paths, or how to wiggle out of tough situations. Not being a scientist, I tend to think about the facts as metaphors and the patterns as abstract parallels. It’s a muddy form of biomimicry.

The following are a few examples of how these patterns are informing my thinking about our organizational development and adaptation as we find the market we serve smaller and greatly altered.

Life is opportunistic.

Life finds a way to make do with the way things are. The natural world adapts to the prevailing conditions; that which doesn’t, doesn’t survive.

The housing recession has been like a desert in comparison to the bubble years’ rich savanna. We have needed to think about how to use our skills and strengths in new ways rather than attempting to push our preferences into the new environment. We will always be timberframers, for instance, but it became necessary to apply our timberframing mindset to other aspects of building. That has led to a fountain of creative thinking that now allows us to build all kinds of building components with the efficiency, precision and craft priority we learned in our decades of building “livable wooden sculptures.” Of course, we aren’t leaving the timbers behind; they’re just not the only kind of arrow in our quiver.

Life uses a few themes to generate many variations
Life encourages variety by reshuffling information

“Life hangs on to what works. At the same time, it explores and tinkers. This restless combination leads to a vast array of unique living creatures on a considerably smaller number of patterns and rules.

“The beetle, with some 300,000 separate species, displays every imaginable color, decorative motif, and proportional distribution of the body parts — yet the pattern of relationships that makes the species of beetles is constant.”**

In this new world of homebuilding, budgets are smaller, but the desire for customizing designs for the owner needs and site conditions hasn’t changed. We needed to develop a much less expensive way to create new home designs. We needed to be like beetles.

We looked at the library of components we had been developing for some 15 years (an outgrowth of our OBGrid 3D environment) and realized we had the answer already fully developed. We just needed to extract the families of components from our library to create more defined and specific home design DNA.

We call this system the 3BMatrix. With it we can create almost endless variations with speed and, as the needs require, we can reshuffle the pieces to make further variations. Instead of beetles, ants or birds, our 3BMatrices are in home style families that have particular pre-determined parameters.

Life tends to optimize rather than maximize

“To optimize means to achieve just the right amount–a value in the middle range between too much and too little. To much or too little sugar in the blood will kill. Everyone needs calcium and iron, but too much is toxic.

At the level of the organism, optimizing is an intricate dance involving many interacting parts and values. Deer antlers require an optimum mix of strength, shock absorption, weight, and growing ability. A change in any one of these variables might adversely affect the others… Thus maximizing any single value tends to reduce flexibility in the overall system, so that it may not be able to adapt to adverse environmental change.”*

Discussing deer antlers brought Hoagland and Dodson to the subject of the Megloceros, more commonly known as the Irish Elk, and animal that lived in many parts of the world (not just Ireland) about 400,000 years ago. Their antlers apparently got so maximized that it probably contributed to their extinction.

I got to thinking that perhaps the Megaloceros and a McMansion have in lot in common.

The Irish Elk’s antlers were mainly for display. Their primary purpose was to attract females. They grew to be about 12 feet across, making them pretty cumbersome for combat and were otherwise a burden rather than a benefit. This made the Irish Elk ill-suited to environmental change, whether it was a new predator or perhaps the growth of thicker forests. Those massive, showy antlers almost certainly contributed to their extinction.

The McMansion, also known as the Housamanious, also grew way too big, and its maximization has little purpose other than to impress neighbors and friends. It’s a species that has grown and grown, but only the size is maximized, most of the rest is usually compromised, rather than optimized, to achieve the big affectation to show off one kind of quality–big. After the impression has been made, what’s left is only a big environmental burden, just like the Irish Elk.

This, then, is one of the good outcomes of the housing Depression. The McMansion is a dying species. Its massive foyers, unused rooms and energy gobbling requirements are its twelve foot antlers. Smart homeowners are coming to us with a desire for smaller homes, and they want them to be optimized, not maximized, and certainly not compromised.

This is one part of these hard economic times I like.

*Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by bAbraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation.

**quotes from The Way Life Works

It requires the twisted neural pathways of the human brain to overcome natural instincts, making us sometimes dumber than our primal ancestors. You don’t need instructions to turn toward the sun for warmth or to put on a coat when it’s cold outside. And yet millions of homes are built without regard for solar orientation, and insulation still doesn’t merit much importance with both homeowners and builders across the country.

I’ve always thought these kinds of oversights were born of builder greed and confusion among homeowners. Builders and developers assume they can’t make as much money if energy efficiency had to be the first priority, and homeowners assume that building codes are protecting them from buying bad buildings, which is hardly the case. Somehow, this kind of anthropomorphic avarice and ignorance have disconnected us from the common sense born even to a mouse.

But surely, somewhere buried in our deep memory, people must innately know better. Wouldn’t people intuitively make the right decisions if making an energy efficient shelter wasn’t a choice but a life-preserving necessity?

Maybe not, if the implications of a recent study are accurate.

Researchers at Columbia University, Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University recently published a report called “Public Perceptions of Energy Consumption and Savings” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The idea of the study was to see if people understand the most effective things they can do to conserve energy.

The study’s 505 survey respondents basically got it backwards. They didn’t understand that efficiency improvements are far more effective than curtailment efforts. Therefore, turning out lights was the most cited way to save energy, rating far above using more efficient light bulbs. In reality, turning off lights is insignificant compared to replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs or LEDs. Similarly, respondents thought shutting off appliances when not in use was more effective than having energy efficient appliances. The opposite is true in that case too.

Here’s the summary table from the PNAS study:

This apparent lack of public understanding led Kirsten Korosec of the Bnet website (CBS affiliate) to write a column titled Energy Efficiency Industry Dragged Down by Our Stupid Selves. Korosec seems as concerned about industry market implications as she is about the energy problems that need attention:

In short, Americans don’t know the first thing about how to save energy. Their misconceptions, if changed, could have a very real impact on bottom lines of appliance companies like GE, energy-efficient automakers and retrofit specialists.
The unfortunate theme for appliance and light bulb manufacturers, car makers and contractors is that Americans — at least based on this survey — equate savings with changing their behavior, such as turning off the lights, and not investing in new products. Which means companies like GE have to work harder to make their advertising and marketing into educational campaigns.

I agree with Korosec, but this isn’t the part of the study jumped out at me. I have sympathy for the survey participants who didn’t know that the most energy efficient lights and appliances are THAT effective. You’d have to see the math that compares less use with less energy consumption. The facts are convincing, to be sure, but they clearly are not as obvious as we wish. There’s education to do here.

What startled me is that “insulate my home” was basically dead last in possible energy efficiency actions. It was the lowest scoring action item, falling just above “there’s no way/don’t know.” By far the most effective category on the survey list almost didn’t make the list. As a builder of high performance homes, this caught me by surprise.

“Insulate my home” even fell below “sleep more/relax more,” suggesting that the respondents thought going into a catatonic state might be a more useful solution. I was briefly inclined to say something more irreverent about this one, but I do respect the notion that slowing down in our frenetic world may be a pretty useful way to save energy. Still, if we were less superficially active, most likely we’d be spending more time in our poorly insulated homes, which would only further raise the importance of the “insulate my home” category.

The facts are simple. Buildings consume more energy than any other sector, as shown on this Architecture 2030 graph:

And in homes, as in most buildings, heating and cooling is where the lion’s share of the energy goes:

There’s no doubt that we need to reduce every slice of the energy pie. Not only should we be replacing incandescent lights with CFLs and LEDs, we should be turning them off more too. We can double-down on more efficient appliances by unplugging power to them when not in use. And there’s nothing more efficient than a uber-efficient car that isn’t going anywhere. So the survey’s participants were at least partially right on these issues, but on the biggest piece of the energy pie, respondents got it all wrong and stuck it between not doing anything and giving up.

Since the late 1970′s, we’ve been building homes that are so well insulated that they won’t freeze, even in sub-zero weather and no auxiliary heat source. This is called “passive survivability” and it’s really not that hard to achieve. It requires only better insulating and sealing details and careful, knowledgeable work. This level of insulation should have been the American standard for the past 30 years. The energy savings accrued over the years would have been the equivalent of discovering a vast new oil reserve beneath all of us, one that requires no drilling and yet constantly delivers security and comfort.

In fact, in the last ten years we have come to the realization that we now have the capability to cut the “heating and cooling” half of the household energy usage completely off. We can make a different pie. If we commit ourselves to the task, we can make the heating and cooling loads of our homes so small that renewable energy sources can make up the difference.

The mantra for the future of American homebuilders should therefore be “Reduce the load. Reduce the load. Reduce the load.” Not very sexy, but it’s the key to our energy independent future. No good solutions are possible until all our homes are “low-load” because of extremely good insulation. When the energy requirements are tiny, a whole new world of really cool technologies can come into play and can make every home its own power plant.

However, that probably won’t happen until American homeowners across the land are heard to be chanting: “Insulate my home. Insulate my home. Insulate my home.”

Over a week ago the New York Times ran a feature article in their Sunday edition entitled Can We Build in a Brighter Shade of Green? about the Passive House project we’ve been involved with. I discussed that same project in my last post on this blog. The NYTimes story (and video) hit a good nerve and was widely read, frequently emailed, and subsequently discussed on several green building blogs. Even though it brought up some of the obstacles to achieving the Passive House standard, there’s no doubt the article was a boost to the movement.

I was introduced to the Passive House idea in 1997 during one of my trips to Europe. A friend took me to see a house under construction that was going to be insulated so well that it wouldn’t require a heating system! It was exciting, and it immediately struck a chord with me. Twenty years earlier I had written about my dream of houses of the future with “energy-autonomous environments that consume no fossil fuels.”**

Even at the beginning of my career, I knew it would be eventually possible to unplug the fuel lines by maximizing the insulation, air tightness and passive solar contributions. I just didn’t know exactly how to do it. Leave it to the Germans to figure out how an idealistic notion could be a reality by solving the science, doing the math and therefore making Passive House an objective and achievable standard.

Over the years, I watched in frustration as the numbers of Passive Houses built in Europe kept rising by magnitudes while few people in the U.S. had even heard of the concept. By 2006, Passive House was reaching maturity in Europe and becoming commonplace. On one memorable Alps-crossing mountain biking trip, a builder-friend from Austria, a Professor from the University of Innsbruck and a carpenter from Germany talked over a lunch break about half a dozen PH projects they were separately involved with. I only listened and hoped to someday be “in” the conversation.

Finally, our company has built one. What took so long? I’ve believed in the idea since my early professional days and I’ve known about Passive House since its early days in Europe. More than most builders, I have no good excuse. I do have an explanation, though.

Until recently, I didn’t know Steve and Barbara Landau.

I can dream all I want, but I had no way of making our clients want one. We had nothing to show and no experience or costs to reference. The first of anything is always difficult. It’s hard to promote what you haven’t done.

So when the Landaus asked about our interest, the answer from myself and our team was immediate. We also offered to cut our costs, knowing there would be some learning-curve inefficiencies. As our work on the Landau house is done, I can say it’s been a rewarding experience, even without profit.

But is Passive House worth the cost in general? It depends on the calculation you use. If you use a cost-benefit analysis based on 2010 U.S. fuel costs, the answer might be no. If you think, as I do, that we should be building and calculating for multiple generations, then the answer is yes, many times over.

We can build homes that last centuries, not decades. My career has been dedicated to that proposition. We can also build homes that use NO fossil fuels during all those long years of service, for allthose generations of inhabitants, yielding a home that provides a rare brand of security and comfort. Tens of thousands of Passive Houses prove that. Put those two ideas–uncommon durability + uncommon energy efficiency–together and you will have a model for a sustainable future.

We need these model buildings to prove the possible. But more importantly, to prove the possible, we need model clients.

We need more Landaus.

These are people who are willing to put unselfish numbers into the denominator of their cost/benefit equation. Some calculations should be about OUR earth, not just MY bank account. If the equation is stretched out to 25 or 30 years, PH and Zero Net homes will almost always show a return. Do they need to make it back in ten? Why not 50? 100? 200? Is that too absurd? How about just the duration of the three generations most people know in their immediate family? If our time frame of consideration can’t stretch backward and forward to include the people we know and love, what hope is there?

That’s why the Landaus are my heroes. When the project started, their calculations were about maximizing energy efficiency, not demonstrating their own return on the cost investment.

Still, the Landaus struggled with the basic calculation of how to afford the kind of building that has no fuel lines. The substantial walls and roof cost more. Better windows cost more. Thick blankets of insulation under and around the foundation cost more. It’s a better building and itought to cost more. (It bothers me when PH proponents try to deny the added costs, as if it’s an embarrassment.)

To deal with the costs, the instinctual wisdom of the Landaus was to cut amenities and save costs on the finishes. What they understood was that they had one shot at building a good structure with the very best thermal characteristics, while the amenities and finishes could be added or upgraded at any time. They didn’t compromise the long-term layers of the building, while they willingly cut back on the short term layers.

Brilliant? Yes, but it should be obvious. When building homes, most builders and homeowners do the complete opposite. Typically, the structural and thermal performance of new homes is severely compromised to make room in the budget for better carpets, fancy light fixtures, all-around shower heads and the-mother-of-all-new necessities: the home theater. People seem convinced that the only things that matter in a home is what they can see and get entertained with, when what really matters most is mostly not visible.

How did the Landaus afford a Passive House? A simple approach; their own kind of math: they added to the envelope until they subtracted fossil fuels, then they subtracted the superficial until the substantial was affordable.

That is how good homes are built. Good builders need good clients and in that regard, we’ve been very fortunate. Over many years, we have been built many wonderful buildings. They are ALL tributes more to our clients than to us. We are in service to their aspirations. We are just grateful when they take us in new and better directions. Right now, I’m grateful for the Landaus.

I don’t think all our homes will be Passive Houses. That’s not necessarily my hope or expectation. On the other hand, I do think our entire country could learn from the Landaus about what is important and what is not; and therefore how to add and subtract, and about the number in the denominator that makes the cost/benefit consideration about building a better future; the one beyond ourselves.

**from Building the Timber Frame House: The Revival of a Forgotten Craft