New Leaf Home Design

Smart Sustainability is still a "thing", and well worth looking into for your family home. It's been years since my family made the switch to more efficient options. Here's my story...

Smart Sustainability – What It Meant For Our House – New Leaf Home Design Smart sustainability isn’t one size fits all. It wouldn’t be smart if it were. Each situation, each house, and each family are different. And each budget. So how do you decide what are the smart sustainable decisions for you? It’s a process. I recently went through this process for our family....

What do you see? A friend posted this because he liked how cozy the house looks in the winter landscape. I agree, but I also see more: The house is well insulated because the snow of the roof is uniform, and there aren't any icicles. The windows aren't too big, so most of the wall can have lots of insulation too. But I am hoping there are more windows on the other side to take advantage of that view. Then I wonder whether the view is equally good to our right side, which would be south (assuming this is sunrise). If so, and the shape of the lot permitted, it might have been better to turn the house 90 degrees, so there would be a nice south facing roof surface for solar panels. The existing trees are to the north, so they wouldn't shade the panels. Also, then most of those imagined big windows for the view would face south so they could soak up the sun's heat in the winter, and the natural overhang of the roof would shade them from overheating in the summer. The eaves could be deeper, which would be better for that shading and would also protect the foundation from rain a little better. Then I wonder about whether there is a basement. Slab on grade construction is great for minimizing the carbon footprint of the house, since concrete has such high embodied energy, but with that slope, it might also be really nice to have a walk-out basement. That way you would get more good quality living space. That's what I see.