Building the White House

Designing and building an environmentally-sustainable home.

Where should we put the house on the lot?

This is a huge issue for us. When we bought the lot, we had every intention of building the house up on top of the ridge to the right, assuming that we had more than enough space to do so. As it turns out from the survey, we own the entire ridge, so it looks [...]

Passive Solar House Design

If you want to build a passive solar home in Nova Scotia, chances are you’ve heard of Don Roscoe. He is a past (or maybe even present, it’s hard to tell from their website) officer of Solar Nova Scotia, and teaches a solar design course, that my wife and I intend to take this fall. [...]

The Third Design

I know you’re wondering where the second design went, but our architect needed to take the sketches back to scan them, so here’s the third design.  

 
This is a passive solar design, built on an engineered slab. The windows are designed to be shaded in the summer by the decks and a portico over the main [...]

Our Architect and the First Design

We’re a big fan of modern architecture. One of my clients is Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. We developed and maintain their websites, and I am always in love with what they do, their design-centric process and the thought they put into every project. When we first looked over the lot, Talbot Sweetapple came out to the [...]

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