Building a house on Lakeside Court

Information about construction, energy, power, and conservation. Also including a time log of progress on the construction. (See what's new to track changes.) These pages started as a guide for ourselves, our friends, but most importantly our architects and contractors. These pages became a history of our house building project as well as a record of our plans and our questions that we needed to resolve as we move forward. The energy and construction pages summarize what we have learned about how to build a house that is as carbon neutral as we can make it. They are meant as a resource to others who share our concerns about the need to reduce our nation's reliance on fossil fuels and are interested in building energy efficient houses. Please visit the post construction web site for a more user friendly discussion of what we have learned.

Contents

Overview

Where does a Californian who loves everything aquatic and loves another Californian who loves Evanston want to live? In Evanston, but on the lake: Lakeside Court. This page is meant as a dynamic set of links to chronicle the building of our house and the information that we are gathering in cooperation with Ellen Galland of Rockwell Associates. It is meant to help the various people involved in constructing our house to understand the alternative decisions that need to be considered. These pages will be evolving as we move forward and should be consulted frequently.

Several considerations that are driving the design of the house are 1) the location (facing Lake Michigan), 2) life style considerations and 3) the need to be minimize the environmental impact as much as is reasonably possible. This last consideration focuses on issues of size (the "not so big house" concept) as well as general environmental concerns and energy efficiency. (Recognizing that building is itself not very environmentally friendly, the question becomes how to reduce the impact of a new house.)

The former house was built in 1952 in the North East corner of Evanston. It was built as a one story prefab that did not take particular advantage of the location. It was obvious from the beginning that the location deserved a new house. After five months of discussing possible designs (and developing this web page to track what were learning) and seven further months of systematic architectual design with Ellen Galland, plans went out for bid in early January, 2002. Although we had hoped to start (and finish) construction in 2002, we started in March of 2002 and had hoped to finish by March, 2003. As of September, 2003 we are almost finished. Information about construction and progress is added to these pages as progress is made.

version of September 8, 2003
As is true of all web pages, this is part of a constantly growing set of pages. If working off of a printed copy, it is useful to look at the date of the last version. As changes are added to the various pages on, the "What's New" page will track changes.
Prepared by William Revelle. Comments to W. Revelle