Shade House,Houston- Matt and Tina Ford

Dwell Magazine-
Notes:
not crazy about the facade.... although i like that he's using reclaimed wood with concrete.
landsape design is lacking... very bare, considering Houston is pretty lush with vegitation... doesn't seem very native to me...

Green technology for heating and cooling is worth investigating.


The exterior features a combination of raw concrete and exposed wood
(reclaimed lumber) that complements the existing concrete structures of
the neighborhood. Beneath the exterior cladding and the roof is a
clever energy-saving solution: radiant barrier house wrap. The wrap,
which looks just like tin foil, repels radiant heat and bounces it
right back into the atmosphere—a breath of fresh air in Houston’s
torrid summers.

He moved the air-conditioning ducts from the attic into the house’s
interior and attached them to an energy-efficient furnace, keeping
costs lower and making the necessary evil of air-conditioning less of a
polluter. In addition to a clever roof temperature control system, the
houses are capped off with Cool Tone shingles, which reflect more light
(and heat) than their traditional counter-parts. The five units measure
between 1,600 and 2,200 square feet—diminutive by Lone Star State
standards—but as Matt puts it, “The greenest thing you can do is a
tight design.”

If the wood floors look vaguely like the basketball court at your high
school, with different colors interspersed within the grains of maple,
it’s because they’re all recycled gym floors from nearby schools. The
countertops and stairs are also wood, these purchased from a man who
runs a tree-trading program: Matt gives him old trees that are cut down
when he clears lots, then buys them back as lumber for construction.


The centerpiece of his solution is a technology he calls
Sun-Flow. Based on the idea that “the majority of cooling that houses
do is to fight heat coming in through the attic,” he explains, he
increased the size of the cavities in the roof rafters to move more air
through them. Each cavity has access to a large vent, and as
temperatures rise, the hot air vents out through a series of airshafts
and channels. As a final step when it really gets hot, rooftop solar
panels power up fans that attach to the sides of the houses, and blow
air out of the attic whenever the sun makes an appearance.

The
result is that hot air never makes its unwelcome way into the house, so
there’s significantly less need to crank up the air conditioner.