I am still trying to catch you up on the past tense parts of this project. This segment of the earth sheltered home history took place over the past 9 months and ends with us choosing and hiring our architect. However, I met with the architect yesterday, and we are not done yet, so it is actually part of the ongoing story and I am not even really sure how it will work out. 😉
I will add a companion page about what I learn about “sourcing” earth sheltered architects here…
This should be the last of the really long history posts (had to work on it over two evenings, but didn’t have time to put in pictures), I am looking forward to discussing current events in my upcoming posts.
I had actually searched for architects a few times. I started trying to contact architects by email and phone back in July of 2010. I told each one that I was looking for someone interested in working with me on a design for an earth sheltered shotcrete home. As you can imagine, the responses were overwhelming… Actually, and this is looking at my email record, of the first 5 emails I sent out, I got one response. He called and we talked, I don’t recall exactly, but I think he scared me off by telling me that “architects charge 18% of the cost of the home…” (I later discovered that this was not always true) At about the same time, I also discovered that Michigan did not require an architect on a home the size that I was building, so I decided to keep working on the design myself.
Then I had a bunch of meetings and emails with my future neighborhood’s architectural committee, and hardly got any design work done in the 4th quarter of 2011 (blame my MBA classes) so I started to realize that I may need an architect after all… I figured it was best to keep working on my contacts. I tried “Service Magic” an online service that turned out to be useless. I recommend a Google search instead, even architects without pages all list in the online yellow pages. On October 1st of 2011, I emailed Scott McElrath from Dangerous Architects for the first time. The next day I sent my first email off to Michigan Shotcrete. These two, contacted within a day of each other, will probably end up being the core team for my project, which is why I mentioned them by name, but lets not get ahead of the story. Scott was interested in a meeting, but was leaving the country for a while (international adoption). Things were delayed and by the time he got back, Sherri and I were busy flipping our house around and were no longer ready to meet. Nate Hatfield from Michigan Shotcrete also responded and we started a dialog. Of all the shotcrete companies I called, he was the only one who knew the difference between gunite and shotcrete or what an Earth Sheltered home was. He was also the only one who didn’t list zoo’s in his portfolio (he only did swimming pools). He had never done an earth sheltered home, but since I couldn’t find anyone north of Ohio who had, he was still my best bet. (I did consider importing a crew from the south west…)
About this time near the end of 2011, I also called my lender, Andrew Kudwa of Greenstone Farm Credit Services. We had bought the land with Greenstone FCS financing (mostly paid off now) and I already knew of at least a couple of other Earth Sheltered homes that were approved by Greenstone FCS. Many lenders are refusing mortgages for conventional homes, so it is great to find someone willing to lend for an unconventional home. The meeting was to get the ball rolling on preparing any paperwork I would need for planned construction the following spring, however, I learned a few other things as well. First was that part of the construction loan process involved a review of the construction documents (blueprints) to estimate the final value of the home. This would directly affect how much the bank would be willing to loan me. Apparently this process goes much more smoothly if you hire an architect rather than draw up the plans yourself. Secondly, I learned that the the money I spend for the architect, engineer, surveyor and other construction related services all counts toward my down-payment on the mortgage.
1) Construction loans are easier with an architect
2) Architect fees count as part of the down-payment on a construction loan.
Since I was having a hard time finding architects experienced with earth sheltering in Michigan, I decided to try some companies who specialized in it and see if I could access their “in house” talent. I contacted Formworks. They sell a pretty complete solution, from architectural services, thru engineering and even materials (steel, insulation and waterproofing, all shipped from Colorado). The problem was that I am not a big fan of their use of insulation or waterproofing, let alone being forced to use a supplier shipping tons of material from thousands of miles away, so asked about excluding those components. I got a polite letter back about how they have patented their system for building earth sheltered homes, not individual components. It was all or nothing, so I continued my search.
In February of 2012, with work getting really busy, I asked my wife Sherri to find us some architects. She found several more and we began setting up appointments. Interestingly, one of the architects was the “Dangerous Architects” firm that I had contacted weeks before. The problem was their website “contact us” link was dead and their phone was not working (maybe the website had the wrong number). I nearly dropped them from the list, but then I remembered that I had got emails from Scott the previous October and was able to find the phone number and email address.
Up to this point, I had been pretty close vested about my plans, so it was an interesting process to prepare a presentation on what we wanted and deliver it to professional architects. Most of the meetings took well over an hour. I had a variety of questions, including “do you think I am crazy?” No one said yes, but I could tell at least one or two probably thought I was. 😉
Scott McElrath of Dangerous Architects was the first one we visited. We liked him for many reasons (including the name which suggested that he would be brave enough for our project). He appeared to listen well, he took notes, he didn’t seem to think we were crazy, he was the only architect that wanted to see the property (and drove out to see it that day). He also scheduled a second meeting (still not hired) to meet with “his” engineer and get his take on our plans. Scott’s primary concern was that we had not budgeted enough money for the house. We are hoping that our simple materials (such as cement floors, cement shower surrounds, etc.) and other aspects of our design (no drywall, no painting, very little roofing) would make enough difference… but we will see.
The next architect we visited seemed arrogant and talked down to us a bit too much. They didn’t bother to take any notes, when I asked about this, they said that they would get into that after we hired them. It seemed clear to me that they planned to take us all the way back to programming, except this time it would be on the clock. Because they planned to start over, they estimated that it would take 6 months of full-time work to get the plans together (with a correspondingly high estimate).
The third architect had some experience with green roofs, but thought that earth was the same temp all the time (heat sink), that 8 to 12 inches of cover was optimum, that only the top few inches of cement directly in the sunlight could store heat (He thought I had too many windows), and several other fallacies (or at least things I didn’t agree with). I don’t even recall everything he said, but he spent most of the time trying to impress me by pointing out all the horrible mistakes I had made. He said I should dump the green house (this one is debatable since many experts would agree with him, but I want one anyway) and dump the storm room (but that is one of the funnest things about the house ;)) and go with bermed walls and a mostly conventional roof and an above ground garage. His estimate came in at the 18% mark (no real hourly break down, just 18 percent of our budget, he was the only one who quoted us a percentage like that). Anyway, he wasn’t going to work out.
The 4th architect told me that they didn’t visualize 3D well! That is like your surgeon telling you that they have shaky hands or your pilot saying they are blind. Pleasant enough, but not a real candidate for a project like this. This architect actually bowed out gracefully.
The 5th architect was licensed in Chicago, but had moved back to Michigan for family reasons (his old boss had lots of good things to say about him). Since he was unlicensed in Michigan, he had to call himself a designer and therefore charged much less than anyone else… During our initial meeting, he seemed very responsive and made several good suggestions to improve the layout. He was quite pleasant and likable. He said he also used Autodesk Revit and thought my drawings would be a good starting point, so he wouldn’t need to charge me to recreate the part I had already done. That sounded good to me. The one problem was that my wife Sherri had not been able to attend the meeting. He had made my short list (along with Scott from Dangerous Architects), but he couldn’t win the bid without meeting Sherri. We had a second meeting just so he could meet her, but he struck out. He didn’t make good eye contact or appear to listen to her needs. This tilted Sherri strongly in favor of Scott. Since Scott cost 3 times more, I gave her a few days to be sure she liked him that much better, she did.
By mid April, we had signed on with Scott McElrath at Dangerous Architects. I met his associate, Peter Shaw, who seems really good and had some pre-existing interest in earth sheltered homes. I guess we had missed Peter with our earlier visits because he is not in on those days.
Since then, the design has been steadily and iteratively moving forward. It wasn’t easy to hand over the plans like that (or the money), but I am glad I did.
One mile stone was a meeting between the architect and his assistant, and the builder and his partner, and the engineer and his assistant, and me and my partner/assistant… During that meeting we worked out how the house would get built. Some big things got changed, for instance, I had planned to shoot the shotcrete from below (based on earlier discussions with the builder), but they said it would be easier (and therefore cheaper) to shoot from above. We worked out how it would be done to minimize form and labor costs, etc.
The drawings are getting close enough that I actually showed them to friends and family this past weekend. It still feels like there is a long way to go before it is “right”, but it is definitely moving in the right direction.
That is it for now… Maybe Sherri can write in about the plumber we met with today… 😉