A modern foundation for a modern home

There is a two-story modern home going up in the Thistle Creek development that is using a noteworthy system for constructing a foundation. Called a 'superior wall foundation,' it is shipped in pre-engineered panels that are lowered into place. According to General Contractor Doug Eastman, the panels consist of insulation, steel and very dry concrete. The fact that the concrete is made with only 6% water makes it waterproof, he said.

'The panels are straight and flat,' said Eastman in an on-site interview last week. 'That makes putting up the rest of the house easier.'

The rest of the house will have extra insulation, a thickly insulated white membrane roof to reflect heat, and triple pane windows.

According to local architect Ted Donnell, who uses superior wall foundations in all the homes he designs, a big plus is that it is completed in in just one day, whereas poured foundations require a week to ten days.

Yellow Springs Passive House

Andrew Kline (L) and Alex Melamed of Green Generation Building Company, LLC on the construction site of what is believed to be the first passive house in Ohio.

The 1800 sq. ft. interior will include a loft space.

A large kitchen window looks out the rear of the house.

Just a few years ago, the passive house was Europe's best kept secret. Pioneered in Germany, the concept relies on super insulation to reduce heating, air conditioning and other energy costs. The idea was slow to catch hold in the U.S. and, according to Andrew Kline, President of Green Generation Building Company, there may be less than thirty such homes in the country today. He believes the passive house his company is building on Dayton Street between High Street and Bill Duncan Park will be the first in Ohio.

As the Blog arrived to get the story, Pat Murphy of Community Solutions, a long-time advocate of passive housing in Yellow Springs was on site. Murphy said Community Solutions has been filming the progress of the construction.

The construction of the 1800 sq. ft. house is indeed unique. According to Green Generation Design Director Alex Melamed, the design was sent to Enercept, a company in South Dakota, which constructed elements of the building, including fully insulated sections of wall (SIPs for structural insulated panels), which were then shipped to Yellow Springs on two tractor trailers. The walls are 14' thick, the roof 24' and the floor 16' of solid Styrofoam sandwiched between oriented strand board (OSB).

In Germany, Kline said, the cost of the highly insulated construction has only resulted in a 10% increase in building costs. It remains to be seen how that will translate in the U.S. But, energy savings will be so significant that Kline says, 'The cost of utilities is built into the sale price.' For the house on Dayton Street, he estimates heating costs to be $87.00 per year.

The house, which is a demonstration project as well as a financial venture, is now available for purchase and is priced from $270,00 - $290,000 depending on its level of finish. The sooner a purchaser commits, the more input he will have in the way the house is finished. Kline expects the house to be completed by the end of June. There will be an open house.

Andrew Kline is the son of local woman Martha Kline and the grandson of noted local architect Jack Kline, who designed the Yellow Springs High School building.

To keep up with the progress of the construction, visit Yellow Springs Passive House on Facebook or www.greengenerationbuilding.com.

Click here for more photos.

Klip House

[Image: The Klip House system by Interloop architects].

The Klip House by Texan architects Interloop is a project dating back to 1997-2001. The architects describe it as 'a delivery system that provides the physical and operational infrastructure for trade corporations to participate in the production, delivery, and servicing of housing.'

Not limited only to housing, however, the Klip system was seen as being just as easy to use for hospitals, police stations, and more—even, why not, a pink auto-detailing shop.

[Image: A pink auto-detailing shop in the Klip system by Interloop].

At the time, Interloop had become 'frustrated,' they explain, by 'Federal and State initiatives that provide financial assistance to qualified families and individuals by awarding housing 'vouchers' to serve as the down payment on a house. In its current format, the voucher system distributes a mass of capital such that one voucher equals one house.' However:

We were, and are, frustrated with a design system that is constricted by insurance companies, loan officers, municipalities, and contractors, etc. and decided to look at the overall economic impact that these vouchers might have if they were bundled, rather than distributed. Instead of designing a single house that has very little impact to the housing industry, we worked with the idea of consolidating the vouchers to pay for a housing platform, or infrastructure. We needed to work outside of the home mortgage process in order to gain some ground.

In other words, producing new housing also means producing new (non-predatory) ways to finance those housing options—architects have to rethink systems of payment as much as they have to rethink the design parameters of prefab componentry.

[Images: The Klip system by Interloop].

Klip House, seen here, 'is essentially engaging financing systems that exist in automotive and product industries'—a statement which comes with a slight twinge of nostalgia for those heady, Greg Lynn-inspired days of the late 1990s when automobile assembly was the reigning model for cutting-edge architectural thesis projects. If your BMW could be assembled offsite and to your every specification, down to heated seats, aerodynamic rear spoilers, and the perfect JBL sound system, why couldn't the architecture you live in follow suit?

Seamless, robotic, and delivered perfectly on schedule, the modular assembly of housing—borrowing assembly line techniques taken from Ford, Saturn, or Lexus—was to lead the way to our architectural future.

In any case, the Klip house itself was at least partially inspired by the boot clips of skis and snowboards. That is, its foundation would operate through a terrestrial 'binder,' or 'adjustable footing system,' onto which new rooms or components could be clipped (thus the house's name).

The binders thus allow for 'an open array of housing components [to] be added, released, interchanged, upgraded and rearranged' at will. 'The architectural contribution,' Interloop points out, 'is simply to introduce a single enabling technology, i.e. the binder, to generate or illicit response.'

[Images: Inspired by the boot clips of snowboards: the Klip's binder system by Interloop architects].

Further, the Klip's 'components are available in three and six foot widths, each made with a variety of options and upgrades,' and they can be either purchased or leased. This adds a Smart Car/iPod-like personalization to the housing design and procurement process.

Your house, hospital, police station, nightclub, field kitchen, mobile writing lab, counterfeit university space, or auto-body shop can thus be expanded (or shrunken)—let alone recolored, retextured, and resurfaced—based on immediate personal and economic needs.

[Image: The Klip House by Interloop architects].

Read more at the architects' website.