Designs That Work

Very Cold Climate

The Basic House - Description of the House

The case study house is a 1190 square foot, three bedroom, one-and-a-half-story single-family detached house.

The elevation drawing on the previous page shows the raised ground floor and overall compact form of the house. The ornamental trim was chosen for a prototype house that was built in a Haida community.

The ground floor has two entrances: one from the large porch at the front of the house, and the second into a back hallway behind the kitchen. All of the essential rooms in the house are located on the ground floor making a conversion to a fully accessible home possible. At the front of the house, the dining area and living room are discretely separated visually by the main structural support for the second floor, creating a much larger space in an otherwise compact plan. The washer and dryer are conveniently located in the hall closet in front of the stairs to the second floor. Under the stairs, the building's mechanical systems are neatly concealed.

Figure 2: Very Cold Climate house floor plans (Right: Ground Floor, Left: Second Floor)

The plumbing runs underneath the ground floor platform in an insulated pipe chase. The back wall of the hall closet serves as a vertical chase for the plumbing for the bathroom and ventilation for the bedrooms on the second floor. The piping and ductwork is kept to a minimum, reducing energy use and minimizing the number of bulkheads in the living space.

On the second floor, the drawings show a second bathroom off the hallway at the top of the stairs and two bedrooms to the front and back of the house. Since all of the mechanical systems are located downstairs and all of the insulation is located outside of the framing, the ceilings on this floor may be left open to make the bedrooms feel larger. At both sides of each bedroom, knee walls can be added to provide large closets for storage. The second floor plan above shows several different configurations for this storage. Leaving these rooms for the homeowner to construct when needed in the future is also possible as a way of reducing the initial cost of the house.

A high-performance, energy-efficient house depends on rational and efficient space planning. The Very Cold Climate house plan presented here is organized to simplify construction and reduce the materials and operating costs. However, it does this while still providing the homeowner with a convenient layout and large, spacious rooms. Attention to architectural design, it should be noted, is one way of securing a high-quality, affordable and comfortable home.

The following section discusses how the building enclosure and mechanical systems have been designed to help this house be durable, healthy and energy-efficient.