If you've read my history, you'll realize that we arrived at this juncture less by design than by happenchance. We’d spent nine years renovating a ranch in Massachusetts, including: insulating the walls, attic and replacing single pane windows after undertaking an energy audit. There were definitely moments during those years that we dreamed of starting from scratch instead of “fixing it up,” but we didn’t anticipate building in our future. Our move to CNY involved renting for a year, to give us time to understand how and where we wanted to live. We assumed, especially given the "buyers" market, we would be buying an already existing house.
We spent a few weeks looking at properties online and with a realtor, growing increasingly discouraged at the offerings. Some were in need of too much repair and energy saving improvements, and others were new, but too big, offering rooms and space that we had no desire to live in. In some of these new homes the materials and methods they used to build left us wondering how long it would be before we’d be doing repairs and making improvements to increase efficiency.
Location was also important, both for the kids (good neighborhood, schools) and for reducing the family’s commute to work, activities, sites of interest, and our number one shopping destination: the food market. While we were attracted to locations further from Syracuse, where my husband works, we realized that such a move would result in more driving for him, and less family time. The idea of building came to us as our realtor passed (for the fifth or sixth time—thanks Dave Pridgen for your patience!) a property in Dewitt, NY.
Dewitt is adjacent to Syracuse, and the site is just 2 miles from my husband’s office. He loves to bike, so we could envision him doing so in better weather. The public schools that our kids can attend for the next six-eight years are both less than a mile away, and the site is close to the many amenities that the City of Syracuse has to offer. So the location was right. Moreover, by building a new home, we realized we could create a structure that was both efficient and low maintenance compared to existing properties. However, there was one potential problem: the site was owned by a builder who would also develop it, and we didn't know a thing about him. Would he be interested in entertaining the idea of building a sustainable home, particularly one on our budget?
The builder is Paul Fowler. Paul has built over 3,000 homes in our region so he has a wealth of practical, applied experience. When we met him, he was mulling over a new product line called “Fowler Green Homes” in order to meet the needs of homeowners who want specific green features http://fowlergreenhomes.com/
However, he’d never built a home to LEED Homes or Energy Star specifications, two rating systems we were interested in applying to our process. Paul explained his approach to energy efficient design as being rooted in the “middle of the bell curve,” meaning that we could pay more for thicker insulation and better windows, but the performance that they would yield would diminish, beyond a certain point. In other words, you won’t necessarily get the results that you pay for. The initial discussions with Paul about our design ideas were influenced by the architect's rendering of the house, as well as early discussions with a planning engineer. Many, many hours later, we arrived at a place of comfort and agreed to a contract. We signed this the last week of 2010, after the snowiest month in the history of Syracuse. A great time to begin building a house :).
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