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Swanson Residence
Barry Swanson, AIA; LEEDS designed this home for his Mom and Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Cosby Swanson, Jr. It is a house with a lot of interest and detailing inside and out with a number of solar and energy features. One of its more pronounced features is how low the house sits to the earth for accessibility; there are no stairs anywhere.
Having a house this close to the earth presents a lot of challenges from a practical and a building code point of view. Luckily we had a very detailed set of landscape plans from Brian Starkey, RLA/ASLA. The retaining wall on the uphill side of the lot allowed the house to be set lower and surface drains handled the rest of the water issues. Of course making all the water go into these drains required lots of painstaking elevation work. I spent a lot of time outdoors with my transit literally sculpting the earth to Brian's detailed specifications. All of the water from the roof was run into 4-inch PVC
drainage pipe to the downhill side of the house. The stone veneer was an added layer of waterproofing and really set the house into the earth.
The lowness of the house also set it up nicely for a concrete slab floor, which is the house's most important energy feature in many ways. The foundation is eight-inch block filled with concrete and insulated on the inside. We then filled the foundation cavity with clean stone and installed one-inch thick Styrofoam insulation on top of the stone before pouring the slab. This has effectively added 100,000 lbs of thermal mass to the house. Once this mass attains the indoor operating temperature that the homeowner decides is optimal for them this all but insures that the temperature swings will be minimal and very slow.
The house has a four zone high efficiency electric heat pumps and the water is very efficiently heated by a two roof mounted solar collectors. Solar water heaters are the most cost effective of all the active solar building choices, the pay back time is short and they provide large savings on your energy bill while reducing your energy footprint.
Barry has designed an abundance of natural daylight entering the house to offset the need for turning on lights and using energy. All the windows and doors are energy star rated.
The insulation package is not energy star rated due to our use of non-paper backed insulation. The issue of where and when or if you should use a vapor barrier on your insulation are ongoing in the industry. We did employ the energy star standards for caulking and foaming penetrations in the envelope.
Detail, detail and more detail is how I would describe the exterior of the house. The blending and placing of the stone and cedar shakes really highlights the character of the house. The stonework is naturally veneered stone over metal lath which really provides for a lot of flexibility as to where you can put it and is a sensible choice in terms of cost. The cedar shakes have all been hand trimmed to fit with shingle axes and hand planes, the rest of the boxing and trim is mostly 5/4 cedar and the soffits are cedar plywood. Spraying and brushing with a TSP solution cleaned all the cedar, which was then rinsed with water before applying a coat of Sikkens SRD exterior stain. We looked at a number other exterior products, many greener, but none had the longevity of the Sikkens's products. Part of the richness of the exterior comes from the many frame and panel details at the entry columns and underneath the windows at the rear of the house.
We used a true frame and panel construction except the bottom rail has a vertical tongue for the ship lapped 1x8's to sit over to create a flashed joint for waterproofing. Its not often you get to use woodworking joinery on the exterior of a house. Most of the other flat cedar panels, both vertical and horizontal have been ship lapped for weatherproofing.
Continuing the stone and wood interplay is the rear deck. We are talking real stones now - as in boulders. All of these very large stones came from the property by means of a seven-ton extendable boom forklift the same forklift we used to lift our 3/4 plywood up to the roof. Bob Shimchock quickly and expertly placed them according to Brian Starkey's landscape plan and we then poured footings as close as we could without disturbing the rocks and then did some creative cantilevering with our framing, fitting the joists as close as possible to the stones and final scribing the deck boards.
Inside the house Barry has continued his fine detailing and created fine vistas both inside and out. The 3000 square feet of cathedral ceilings are T&G cedar, sanded and sealed with two coats of Sikkins's water based satin sealer. The kitchen cabinets are cherry as are the library loft cabinets. The library cabinets and shelves were made on site, as was the library handrail and the cherry fireplace surround. It is hard to describe all of the fine views available from the inside of this house; hopefully the pictures will translate some of the quality of this challenging project.
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| Click above to see the Swanson Residence slideshow. |
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