Designing the New

This week was rather busy:  organizational meeting for creating a technology club at school for students, help my daughter move, chaperon a dance, escort my wife to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and contact concrete and heating/cooling contractors for our new house.  Do I need to get all these people to write notes to my professor excusing me from doing a good job on my college work?  They will, well maybe not the contractors, but the students will.  Then again, I don't know if my students will either--I was late to the dance because I was so wrapped up in my classwork that I almost forgot to go to the dance.  I wasn't really late.  It's just that I had all the decorations locked up in my room so not even the other chaperons could get to it.  Maybe I need a note from my professor to the students excusing me for being late.

Anyway, we sent our tentative plans to AIDomes and they are now converting our rough drawings into real plans. This where we stand today:

This is what we are currently

planning for the garage--not much change from AIDome's plan.

The house, however, turned out to be a compilation of a number of models AIDomes had:

 

I cut and pasted (which explain the odd shape) parts of the models to show where we want things, now the engineers will turn our ideas into usable plans.  However, before they can do too much more, they want to know what I will use for my basement walls so they can design that part of the house.  I'm not sure they need to do anything more than locate the support structures.  We will plan the rest as we determine what we need.

I have also been talking with Innovative Power Systems about what I can install for heating and cooling as we build.  We want to cut our reliance of fossil fuels as much as possible.  They gave me a price and estimated time it will take for me to recoup my investment (10 years).  I am satisfied, but I want to see what else is available in Minnesota before I decide.

A geothermal system is still under consideration, but I want to learn more about the IPS solar thermal.  More to follow.