Symbiotic Home (sym-home) has expanded upon its mission of documenting the “Greening” of a typical 1960’s home on a modest budget prioritizing projects in terms of needs, environmental benefits and financial paybacks.

Sym-Home is now providing residential design services, home energy audits and consulting.  Sym-Home specializes in energy efficient, healthy & durable homes.  Joshua Lloyd, owner of sym-home, draws from a decade’s worth of experience in the architectural field. In addition, his experience includes producing construction documents and coordinating LEED documentation for Ohio’s first LEED Platinum Home, located in Columbus, Ohio.

Sym-Home also provides home energy audits, helping home owners to take control of their homes energy usage by providing them the appropriate information after a thorough inspection and test on the home to see where the most energy is used and prioritize a list of recommended projects in terms of financial payback.  Joshua Lloyd, is a certified Building Analyst through the Building Performance Institute (BPI) to conduct home energy audits.

Sym-Home also provides consulting services to homeowners, builders and other design professionals.  Sym-Home can assist project teams with issues related to high performance structures, from building science issues, schematic level energy modeling for both commercial and residential structures, and LEED documentation and coordination.

Sym-Home considers residential design and home energy audits as a complimentary service to each other, especially for home owners looking to renovate or add on to an existing home.  Home energy auditing tools can be a valuable resource during the design and construction phases of a new home and renovation.

For those of you who have been following the renovation process, we will be re-posting all the projects with more images and information regarding each project in a series called “To Kill an Energy Hog”

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I am always telling people with green design and construction, you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere with what goals you are going to try and obtain for any project. Are you going to focus on energy efficiency, indoor air quality, renewable materials, etc.

Catherine Mohr makes her decisions to building a green home by analyzing the numbers and examining the embodied energy of the materials and systems going into the home. So watch her presentation, and ask yourself this; if you are building a new home home, what is important to you, and where would you draw the line?

Catherine Mohr builds green

Check out Catherine Mohr’s blog as she ventures into green home building.

Partially to give me something to do, and partially to help build my portfolio, I entered the FreeGreen.com “Who’s Next?” green home design competition.  FreeGreen.com has been attempting to bring progressive home designs to mainstream America by offering free home plans to download.  However the “Who’s Next?” competition is intended to kick off the launch of a new plans site with designs that are for purchase.

With over 400 entrants, the competition is stiff.  Public voting began on March 2nd 2010, and will close on March 18th.  The top 3 submissions will receive $5,000, a chance to develop the design and offer it on their new for sale plans site.  All entries are 1,800 square feet or less and in two separate categories.  The first, “The Starter House” for a young married couple looking to expand their family.  The second “The Not So Empty Nest” for an older retired couple looking to downsize, yet still want to accommodate family gatherings and take into consideration potential mobility issues by the homeowner.  I had the chance to enter a submission in both categories, one with an old co-worker and friend, as well as a submission on my own.  So please take some time to review my submissions as well as others, and I would appreciate your support and vote.  You can vote for each entry once per email address.

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Back in November I announced the AIA Ohio boards acceptance of a proposal to host a statewide design competition (here) that would be run by the AIA Ohio Committee On The Environment (COTE).  Well after 6 months of work we are wrapping things up and getting the word out to the AIA Ohio membership.  Registration for the competition is set to open on June 19th.

AIA OHIO AFFORDABLE GREEN HOME DESIGN COMPETITION

AIA OHIO AFFORDABLE GREEN HOME DESIGN COMPETITION

It has been a difficult but rewarding experience to organize and coordinate an event like this.  My only hope at this time is that we receive a good amount of submissions and that we can raise enough money to provide the stipends necessary for our winning design teams to produce final documents of their designs.

So I encourage you to visit the competition website at www.aiaohiogreenhome.com and consider entering if you are eligible.