I write about what I've learned designing and building homes — the things that work, the things that are misunderstood, and the questions worth asking before you build. These aren't abstractions. They come from a house I designed for my own family and live in every day.
Most homeowners specify an insulation level and call it done. Air sealing is the part nobody talks about — and the part that actually determines whether your house is comfortable. In my home, the floor and ceiling temperatures in winter are nearly identical. That doesn't happen by accident.
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Some decisions produce clear answers quickly. Others don't. This entry covers the choices where years of living in my home hasn't settled the question — where I'd still be genuinely uncertain if I were starting over, and where the right answer depends more on what a particular family values than on any objective measure of performance.
In many homes, there is one room that sits largely unused and one space the owners wish they had. After seeing both patterns enough times, I've started keeping a list. This is that list.
Thirteen years building systems for a living taught me how to think about complexity, manage stakeholder expectations, and make decisions that age well. Those skills transfer more directly to residential design than I expected — and in some ways they're more valuable here, because you only get one shot.
I listed what I did right in another entry. This one is harder to write and more valuable to read. These are the mistakes that cost real money, real time, or that I still live with every day — and the reasoning behind why each one happened. That reasoning is what will prevent the same mistake on a your project.
The American habit is to turn the heat down at night and let it recover in the morning. Properly sized heat pumps don't work that way. Here's why a heat pump running continuously at a modest output is more efficient than one cycling hard to recover from a temperature setback, and why the unit size determines whether recovery is even possible.
Years of daily feedback from nine full-time occupants. Here are the decisions I'd make again without hesitation — and why they worked. The reasoning matters more than the list, because reasoning is what transfers to a different project on a different piece of land for a different family.
Ask most HVAC contractors how they size a system and they'll tell you they use square footage — maybe a rule of thumb like 1 ton of cooling per 500 square feet. That number comes from experience, not analysis. It doesn't account for your home's insulation, your windows, your climate, how many people live there, or whether your building is tight or leaky. The result is a system that's wrong — and wrong HVAC systems produce homes that are either uncomfortably hot and cold, or that wear out equipment ahead of schedule, or both.
Most clients come in knowing what they want. A farmhouse kitchen. Vaulted ceilings. A big front porch. These are aesthetic preferences, and they're valid. But they're not a design brief. Here's how I think about the difference between what a home looks like and what it does.
Most solar quotes are sized for average daily production in good conditions. They're not sized for January, which is the month that determines whether your system works. Here's how to think about the number that actually matters.
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I write about what I've learned from designing and building my own family's off-grid home on 40 acres outside Spring City, Utah — and from the work I do with clients. I don't have opinions about home design from a distance. I live in the house I built, and I notice every day what works and what I would have done differently.
These entries are for people who are thinking seriously about building — who want to understand not just what to choose, but why the decision matters, and what happens when you get it wrong.