The home-building blog I love to hate, The New York Times‘ Dream Home Diaries, is in full swing. Ms. Davis and Mr. Brown’s home is framed, sheeted, and moving on to the next stages.

Some of the most recent posts have been pandering, bowing to past comments about their home’s lack of any green sensibility in their build. The latest post is the most hilarious and at the same time severely frustrating.

Here’s the situation:

The authors are building a custom home on a barrier island near St. Petersburg, Florida, and make this big deal at the beginning about finding the right architect for them. After some false starts they end up hiring a firm in South Carolina to design their Florida beach home. Skipping over the massive size of the house relative to their supposed initial budget of $350K and the roof deck fiasco involving the scared-of-heights husband to today, now there is this.

The authors just got a call from their builder that they’ll need to have a third A/C in their home with two floors of living space because of the way it was designed.

Two floors. Three A/C units.

And the best part — the architect didn’t even plan out a closet for the air handler!

They even had the nerve to try and pass off their new unit as some kind of green plus:

“The good news is that John is a closet environmentalist. He recommended an American Standard Heat Pump System that both cools and heats — believe it or not, there are nights in Anna Maria when heating is needed — that is both energy efficient and environmentally friendly. It has a Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio of 14, which means we can save up to 43 percent on our energy bills while doing our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Um, the minimum SEER on new A/C units is 13, and since when did building a three-story 3500+ square-foot home for two people on a barrier island with three A/C units constitute “doing [y]our part” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions???

Here’s where the chop-busting comes in. Back in July when the Davis-Browns made their first panderpost about green building — after they already had plans and a builder — I asked the following question:

Have you had your architect design the home with air flow in mind so that you won’t need three massive Trane units humming full time to cool the place? Right-sizing of your HVAC system should be a major focus since AC makes up most of your electricity bill down here in Florida.

Normally I save “I told you so” for my younger sister, but in this case I just couldn’t let it stand.

Unfortunately at this point it doesn’t matter. The design is pretty bad, the builder is having to make changes on the fly to make up for the holes, and the authors are still trying to pass themselves off as everyday pennywise Yankees with a blog about their home building process.

With this couple’s budget and time their house could have been a green masterpiece without sacrificing at all. They have a garage at the base of the house that would have been perfect for a grey water system and the structure could have easily been SIPs.

Oh well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors turned out to be scientists running an experiment on how quickly they can exasperate genuinely helpful people.

When you’re the [adventurous/cheap/masochistic/stupid] type of person who embarks on a custom home building/remodeling project you look for other people going through a similar experience. The Blog Revolution has been great for connecting do-it-yourselfers with each other, at least over the Internet.
I check the following blogs, forums, and sites quite frequently.

For help, inspiration, design ideas, useful tips, deals, and so on:

IKEAFANS – “Personalizing the IKEA Experience”

To see green and new building techniques in actual use:

Building a house in Central Florida – An environmentally friendly ICF home in Lake County, FL.

Woodswell Blog – An ICF home in Tallahassee, FL.

To commiserate:

Gottfried Green – Ex-New Yorkers trying to build a family home as green and sustainable as possible.

Nashville Modern Prefab – Documenting an attempt to build something interesting near downtown Nashville.

When I haven’t slapped my forehead enough:

Dream Home Diaries – A married yankee pair of writers (and consultants) who have a “commuter marriage,” two separate homes, a $250K strip of land on Anna Maria Island, and a dream to build a cozy beach cottage retirement home… with an elevator. For roughly $350K.

It’s a combination of faux-naïveté, disingenuousness, and whining about property taxes. So far they’ve tried to keep a pennywise yankee tone while unveiling house plans for a structure that couldn’t be built for less than $750K and bellyaching over a $5000 tax bill… on their third home.

As a side note on this particular “blog,” I have to say that The New York Times has really frustrated a lot of readers by letting the authors continue on the way they have because the arc of the posts has gone past ridiculous and into ludicrous speed territory. The comments from blog readers have gone from light and helpful to acidic and sarcastic ever since the writers revealed that they haven’t even come close to breaking ground yet.

More links:

Because I’m a big fan of the modern design and prefab movements…

Hive Modular – Architecturally Designed Modular Housing.

BoKlok

The Dwell Homes by Empyrean

Rocio Romero’s LVL Home

MoCo Loco: QUIK HOUSE