Passive Solar

Greetings everyone! It has been a long time!

A quick update on me, as far as building, we are very busy like everyone else and personally, I am trying hard to spend as much time as possible with family as we live and work this small farm that we own and live on.

I'll get right to the topic, passive solar..

By now, most people understand the concept of passive solar (orienting a structure to let sunlight through the windows during the cold months, and shading the house from the sun during the warm months), so, this post is going to be about a (kind of) recent experience that I had when a high end designer contacted me to discuss a cutting edge project that would be going up in the area near where I live.

I felt honored to make it to the phone interview portion of the designer's search for the perfect builder for their clients. I was blown away by their first question: Are you familiar with passive solar? I didn't want to be rude or seem arrogant, but I responded with, "Are you familiar with Google?". So, I pretty much lost that opportunity to be the storybook builder in their eyes.

Why did I respond with that comment? Well, quite frankly, I, having lived in the trenches and working with some of the most savy green innovators was taken back that a design firm, which charges its clients a bunch of money to guide cutting edge projects, hadn't even taken the time to research my accomplishments or that of the famed Team Hybrid. Now, immediately, I think to myself, "Man, how did I become so arrogant?" In reality, I felt sorry for their client who is paying a gob of money to them to end up with a house that is very close to slightly above what we build as a norm. I asked my wife about how I could ethically take that project knowing that the clients could have spent that extra money on their home. I decided that even if I was selected, I would turn down the job because I just couldn't get past that fact.

As I probably mentioned, I did not get that job..I wasn't selected because it was determined that I wasn't a good communicator. Perhaps it was my response, perhaps it was because I had a tone in my voice and had an off the wall response to each of their questions. In reality, I decided with that first question that the design firm and I would never be able to get along because I lost all respect for them in less than a minute.

My overall take on this situation, is that there are all sorts of people in the world. Some are meant to work with certain people and others are meant to work with others. It is important to determine in the first stages of a project, that would be the meet and beginning design stage, if the team can be compatible. If not, there should be no more time wasted.....especially in an industry where time is money. In that design firm's defense, that is exactly what they were doing. Maybe they asked me that question and expected that response, maybe they did research me, we shall never know because we parted ways immediately and moved on.

Several years ago, I started designing all of our projects in order to get to know the client and their ideas better. I learned so much by being the designer. Designing a house and building the house have a huge advantage over going to someone to draw the plans, then shopping for a builder to figure out the vision and build the project.

Passive solar has been around as long as there as been an Earth and a Sun, and Google Earth can help you or anyone else get the full advantage of passive solar....spend part of a rainy day checking out what I mean and you will probably say, at the very least, "That's pretty neat".

Have a great week and enjoy the weather!

Adam
The Hybrid Home Guy