07 Dec 2009, Posted by Shawn in Build it Small, Showcase, 5 Comments, Short-URL:http://portlandbuilt.com/70aw4
Build it Small: Portland’s Harpoon House
Last weekend I visited the Harpoon House in Portland’s Buckman neighborhood.
Owners Matt Kirkpatrick and Katherine Bovee were kind enough to show me around and talk about how their dream of a small home is growing into a reality. Some highlights include:
- <500 sq. ft. footprint on 2500 sq. ft. of land.
- Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) for a super-energy-efficient envelope.
- Triple-pane windows.
- Eco roof with no composition shingles!
- No garage
- Anticipated LEED certification
This is Matt’s first house as a designer, and it’s impressive to see the level of ambition for someone so new to the field. Even more remarkable is that the couple was able to pull off the purchase and financing in a decidedly un-friendly lending climate (When I asked Matt what the biggest hurdle was about building, he didn’t hesitate to reply, “the bank.”)
As the project moves forward, we’ll update with new developments and site walk-throughs. This is a great example of the growing “small house” trend and it will be interesting to see how closely this project meets the couple’s needs.
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5 Comments
December 7, 2009 4:37 pm
Walt Quade
It’s great to see young people choosing to live conservatively. We all need to learn from them.
December 11, 2009 1:02 pm
Wendy Maynard @@WendyMaynard
What a crazy little house! I’m not sure what an Eco Roof, but is that why it’s flat?
December 12 2009 15:49 pm
Shawn
Hi Wendy!
Eco Roofs are often flat, but work on a slope too. The basic idea is the roof serves as a foundation for dirt and small plants. The soil/plant layer does a couple of things: it insulates the house extremely well, provides rainwater management (the plants drink it up), and reduces the home's carbon footprint (first by eliminating the petroleum used in shingles and second by capturing CO2 through photosynthesis).
The city of Portland has a cash-incentive eco-roof program that actually pays you for a portion of the install cost. I also just discovered an eco-roof blog run by the city. You can see it here.
December 21, 2009 10:36 am
Wendy Maynard @http://www.twitter.com/wendymaynard
Sounds pretty cool. I understand the basic concept, but a couple of questions:
1) Do you have to go up on the roof to do a bunch of gardening? How the heck do you get up there?
2) In a city like Portland, don’t you get a lot of water that just sits in the dirt on the top of the roof? Isn’t this going to leak after a few years?
Thanks!
December 21, 2009 11:47 am
Matt Kirkpatrick. @Twitter Name
Hi,
To answer your questions, you do need to do a little weeding on ecoroofs. For the most part, if the plants up there can survive the dry summers (shallow soil doesn’t retain much moisture), you don’t really need to do anything if you don’t want to. You do however need to make sure you don’t have trees or plants with woody roots growing because they can damage the waterproof membrane underneath the soil. So its probably a good idea to give your ecoroofs a weeding once a year. With Harpoon House, we have two ecoroofs, the lower one is living space that we will be spending time in anyways, and the upper one will have a ladder so that we can get up to it.
For the leaking, as long as you do some pretty basic maintenance like weeding once a year, ecoroofs should last longer than conventional roofs. Our waterproof membrane is the same system that typically goes on the roofs of things like warehouses and office buildings, but because we are covering it with soil, it doesn’t get exposure to things like sun and hail that could damage it over time.
I hope that helps.
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