Mark Morgan sees the design process as a creative collaboration between homeowner and builder. We invite you to browse these design pages to get an idea for the various options available for building, heating, and powering your home.
Mark strongly encourages homebuilders to include these four key design elements:
- Passive solar;
- Mass*, such as earth mass;
- Insulation*, such as straw bales or cellulose; and
- Air exchange.
*
Mass is a property that retains temperatures, while
insulation (or "R-value") reduces temperature transfer. Earth mass provides excellent mass with decent insulation, while straw bales provide excellent insulation with decent mass.
When planning your home, we also urge you to consider the lifestyle choices that can help make your home truly sustainable.
The methods on these pages represent Bearpaw's primary strengths, as well as the techniques most appropriate to our home state of Wisconsin. If there is a unique method or local supplier that you are interested in using for your home, please let us know and we will be happy to consider it.
The descriptions on the following pages are meant to provide an introduction to sustainable options and answer some common questions as you plan your home. In the future we hope to provide detailed instructions of our methods for the aspiring builder, which will be available for a small fee. In the meantime we encourage you to visit other sites on the web (the MREA is a good place to start) for more detailed information, or consider enlisting Mark as a consultant.
