The highly sustainable residence is being designed around a circa 1820 hand-hewn timber frame barn from Palatine Bridge, New York. The traditional Dutch barn was disassembled and moved to the owner’s ranch in Grayson County, North Texas. This sustainable home provides the single most important measure in mitigating the impact to the environment of a structure, that of “embodied energy.” This term describes the amount of energy used in production of a building element.
By using the timber frame in its original form, we preserved the historic integrity and cultural value of the architecture, recycle the materials, and reuse the embodied energy in the already cut and formed wood. Other sustainable materials slated for us in the design of this home are: highly efficient structural insulated panels (S.I.P.s), geo-thermal heat pumps, cisterns for rainwater collection, Rumford fireplaces and bread oven, and overhangs and porches to act as sunscreens and reduce the heat load.
