Great design is much more than aesthetics. It’s about efficiency, durability, comfort and convenience. A well-designed home is multifaceted enough to guard your family against disparate threats, such as blizzards and viruses.
We’re spending a lot of time in our homes these days, and we’re thinking about ways to make those homes safer. Resilient design is about keeping the possibility of disruption in mind from the earliest planning phases. When your lights go out during a winter storm, it’s annoying. If your heat goes out, it can be life-threatening. Without electricity, you may lose your access to information and communication.
What Is Passive Survivability?
Passive survivability describes a building’s ability to keep its occupants safe and healthy during a loss of grid-supported utilities. On Easter Sunday, tornadoes swept across 10-states, leaving 750,000 residences without power. Several of these states are dealing with high Covid19 hospitalization rates. With workers sick or quarantined, it may take longer than usual to restore services.
No amount of planning can guard against all disasters, but if you’re considering major renovations to your existing home or a ground-up custom build, you may want to incorporate survivability elements into your design.
Design For Cold-Weather Climates
Boston gets about 44 inches of snow a year, and the average low in January is 22 degrees. Designing to conserve heat will lower your energy bills and keep you safer, during a snowstorm.
Facing your house or windows south will allow the sun to heat your home. Structurally, there are ways to frame a home that boost heat efficiency. Roofs should be durable and sloped for slow-shedding.
Air sealing, mechanical ventilation, condensation-resistant windows and vapor barriers are essential in cold, damp climates. Thermal insulation over the entire building envelope and foundation can hold heat in.
PEX pipes are less likely to burst during a freeze than copper, and all pipes should be insulated.
Design For Pandemics
Copper and brass do have a hidden superpower—they destroy viruses almost immediately. As we cope with a pandemic, you may want to think about incorporating brass doorknobs and other surfaces in your home.
Power Your Home During An Electrical Outage
If your electricity goes out, you have several back-up options.
Solar panels work well if you have the right roof orientation. Sometimes codes in historic districts ban visible solar panels, but we may be able to successfully argue for exceptions. Cambridge has green ordinances to encourage renewable energy and makes decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Home Battery Pack or Generator
Tesla and other companies make battery packs that fill rechargeable batteries from solar panels or the electric grid. As soon as an outage occurs, they switch on, so that there’s no interruption to your home’s electrical system.
Generators can be designed to switch on automatically when the grid fails. They take up more space than battery packs, but they can keep your home running for days or even weeks. Natural gas generators are fed by the pipes that already run to your house, so there are no tanks to refill. The more appliances you want to support, the more expensive your generator becomes.
Generators are safest outside, and I like to hide them behind retaining walls and landscaping. But in a dense neighborhood, such as Beacon Hill, a generator could be hidden on the roof or in a fire-rated mechanical room, with an outside vent.
Edible Gardens
Safely accessing food has come up during our current Covid-19 situation, particularly for those who are older or immune-compromised. Physically going to a store puts you at risk for exposure, but often produce is limited when you have groceries delivered—not to mention the ethical questions surrounding workers rights and the companies that provide these remote shopping and delivery services.
The best way to ensure a steady supply of produce is to grow it yourself. Have a yard or outdoor space? Create what the French call a potager garden (an ornamental kitchen garden). Landscape with edibles, but do it in a balanced and intentional way, so as not to detract from your home value or irk the neighbors. Think about natural irrigation, like using removable or underground pipes to direct run-off from your roof to your plants.
Grow Food Indoors Or In Limited Space
If you want to extend your growing season, options include a greenhouse, an interior sunroom, or a window-area specifically designed with gardening in mind. Greens, herbs, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, and peppers do well in window gardens.
Smart Home Security
Your home security system needs to be hardwired with your electrical work. Nobody says, “Come look at my beautiful security devices!” The sooner we understand the level of security you’re looking for, the sooner we can help you hide it.
We can hide physical sensors in the window that pick up motion and the frequency of glass break, so they aren’t triggered by ordinary sounds, such as doors opening.
Night-vision cameras with remote surveillance and zoom options can be incorporated into design, so that they’re nearly invisible.
Have Questions About Resilient Architecture?
As a full-service architect, I help you plan every detail of your home. If you’re worried about keeping your home safe or sanitized, there’s probably a design feature we can incorporate that will alleviate some of your anxiety. Give me a call at 617-216-7643, and let’s schedule a consultation.