Integrated Design I

I recently spent the night at a friend’s cabin in Ben Lomond.  The house was built in 1947, in a time an place when building permits, if required at all, were just a permission slip to build something, on a lot somewhere.  Details of the structure before or after were not considered necessary, except as an outline on graph paper, for the assessment rolls.

Things have changed.

Water, sewer, and electricity (but no gas) capacity have always come through public utility systems.  The heating “system” was a woodstove he added himself, in the 1970s.   Various shed-type room additions had been appended over the years, including a 15’x30’ accessory building (red-tagged upon a neighbor’s complaint two decades past, without resolution).

The property as it stands today is a testament to the necessity of a permit process, and more importantly to the idea of integrated design incorporating green building principles from the ground up.

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