Looking for a Home Designer in Portland? Maybe you are wondering what it takes to create an energy efficient home and who you should hire to build it. In 2020 John Webb Construction & Design designed and built one of the highest quality homes in Oregon. We documented almost the entire process to show how the design evolved and the project was managed.  

In this post John talks a bit about his New Home Construction Design process. As a New Home builder and Interior Designer in Oregon he doesn’t take on just any project. John builds modern, healthy new homes that with energy efficient designs from the ground up.

The Hatfield home was started with a post-tension, radiant heat foundation. That means it has warm, polished concrete floor that might crack, but will never separate. That means no water seepage or pests getting in the home through the floor. On top of the superior radiant heat system, with HVAC for the second floor, this homes features an HRV system. The Heat Recovery Ventilation system is to filter out dust and germs and bring air in at-temp for full comfort, maintaining a truly healthy home.

“We have been building homes for a number of years, but just the way the economy has been it didn’t really afford me to build the types of homes I like. So, my homes are usually medium to high end that are mostly thought out homes, that are healthy homes, that are something that you are not going to have to maintain for years and years and years.

So this home has got a concrete floor, and all the concrete has been dyed before it went in. And it’s got a grid cut in it at a diagonal, a big 5 foot by 5 foot squares, which looks like big slabs of tile. And it’s kind of a tote color in it, in this home. But prior to that we have a post tension, which is cables that run like a checkerboard through the house, and they’re cinched down to like 40,000 lbs each. And that’s kind of like I used it as an insurance policy – the concrete will never separate – concrete always crack, but this will never ever separate. And then we’ve welded a cage outside the edge of this as a big bulkhead.

So, this home is not one where you’ll have to worry about water problems under it or anything – you know, bugs or termites or anything like that. And the floor is the finished product, it is forever. After the plaster goes in we’re going to pull it up and polish it out and grout the floor. So, it is the last floor you will get in this place.

It also has radiant heat. We have two zones: in the Master Suite and in the Living Area. So, the nice thing about the Radiant Heat is the floors are nice and warm and the temperatures are just different. When you have a regular system it’s all air blowing and your thermostat is up about 4 feet. So when it says 70 degrees it’s really only 70 degrees above the thermostat, while everything below that is cooler. And when you’re sitting on your furniture you sitting below that 70 degrees anyways. So,, with the Radiant, which is nice, is that it comes through the floor. And so your feet are warm and it’s just different. You don’t have to have your thermostat set as high. There are no moving parts and you don’t have any air blowing. You don’t have any dust flying around the house. It’s quiet, it’s silent.

And in this home, also we have an HRV, which is a Heat Recovery Ventilation System. So, it always has fresh air in the home. And in this day and age of the virus that has been challenging people around America, this home has got fresh air all the time. It is sucking all the bad particles and germs and putting new fresh air in it all the time. And, it takes it out and brings it in at the same temperature. It has a system that it runs through to bring it back in at the same temperature.

That being said, it’s a quiet healthy house. And, so if you have ventilation fans, lets say you would have over the stove, that would be the only one you would hear. Or in the Summertime when you kick on the Air Conditioning, then you’re going to have air blowing around again. But we have filter systems on that, so that’s pretty easy to manage. But just imagine keeping your house clean. In a regular home after you dust you see the dust everywhere on everything again, in minutes. It’s really pretty cool to not have any of that floating around or breathing any of it.” 

John Webb Construction & Design EUG: https://johnwebbconstruction.com/

Posted November 7, 2022 by John Webb