An Architect (perhaps) and a Site Visit

We have found an architect (well, we think so but we haven't signed the contract yet so this may be the jinx post)! He's Matthew Bialecki based in New Paltz, NY (town about 20 mins away from our land). See his other projects here:

http://www.mbialeckiarch.com/

We chose him amongst the four we interviewed because:

1) He had completed other projects with a similar background to ours
2) Was quite keen on our interests and that we are open to some different ideas for the home
3) Has green building certification and experience
4) Is local, knows local codes and builders, and
5) (this is more me than CP) he was quite frank with us about options and approach given the constraints of the project

On that last point I appreciated that he told us going with a geothermal heating system was total overkill for a house our size and budget. He recommended a low-energy tankless boiler as a backup as he believed we could achieve most of our heating needs through proper passive solar design (and don't forget the center mass fireplace). And that would net about the same energy efficiency.

Oh, and he tried to impress CP with his art book collection. Then he vogued for us.

He had some really nice cardboard mock-ups of projects in-the-works and promised that we'd get a cardboard mock-up as well! That pretty much cinched it for me.

In any case, he's coming for a site visit on Monday 8/29 and this will be important to starting the siting process. Even w/o seeing the property he already had some interesting ideas about our streams/bridge/siting challenges (more on that later). We also mutually agreed not to sign the contract until after the visit. This allows for some adjustment based on his assessment of the siting since that could materially impact the scope of project. Also, in negotiating the contract we carved out any engineering work on the bridge since, depending on the scale we end up going with, that's a special project.

More on the visit after.