7000ft, I am totally convinced you ought to write a book. Your family sounds very interesting and it sounds like you all work as a cooperative of sorts. How much of your food do you produce? The tomatoes that I grow are primarily for sauce, so I use Roma-type tomatoes. They are odd-looking, being long and quite large. The variety I grew this year was Super San Marzano. I've tried some others, but this one is the best. The sauce-type tomatoes are awesome for making sauce. They are very meaty with minimal juice and seeds. Making sauce is a breeze because you can skip the steps for squeezing the juice and seeds out. According to the catalogs, some varieties have pectin in them that helps to thicken the sauce. We ended up with 25 jars of sauce in the freezer. That is a record for us, so we are pleased! That's 25 dinners during ski season that I don't have to cook. :) I also grow a cherry tomato and some sandwich-type tomatoes. I've had good luck with Early Wonder, which is early yet tasty. (way better than early girl!) Inside the GH we enjoy our first tomatoes in mid-July. Without the GH we are lucky to get any red tomatoes at all. I'm sure it's the same for you. My gardening efforts are pretty much solo, but my husband was instrumental in building the GH and in helping look after things as needed. He is an expert at raising seedlings because I tend to travel a lot in the spring. He also built a root cellar and he is fully on board with our quest to grow as much food as possible. It's a bit of an oddball pursuit, so I'm happy that he's into it!

Yom, during our remodel and renovation we added many "green" attributes to our home. The first was hot water on demand, we had the unit installed very close between two bathrooms so that we have very little time to wait in the shower before hot water comes. That is a key with these systems. Fiberglass BLOCK insulation on the exterior of a block foundation. This is a very unique and unusual thing to do. These are black blocks, which are used to made molds for pipe fittings so you buy them at the pipe fitters (ones who do terracotta or cement). They are about 4" thick and 15" by say 10" (or slightly larger). They have a high R value, and termites will not eat thru them. Our stairwell has about 5' or so of cement block above grade. That was sealed as usual, then the fiberglass put on the outside of that, skim coated and then stuccoed. It looks amazing and increased the R value of the stairwell that is mostly glassed in. In a new construction, I'd have done any exposed block foundation area with this stuff on the exterior. Amazing. The interior we used spray foam insulation. It's not green from an off-gassing situation at all. We had it done months ago and aren't ready to go back in to live (I have more work to do!) and I appreciated the waiting period. However, the increased insulation is INCREDIBLE and it is the cone of silence in any room that was insulated including a mainly glass, tall stairwell!! The stairwell itself is a greenhouse. We had to be very careful about the whole heating and air distribution and load in the home (the unit already existed) especially with the stairwell. We haven't vented it so far, but will do so as we see how the air and heat/cooling works for a season or so. What could be just a big, draining load on the systems of the home as a unique purpose now. It also collects water for the plants inside the stairwell via a chain and a rain barrel off the corner of the slanting roof. We bought local. I found lots of things I really wanted, and much of it was made here within 100 miles - such as the ceramic tile in the shower and the china sink and toilet. The plumbing supplier kept the renovator up on all this info because we mentioned up front we'd prefer it. SOme things had to come from China though that I wanted. It was a balance, but I feel pretty good about the choices. Natural vs. man made...some things we purchased were man-made. There are natural choices - terracotta or stone/marble flooring/wood flooring and counters etc. I decided against using them and opted for man made floors and counters. To me they were more practical in price, and actually the carbon to produce stone etc. is MORE than the carbon to produce the VCT floor and laminate counters. Plus they were WAY WAY less expensive. You are absolutely right about cisterns Yom. The state is not taking the "real" measures it could to preserve our water such as guidelines and encouragement of using cisterns, solar etc. With a drought, imagine how great it would be if some of the landscape installers had the ability and access to install in-ground or above ground cisterns? It would keep them financially viable! Solar will be way, way less expensive in the next 5 years. There has been a flat "screen" that looks like landscape cloth that was invented and marketed last year. That makes panels so affordable, and the systems will be much simplified to interface with the fabric panels. There are many people who have the goal to make things like solar more affordable to those who desperately need to reduce their monthly bills, so all of this is on the way. Everyone can benefit from it. There are so many little things you can do that add up. What I did was lay out the savings over time on paper for the DH. He jumped for just about anything that would pay for itself in 3-5 years (or less...) Good luck! GGG

Solar shades come in varying openness factors. The densest is blackout. I have them on all of my west-facing windows and they make a huge difference in the temperature of the room. The difficulty is if you want a more open weave for the daytime and a blackout weave for nighttime. You can install two separate shades if your windows are deep enough or you can install one inside mount and one outside mount, but that gets pricy. I only have cellular shades on one bathroom window where I wanted to be able to change the openness factor. I don't know about the heat protection because that window doesn't face west.

Well...this house is designed with a strong exterior-interior linear concept as the fundamental basis for design. While some minor exterior and interior modifications may be possible, there are limits to what modifications may be made without losing the all important concept. If the concept doesn't work for someone, the best strategy is to look for another house designed with a concept which is a better fit.