Hiring Architect or designer

For our passive solar home build. We're having trouble pulling our ideas together. We would prefer you are near southern Kentucky so that you could see the site to ensure the design minimizes impact to the land and works with it's natural features, but we are currently living out of state as well and are willing to meet via Skype if we can just find the right individual. The build will be mostly DIY and progress in stages as cash allows, so we would like to agree on a flat fee upfront. You should be comfortable working with builder-owners, alternative materials, and be excited about sharing ideas! We've failed to find the real passion for our project among local professionals and are excited to have found permies, where we really think we'll find a match for getting our homestead off the ground! Link to your website or some of your recent projects, and let's discuss rates and we'll share some of the details of what we're looking for. We're also open to working with students looking to build their portfolio, as long as they are passionate about sustainble building. We're excited to be here! Thanks in advance.

Amanda

Welcome to Permies!

I don't know what your time table was or is. I hope it would not be out of line to suggest you try not to get too frustrated in going slowly.  A big reason for that is the way most DIY builds don't fit very well with the "business models" of most professionals. I'm not thinking only of small $$, but of the time table and expectations which often have to be "adjusted" on both side.

If you can develop your ideas and feelings to the point where you can write out specific needs the a professional can provide, it would probably make it easier to conceptualize, on your end, and also to explain what you expect to receive from professional (somewhat, anyway) assistance. This really helps to focus and also to mitigate surprise or disappointments.

Most people create their own biggest problem when attacking a large plan by trying to do it all at once, trying to stuff everything into their head at once. Even parts of it can be just too much. Try to chop it up somehow into bite sized pieces.  Perhaps divide things up into "immediate" and "everything else" for the moment. Defined by blocks of time, maybe by budget availability, maybe by location on your site, maybe by deadlines in  your own lives for "must have" parts of the project. Plan and do what has to be done next while leaving, as possible, other options open but not planned or scheduled in any way. Maybe, maybe not. You'll get there. Or not. It's good because it has to be that way for you to move the actual real time project forward. Pay attention to the next step, don't try to plan everything, everywhere now. What single thing do you need to move forward and take your next step?

If you have already done all this, I apologize.

There can be many different visions, but they all have to rest on details. And the visions and plans need boundaries or they will wisp away as they morph and change and churn w/out getting anywhere.


Regards,
Rufus

Simple design with lots of sun expose, every room gets lots of winter sunlight. You could even have a winter greenhouse for even more solar gain
It can also be built with a greenroof and bermed sides too, to help with summer highs and even out winter lows

DIY, and you can build as you go along




Simple and compact

Looking forward to seeing a more itemized (maybe even bullet points) of what you ultimately want and maybe specifically what you want from just the Architect/Designer.

# of Bedroom = ?
# of Bathroom = ?
Total Square Footage= ?
Insulation = R40 via EPS/Strawbale/Bale-Cob/Bermed-Earth/??
Walls = regular Plywood+Foam or Cement or Bale-Cob or CEB or Log Cabin or etc
Basement/Slab/Crawl Space
Green Roof = ?
Heating = Passive Solar + backup Radiant Heating(Solar or Heatpump or DHW or Electric) or maybe just a regular Furnace+Air Handler
Ventilation = ERV?, Bathroom + Stove Ventilation
AC = Mini-Split or Air Handler or just natural cross ventilation
Electric = 100Amp or 400Amps(all electric)
Solar = Solar Electric?, Solar DHW?, Passive Solar is obviously a yes
Fuels = Natural Gas, or Propane Tank or Oil Tank or all electric with just a backup tank.
Water = City/County or on-site well, do you want to do your own 6-stage filtering or not
Sewer = On-grid or on-site septic
Roof = ? https://www.jtcroofing.co.uk/roof-types/
Plot Size = ?
Landscaping = greenhouse?, vegetable garden?, 400ft of perimeter fruit trees with 10ft spacing?, bee hive+chicken coop+pool aquaponics?, or is it 1acres of fruit tree and 1/4 acre fish pond and 10+acres of pasture?

Would love to see some examples of some floor plans that you like.