Come to the Open House This Weekend. 11-6 Saturday and Sunday

We have a newly completed home available for sale. This is the home you've seen featured recently in our Blog. We had the blower door test done and scored an amazing 1.67 ACH. That translates to huge energy savings for the future owners.

The home is located at 14009 SE Sierra Drive in Clackamas, Oregon and features a classic look with a covered front porch and craftsman style posts. Despite its classic look it has modern features like year-round climate control, under and over cabinet lighting, and Hardie siding with a 15 year paint guarantee.The floor plan has formal and informal dining areas adjacent to the kitchen making everyday living and entertaining easy. The main floor ceilings are 9' high to enhance the open feeling of the great room and kitchen. The main floor also includes a centrally located powder room. As you've seen from earlier posts we've installed solid Tigerwood hardwood floors and a gas fireplace with a mantle and marble surround.
Upstairs are four bedrooms including a master suite with a vaulted ceiling, double doors, walk in closet and master bathroom with granite counter tops and two sinks. The laundry room is also conveniently located upstairs next to the second full bathroom.

If you've been following our Blog you've seen all of the methods and materials used in this house (and all Miranda homes). The Earth Advantage Certificate for this house will be posted soon, as well as our Energy Performance Score.

If you'd like to come see it for yourself, give us a call at 503-208-4663. We'll also have it open on weekends from 11:00 am until 6:00 pm.

Mark Mecklem - Miranda Homes

Now Offering Custom Homes

Until now, we've been building a library of home plans for buyers to choose from. We've selected floor plans that we feel will satisfy a range of customers while incorporating all of the features you've been reading about here.

Well, now we're offering custom homes too. Buyers can bring us a floor plan from their architect, a plan book or a website. We will re-engineer the plans to incorporate all of the things that make a Miranda Home a Miranda Home.

We'll apply all of our methods and materials to build your dream home in a way that reduces the impact of construction on the environment and provides you with a home that is long-lasting, comfortable, low maintenance and energy efficient.

We're still expanding the library of "in-house" designs and will continue to offer a growing variety to choose from. But, if you've been wishing you could have a Miranda Home with your custom plan, now you can.

Mark Mecklem - Miranda Homes

Is a tight house dangerous?

Only if it is improperly designed. To give you a comparison, can you imagine if the drinking water that came out of your faucet came from under your door jams, dirty window sills, off of your garage floor, down from your roof with bird poop on it, without going through any filtration process before you drank it? Your water is filtered and goes through a controlled process before you drink it. Why do you allow the air you breathe to be handled any differently?

Consumers today confuse a tight house with a house that doesn't breathe and thus would get stale and moldy. If the builder doesn't mechanically ventilate the house, then they're right.

Air entering a tight house with a fresh air intake, high off the ground, going through a filtration system and then being forced out of the house mechanically is the key. It removes dust, allergens, and other pollutants before you breathe them. The tight house closes off the passages that allow dirty air in. Just as you wouldn't drink dirty water, you shouldn't breathe dirty air.

Rob Boydstun - Miranda Homes

Sorting through the Green Building Programs and Certifications

• Earth Advantage Homes Silver, Gold and Platinum
• Energy Star Homes
• LEED for Homes
• Homes Built to Code
• Oregon Energy Code

I'm in the building industry and I have a hard time keeping all of these new programs straight!

Let's start with the easy part, the least energy efficient building program. Surprisingly, building to current residential building code in Oregon creates the least energy efficient home! What!?! How can this be possible? Sadly, it's because building codes take a long time to be adopted and the process for changing them is even longer.

Instead of waiting for code to change or trying to influence this process, the eager beavers in energy performance for buildings decided to take the problem into their own hands. These various entities gathered the latest research on sound building science and created optional, prescriptive building paths. Earth Advantage, Energy Star, and LEED for Homes are all examples of these incentive based programs. These programs, while meeting code, guide and inform a builder on how to build a better, more energy efficient home; in other words, a home that will use less energy and cost the owner less to operate.

So what is the best green building program? After examining all the programs mentioned above, along with similar programs in California and their Title 24 Energy Code, my own education and research brought me to Miranda Homes. Exciting! Stay tuned while I do my best to sort them out.

Lisa

Earthquakes and Steel Framed Homes

On occasion, we get questions about how our homes will react in an earthquake. Luckily for all of us, none of our homes have been put to the real world test of a high magnitude earthquake. However, there has been scientific testing and real world testing of strong ground movements on light gauge steel buildings. Nucon Steel has recently published an article in NuTimes magazine that outlines the benefits of steel as they relate specifically to earthquakes. The article covers both commercial and residential use of light gauge steel in construction. These benefits also transfer to other types of disasters as well as regular wear and tear that homes undergo year after year. Steel structures simply remain dimensionally and structurally stable much longer than wood ones. Steel is not a food source for termites, ants or mold and it's not combustible so it doesn't contribute fuel to a fire. As we've said before, there are reasons commercial buildings are made of steel. The same reasons apply to residential construction.

You can read the full article on pages 9 and 10 of NuTimes Magazine HERE or by clicking on either of the pictures above.

Mark Mecklem - Miranda Homes

How to Follow Your Own Home Being Built

We've started something new for our customers. For each pre-sold home we will have a dedicated blog with regular updates about where we are in the process. It will be mostly photographs but there will be the opportunity for the home owners, or anyone else, to ask questions and make comments.

How many builders do that? We only know of one. (It's us...)

Of course, we'll still be keeping up on our regular blog here but a dedicated blog for each home will be a great way for people to see the progress of their home and to easily share it with friends and family.

You can visit www.miranda-colby.blogspot.com to see the first of what will be many dedicated blogs to come. Mark it as a favorite and watch it all come together.

Give us a call at 503-208-4663 if you'd like to visit one of our completed homes or a home in process.





Mark Mecklem - Miranda Homes

Newly Completed Miranda Home Available

We have a newly completed home available for sale. This is the home you've seen featured recently in our Blog. We had the blower door test done yesterday and scored an amazing 1.67 ACH. That translates to huge energy savings for the future owners.

The home is located at 14009 SE Sierra Drive in Clackamas, Oregon and features a classic look with a covered front porch and craftsman style posts. Despite its classic look it has modern features like year-round climate control, under and over cabinet lighting, and Hardie siding with a 15 year paint guarantee.The floor plan has formal and informal dining areas adjacent to the kitchen making everyday living and entertaining easy. The main floor ceilings are 9' high to enhance the open feeling of the great room and kitchen. The main floor also includes a centrally located powder room. As you've seen from earlier posts we've installed solid Tigerwood hardwood floors and a gas fireplace with a mantle and marble surround.
Upstairs are four bedrooms including a master suite with a vaulted ceiling, double doors, walk in closet and master bathroom with granite counter tops and two sinks. The laundry room is also conveniently located upstairs next to the second full bathroom.

If you've been following our Blog you've seen all of the methods and materials used in this house (and all Miranda homes). The Earth Advantage Certificate for this house will be posted soon, as well as our Energy Performance Score.

If you'd like to come see it for yourself, give us a call at 503-208-4663. We'll also have it open on weekends from 11:00 am until 6:00 pm.

Mark Mecklem - Miranda Homes