Douglas Romines springs for triple-pane windows, wood fiber insulation, and solar power to build an efficient Hudson Valley home at a cost just slightly above traditional construction.
When architect Douglas Romines says that building his family’s house in the Catskills was a learning experience, he really means it: It was the first home designed to Passive House standards that both he and his contractor worked on.
Some might see that as a big risk, but Douglas simply shrugs. “This was always how we were going to do this,” he says.
The total cost of the build, including all appliances, plumbing fixtures, and lighting, as well as the milling of trees that were cleared, came to $514,500.
W. Douglas Romines
Two key experiences led to that conviction. Early in his career, Douglas lived and worked in Germany, where many elements of Passive House construction—exterior insulation, airtightness, high-performing windows—were already standard in the late 1990s. “That way of building influenced me a lot,” he recalls.
Later, he worked for Frederic Schwartz Architects in New York City and was part of the team involved with the restoration and management of the Ramirez Solar House by Henry Wright Jr.—one of the earliest examples of passive solar design.
Surrounded by nature in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, the house offers an escape from the city. It got Douglas and his wife, Andrea Loefke, thinking: “How can we create this kind of retreat for ourselves?”
The home’s design prioritizes natural materials, including: larch siding, cedar roofing, wood fiber insulation, hickory floors, granite kitchen countertops, and clay zellige tiles.
W. Douglas Romines
So in 2016, they began looking for land within a 100-mile radius of their home in Brooklyn and zeroed in on an area of the lower Hudson Valley, where the rolling hills and forested peaks reminded Douglas of the landscape of his youth in East Tennessee. They purchased an untouched 18.5-acre plot along the northern base of the Shawangunk Ridge, ten minutes from Minnewaska State Park.
The following spring, they built a small A-frame cabin so that they could stay on the land while they contemplated what and where they would like to build. The elongated property stretches north to south, meeting the road in the southeast corner and widening at the northern edge, where there’s what Douglas describes as a “peninsula of higher ground” that they settled on for the build site. It had natural drainage and the best potential for views, plus it was deeply set into the property, making it remote and buffered from the surrounding lots.
Douglass and Andrea invested $12,000 to clear trees from the site. “I never believed we could have a view,” says Andrea. “It’s so breathtaking, but it was really hard to imagine.” The felled trees were reused in different ways: some chopped for firewood, while many were milled to be used in future projects by the couple. They ended up having so much wood that they gave some away to their neighbors, and the rest went to the clearing company to be turned into lumber.
W. Douglas Romines
See the full story on Dwell.com: Budget Breakdown: In the Catskills, an Architect Experiments With Passive Design for $515K
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