Heimsath Architect’s team members are now in week 4 of self-isolation. Like many of you, our communications with the outside are mostly through the various conferences call applications (Go to Meeting, Zoom, Skype). It has been working well, though I find that looking all the faces in boxes invariably gets the Brady Bunch theme song stuck in my head. For the past 20 years, we have done our ... Read More
In the past, stained glass back-lighting has been quite difficult. The fluorescent and incandescent light sources we had to work with created heat, were hard to access, and had color issues. The stained glass never looked good compared to the natural lighting provided by sunlight. However there are some new LED solutions that are making it much easier to have a beautiful installation without ... Read More
If you are thinking about remodeling or building a home, you ought to give Houzz.com a try. It is a repository of 800,000+ pictures that various people have uploaded to the site. With this you can browse and find spaces you like and create idea books that you can share. One of our recent clients used this a lot both to help her understand what she wanted and to communicate this infromation to us. ... Read More
More and more we see our church clients wanting lighting control to highlight areas of the worship space. It could be that they want to have a different set of lights to highlight the baptism, it could be that at times they want to light up of the choir area, or maybe they want to have a dim the lights and just have light shining on the pulpit. Traditionally this is done in one of two ways; ... Read More
Imagine a world without any gas stations - none on the roadway, none in the neighborhood. Imagine a stoplight with waiting cars and no smell or fumes. Imagine a busy street without the rumble of engine noise. Don't just imagine these things, get ready for them. Electric cars are coming and there are big implications. Avoiding the high cost of gasoline is just the beginning. The electric car ... Read More
Solar Panels on the Front roof Area There is a 5.76 KW solar array on the Purple Heron House. Given that the house is a 5-star rated (or will be when Autsin Green Building finishes its process), we looked into Solar as a way to make the house even more effiecient (with the current efficiencies of the solar panels, it is usually better to conserve first and then look to generation). At the time ... Read More
So what is a demand charge and why should churches care? Churches should care a great deal. If you are not paying it now, watch out! It could equal or even exceed your consumption charge in a given month. A demand charge for church electricity bills is seriously being considered by our local utility company. Some utilities already have added this charge for churches, and may soon expand or ... Read More
One and a half years after graduating from the Historic Preservation Program at University of Texas at Austin, I went back to the School of Architecture and took a tour of its prominent Architectural Conservation Lab, a great building conservation resource. Fran Gale, the director of the lab, was hosting a session with the students from her Materials Conservation class. The students were asked to ... Read More
When we work with our clients to design or modify a worship space, one of the most interesting issues that must be considered is the relationship between natural light and the audio/visual systems. Whether it is a historic sanctuary, a high-end praise and worship space, or a multi-use space (Sanctatorium is one of my favorite multi-use space words), more and more, we are seeing a desire to have a ... Read More
My wife and I are designing and building a new energy-efficient home. We are working very hard with our builder, Risinger Homes, to achieve a 5-star (highest) rating in the Austin Green Building Residential Program. One major focus is how to make the lighting more efficient. In a future post, I will discuss some of the technical basics of lighting. I've designed lighting for our churches and ... Read More
