Interview with the Owners of the Newest GO Home, in Hope, Maine

We paid a visit to GO Logic clients Madeleine and Patrick at their recently completed 1,500SF GO Home, where they shared their impressions of our design/build process and of living in their new home.

GOL: This is a beautiful site. How did you come to build your new house here?

Patrick: Madeleine and I both grew up in Philadelphia, where we lived until we moved here to Hope. We purchased this land from Madeleine’s mother and her mother’s husband, who live next door. We'd been coming up here to their house for 10 years or so. My job has always been remote-work friendly, even before the pandemic, and we always had the idea of living here. It took a while to decide, but when we had our first daughter, our priorities kind of shifted. We have one acre of land, and it’s surrounded by meadow, so it feels very open. We’re currently rewilding it with native plant species—bee balm, milkweed, and so on—and we’ll also be planting a bunch of asters. The idea is to create a natural meadow all around, with a few more trees.

GOL: What led you to choose GO Logic for this project?

Patrick: From the beginning, we knew we wanted new construction rather than an existing house. We were familiar with GO Logic through word of mouth and from just being here, near Belfast. We were also aware of the Passive House concept and what it entails—a focus on the building envelope, the building’s position relative to the sun, materials with low embodied carbon. That holistic approach to building, and the idea of living in a Passive House, were really attractive to us. And we actually had a chance to stay in the first GO Home—the red house in Belfast—as an Airbnb that we just happened upon. Madeleine, especially, fell in love with it, and that’s really what led us to work with GO Logic.

GOL: What was your experience in the design process?

Patrick: We started talking with Alan in 2019, and he did a really good job of gauging where we were coming from. He put together a design proposal and a working estimate for construction that made us feel like it was the right thing to do, so we signed a design contract. The design process began about six months later, in the spring of 2020. Lyle Lemon was the initial designer on our job, and we had some subsequent design meetings with Mark Peterson. We really loved the red house, so we didn't modify the original design too much. Aside from the garage, all we did was add a couple of windows and change some of the finishes. I handled a lot of the mechanicals myself, including the water filtration system and the inverter for the photovoltaic panels. The whole design process was really straightforward. If we had opted for a custom design, there would obviously have been a lot more back and forth with the architects, but we wanted to take advantage of the efficiencies of the GO Home process.

GOL: How did the construction go?

Patrick: Initially, I was really into the idea of panelized construction. But in discussing the schedule with Alan, and in light of the fact that we were local, we determined that it would be much easier to do this as a stick-built project. In hindsight I'm glad, because I spent a lot of time up here on site during construction, coming up from Philadelphia every other week or so and just being involved in the process. I like building things and seeing how everything goes together, so it was nice to have a relationship with the crew. Initially Erik Brooks was the lead, and then Alex Giblin took over. Jamie Snook was a constant on the crew, along with Joe, Dave, Jeff, and Caleb—all really great people to work with and bounce ideas off of. It made the whole process really fun. Everyone's been really helpful post construction too, with minor adjustments and that sort of thing. I busted a door hinge and was able to get a crew out here to help me lift the door off so I could replace the hinge. We moved in over the first weekend of November 2021, just a little over a year from the time we signed the construction contract.

GOL: How would you describe the build quality of your house?

Patrick: Regarding the GO Logic scope, I would say it’s perfect, from the framing and the building shell all the way through to the finishes. We’re really impressed with how well it came together and how sound all the connections are. We also know that we're living in a house that was designed and built with a focus on health and comfort, and as parents, that's really important to us. We know what every material is and how it's all put together. We know that there's no bad stuff in here.

Madeleine: And the end product is just incredible. It’s so comfortable and so beautiful, and the craftsmanship we watched happen was amazing.

GOL: How is your photovoltaic system performing?

Patrick: We have 27 360-Watt Q CELLS panels on the roof, so the system is about 9.7 kW. I installed a hybrid inverter for battery backup in the future, but right now we’re just selling our surplus power to the grid. Our energy usage has averaged 12 to 15 kilowatt-hours per day, up to 25 or 30 during the coldest part of the winter. But on a sunny spring day like today, we’re exporting about 60 kilowatt-hours per day, on average, so it’s completely net-positive.

GOL: What’s it been like to live here?

Madeleine: It's been so nice. We’ve only been here five months—just through one season and into the next—and seeing how the light is changing has been incredible. It's hard to say what my favorite place is in the house, but I love the views from our bedroom. The mudroom area is perfect, especially for the weather we have in Maine, and I love how it's separate from the rest of the house. I also like the open-concept main space, but with the kitchen off to the side. There's a little bit of separation, but it’s still very open. And I love the upstairs layout, with the bedrooms opening onto the hall in the middle. There’s just something about that little space. I've never seen anything like that, and I really like it.

Patrick: I’m always drawn to the big living room windows. And I like the overall simplicity of the space; it doesn't distract you.

Madeleine: And the light. That's almost number one with this design, I think, all the light. Before this, we had been living in row homes our entire adult lives, and there’s no comparison with the light in this house, or how comfortable it stays inside.

Patrick: Back in our row home in Philadelphia, we had probably 6 air changes per hour. Thinking about this place, all the building shell details involved in constructing it, and what an airtight house feels like—there’s just no comparison. It’s amazing, actually. I can be working upstairs on a morning when it's 4 below zero and have to turn the heat off, because the building is so tight and well insulated, and the windows work so well.

Madeleine: My friends back home are getting tired of hearing me tell them, “Guess what? I’m in Maine and it’s well below freezing, and we don’t have our heat on.”

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