Budget Breakdown: A Portland Home Packs an Off-Grid Punch for $820K

About five and a half miles southeast of downtown Portland, Oregon, in the Errol Heights neighborhood, the Springwater Trail Residence faces a greenbelt with a wetland that provides regular wildlife sightings for the home’s owner, Mariam. "I’ve seen an eagle come right up over me with a fish in its talons," she says. "From my bed, I can look out the window and know where the eagle’s nest is. I sometimes say, ‘There’s the eagle. I can get up now.’"

Each day when she wakes, Mariam is immersed in nature without being too far from an urban center. But to build a home with a front-row seat to the outdoors, Portland and Bozeman-based Minarik Architecture had to come up with a design that would work on heretofore undeveloped land: The site was unstable, there were rigid environmental requirements, and Mariam wanted something that could get as close to going off-grid as possible. Essentially, it meant that Minarik had to economize in terms of space, materials, and energy usage. 

First, the design had to overcome the unstable site. "We are sitting on thirty feet of undocumented fill, just concrete and rubble from when they built the rest of this development," says architect Doug Minarik. "It was just horrible for building," he adds, laughing. After the site had been excavated and graded, Minarik installed 30 micropiles to provide a sturdy foundation for the home, which accounted for about one-eighth of the entire $820,000 budget.