Ohio Architect's Home: From the Roof to the Windows

Drone footage of Dan Meehan's retirement home in progress and beautiful Lake Erie. Video courtesy of Jonathan Fields.

​Turning environmental challenges into design wins for a truly interesting lakeside home

"That was part of the fun—working through priorities and challenges and turning them into solutions that are exciting and add a lot to the quality of the architecture and the space", said Dan Meehan, an Ohio Architect who's designing and building his dream retirement home on Lake Erie.

Living on a Great Lake like Erie means living with extremes. Extreme beauty. Extremely captivating views of nature and the Cleveland skyline across the water. Also, extreme weather.

Architect Dan Meehan had to pull out all of the stops so that his dream retirement home would maximise these wonderful Lake Erie views, while soundly withstanding Lake Erie gusts and horizontal blowing rain.

VYCOR® enV-S™ self-adhered weather resistant barrier completely wraps and seals under all of the cladding of his house. ICE & WATER SHIELD® protects the whole roof.

"The roofers didn't cut super long strips (of ICE & WATER SHIELD®)", Dan said. "They cut strips they could manage between three guys and still got the whole roof covered inside of two days".

Dan bridged between the ICE & WATER SHIELD® and the custom Boral eve molding with a metal drip edge. That was a design decision, he said, for a more interesting roof detail than gutters.

"Once the roof is on, I'm going to have the carpenters start installing the windows", he said. "It's good that the roof will be completely on so that there's nothing that could blow off and break a window".

The wind would have to blow off a pretty big roof piece, however. Dan's installing heavier-gauge extruded aluminium exterior windows, which have a "really high" wind rating, he said. Throughout the whole house, he's installing both double-hung sash and casement windows.

The double-hung sash windows are really the stars of Dan's window show. They have a thick cross section and are huge—4-foot-4 wide by nine feet tall (1.3 metres wide by 2.7 metres tall) outlets to the wonderful world of Lake Erie.

"In areas where we're going to sit inside a lot, and look out, I didn't want to have screens on the inside", Dan said. "It doesn't look as nice, better to see the wood molding. I wanted to use double-hung sash windows, instead of casements, where we'd be enjoying the views, since we could put screens on the outside".

Dan also skewed the lake side of the house by 10 degrees. As he, his wife and guests gaze out through those cathedral sized double-hung sashes, some windows will feature the private park and lake, others will showcase the Cleveland skyline.

"It's a design trick that I made up for this house"

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