Lupine Development & Consulting

10/19/2026

Why ADU projects in Austin stall before design even starts.

Most people start with the floor plan. The ones that stall usually hit one of these first:

1. Impervious cover. The lot is often already near its limit with the house, driveway, and patio. The ADU has to fit in what's left, and that math decides the size before anyone draws anything.

2. Trees. Protected and heritage trees have root zones you can't build in without a permit, and sometimes not at all. One big oak in the backyard can move the whole project.

3. Utilities. The existing water and wastewater service may not have capacity for a second unit. A new tap or an upsized line is a separate cost and a separate review.

4. Drainage. Even a small structure changes how water leaves the lot, and some areas have drainage requirements that surprise people.

5. Deed restrictions. The city doesn't enforce them, but your neighbors will, and some older subdivisions prohibit second units outright.

Run those five before the floor plan. It's an hour of work and it changes everything that comes after.

Impossible just means not permitted yet.

10/16/2026

Two parcels, one owner, and a replat nobody saw coming.

An owner came to us with two adjacent lots they'd held for years. The plan was simple: one building, sitting across both. They'd already talked to a builder. Then the city told them they couldn't permit a building across a lot line.

That's not a wall. It's a replat. The two lots get combined into one through a minor replat, which in most Central Texas cities is a staff-level review instead of a public hearing, as long as you aren't creating new lots or changing the street layout. A survey, a new plat drawing, a check for easements along the old shared line, a few weeks of review, and a recorded plat.

The part that catches people is the utility easement that often runs along the old lot line. If one is there, it has to be abandoned or relocated before anything gets built over it, and that is its own process with its own timeline.

None of this is hard if you know it's coming. It only becomes a problem when it shows up after the builder has a start date.

If you've got a project on more than one lot, that's the first thing to check.

10/14/2026

If you're listing a lot, a few questions will come up from every serious buyer. Having the answers ready keeps the deal moving.

1. What's the zoning, and does the buyer's plan actually fit it?
2. Is it platted as a legal lot? Unplatted land can mean months of extra work.
3. Is any of it in the floodplain?
4. Where are water, wastewater, and electric, and who provides them? In the ETJ, septic suitability matters a lot.
5. Are there easements, deed restrictions, or HOA rules?
6. What are the setbacks and impervious cover limits?

Most stalled land deals I see come down to one of these six. None of them are deal killers on their own. They just need to be known before the buyer falls in love with the lot.

If you've got a listing with a question mark on any of these, send it my way.

10/12/2026

"Impossible" just means "not permitted yet."

I've been saying that for years, and people usually hear it as a joke. It isn't.

Almost every project that gets called impossible is really one of four things:

1. The zoning doesn't allow it yet.
2. The lot isn't platted the way it needs to be yet.
3. The utilities aren't where they need to be yet.
4. Somebody got a review comment they didn't understand and gave up.

None of those are walls. They're hurdles, and each one has a process behind it. Rezoning, replatting, a utility extension, a variance, a different code path. The process is slow and it's tedious, but it exists, and if you know it well enough, you know which hurdles are worth clearing and which ones mean walk away.

That's the work. Over 20 years in Texas development, from master planning for national builders to small lots nobody else wanted, the projects I'm proudest of are the ones that showed up with a "no" already attached.

If you've got one of those on your desk, send it my way. I'd like to look at it.

09/12/2026

I wrote up the thinking behind next month's ASES SOLAR 2026 talk: why floating solar only makes sense once you stop treating water infrastructure and power generation as two separate budgets.

Land is expensive. Water loss is expensive. Most solar gets bolted onto a site afterward instead of being designed into it from day one, and that's the piece I dig into on the blog.

Full post here: https://zurl.co/J8a8G

09/12/2026

Excited to share that I'll be speaking at ASES SOLAR 2026, the American Solar Energy Society's national conference, October 19-21 in Austin.

I'm presenting on the floating solar piece of our closed-loop water and energy system, how putting panels directly over water storage cuts evaporation loss, adds clean generation, and does it all without using an extra acre of land.

If you're going to be at SOLAR 2026, or you just want to talk solar and water infrastructure, come find me. Would love to compare notes.

04/30/2026

A new report from the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance is sounding the alarm about the proliferation of proposed AI data centers in the state.

The report summarizes data center operations, growth, and impacts, along with a review of national and international efforts to respond to data center challenges and a summary of recommendations.

Rachel Hanes is policy director for the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance. She says Texas could be in dire straits if action is not taken soon.

“It's going to have very large impacts on our water supplies, on our energy supplies and public health, our coffers, our local government regulations and authorities and budgets,” she told TPR.

Read More👉 https://ebx.sh/SUvEl6

04/28/2026

This concept has been around for decades — and it works. It's called an Earth Air Heat Exchanger. You run air through underground pipes before it enters your home, and the ground cools it for you. No electricity. Just physics.

The catch that the viral graphics don't show you: sizing matters. A 1,500 SF house needs roughly 150–300 linear feet of underground pipe to do the job. A 3,000 SF house needs twice that. On a typical suburban lot with setbacks and a neighbor 10 feet away, that's a real space problem.

My preferred solution for American housing stock is to integrate the pipe system under the foundation. In Texas especially, we're already digging deep perimeter beams for expansive clay soils. Use that excavation — coil the pipes beneath the slab before the pour. You solve the lot coverage problem, the slab acts as a thermal buffer, and you get a structural benefit from keeping subgrade moisture consistent.

Worth knowing: these systems need condensate drainage, proper intake filtration (soil gases are real), and a well-insulated envelope to hit their full potential. Not complicated — just details that matter.

Great concept from Biotonomy. The implementation is what separates a cool idea from a working building. Original post: https://zurl.co/DCMMc

04/12/2026

Done wrong, the unchecked, speculative buildout of data centers raises electricity rates, increases pollution, and undermines clean energy and climate goals. The Trump administration is using AI as an excuse to boost fossil fuels — stopping coal power plants from retiring and gutting health and environmental laws. While utilities are racing to profit from building new, expensive methane gas plants.

Utilities spend billions to serve the immense energy demands of individual data centers and can often leave communities footing the bill for the upfront costs for new power plants and grid infrastructure. Tech companies need to pay their fair share. Households should not be subsidizing electricity for some of America’s largest, wealthiest companies.

Earthjustice is pushing for strong policies that ensure data centers are powered by clean energy, do not pass on their costs to billpayers, and disclose and mitigate their impacts.

04/12/2026