The Shambles
The Shambles is experiencing spring. Birds that shouldn't be in the area yet are already arriving, a disquieting harbinger of global warming that the president doesn't just ignore but actively disputes.
About the time the ground dries out enough to work, the rain will return to upset our plans. So it's off to make the lists that will guide our activities for the next three or four months. Hope always pushes its head out of the ground with the croccus and daffodils. I guess that's what Charlie Shulz was getting at when he first drew Lucy holding the football.
posted by Richard Yarnell @ 1:49 AM
6 Comments:
Herewith begins a "blog" that I'll try to maintain as we wrestle with the excitement, angst, and compromise that makes up the process of creating a habitable home.
The house we live in was built in 1965 by the farmer who lived here. It's a decent job, really, except for the places he cut a few corners. It's on a daylight basement which has never been finished so there's no way into the living space except via stairs. We found this a liability when my folks could no longer navigate them. It faces a little more East than a good candidate for both passive and active solar is concerned, and there are wood parts that are suspect. The deck needs to be rebuilt, and there is an unsettling springiness to parts of the main floor.
My family has built a number successful houses. My first one, started before I was married, is a large A-frame on the Washougal River, It was successful and remains in use even now so long after we sold it. My folks' second home was a premium scale glass and aluminum monster, justified by its being located in sunny southern Cal. My kid's million dollar baby is a handsome amalgum of Spanish, Moorish, and modern S. Cal. Despite its opulance, it is a model of energy efficiency - unlike its neighbors, the rooms are a comfortable size.
I have long lists of amenities to be applied to the new house and have recently decided it will become a model of elder housing design that permits one to live out life in one place because it will be forgiving of old age and infirmity. For that reason alone, I'm glad I waited so long to finally build. If all our building codes require that we provide the space and ammenities that are friendly to the disabled or halt/lame (which most of us, sooner or later will become, if only by age and infirmity), then the cost of using wide doors and hallways, of having toilets a comfortable height, then the costs of that kind of construction would come down simply because it would no longer be unique.
When we first moved here in 1998, I located what I thought was a good place to put a vertical (4 stories with parking on the roof), small footprint, earth sheltered building. In order for it to work, it had to be close to the property line which we share with BLM. When we had our first meeting with our architect, we got a list of things that we had to do including what was predicted to be the daunting task of obtaining an easement across a narrow strip of BLM land to the county road. The alternative is a 1000 foot driveway.
When I trudged up the hill to take pictures for our new designer, the trees seemed to shade the hillside more than I'd remembered (the site had been logged just before we bought the place but there are mature trees on either side. So, while the hillside slopes due South, several large trees, perhaps dozens, would have to be cleared to both the South East and South West. Aside from that, the hillside isn't as steep as I thought it was when I was trudging up and down planting replacement Douglas Fir seedlings.
So now, we're considering taking down the old house, rotating the new one to the SSE, excavating to a depth that will bury the two story north wall nearly to the eaves, then again, to put the attached greenhouse a half story down below the lower, bedroom level, and starting more or less fresh.
My folks' Carson City house was "Passive Solar" and worked extraordinarily well. I instrumented the building for HUD so we have good data on heat sink performance (3 sensors per concrete wall of three different thicknesses, for example). By designing to achieve almost 100% reliance on passive solar techniques and then adding an active Solar DHW system, a modest solar powered radiant floor system that can be attached to a heat pump if our successors aren't interested in relying on the sun, and by loading the roof with a grid connected PV array, we believe we'll be selling a substantial amount of power to PGE. We'll drill a second well and power that entirely with solar with a battery backup. We'll have a small battery system in the house to power a 12v lighting system (we do have regular power failures) and, if we can find them, will use 12 or 24v refrigeration. (This is another example of an easy public policy change that would make this kind of practical planning more affordable. There is no reason not to have refrigerators and freezers powered by 12 or 24v DC. As LED's become cheaper and more prevalent, if the code provided for it, use of low voltage lighting would save a lot of electricity in a very short time. Economies of scale would drive the cost lower.)
Everything will be accessible without stairs although there will be a stairway between the two floors. We'll install a passenger elevator. All doors will be code for wheelchairs: drawers below the counters; the kitchen will include a center island with a wheelchair height work area. There will be a walk in tub and a roll in shower, grab rails everywhere, light switches at every entry to each room, etc., etc.
Since we live in the woods, (although this location isn't as close to the trees as the other site, it was scary the last couple of very dry years) we will install fire sprinklers with a sizeable static tank under the pitched PV scaffold. Construction will be fireproof - concrete and insulated concrete block. Windows, except for the grenhouse, will have metal shutters for both security, if we travel, and fire protection. The greenhouse will contain the Endless Pool and our wood fired hot tub, and will be an integral part of the passive heating system.
When the former owner built the main house, he lived in a two room frame shack which we use for storage and as a studio. We will rebuild that for use as a studio (Susan's spinning, weaving, and other crafts along with, no doubt, her solitary adventures with her banjo and concertina) and as guest quarters or useable as a care-giver's apartment in case either of us ends up needing full time nursing care. It has water but no bathroom - that will be remedied.
Our thought now, since completion of the house depends on the sale of one of two properties I have on the market, is to do the studio first so we'll have someplace to live on site. The logistics of caring for the livestock and gardens from a rental somewhere is too complicated.
I'm thinking along the lines of a Hobbit hole (which could be based on a quonset framework) or can be built using cob techniques. It fits the landscape and won't, to my mind or imagination, clash with the main house, and befits the kind of work that will go on inside it.
We seem to have the approval of the architect when we specified relatively small rooms but with many large closets and storage areas. She also approved the idea of mud rooms at every entrance and the rest of our practicality oriented "wish list." The next task is to find out from the County whether we can leave the studio where it is (very close to the BLM line) and just what constitutes a remodel. (My kid left 3 feet of foundation when he razed his grandmother's house, and incorporated it in his new house. By doing this, even though his is a brand new house, it is considered a remodel of the old one and is taxed on the same basis that the old one was!) I want to do it so we can keep the studio close to the property line. The adjoining property can't be developed, given it's public ownership.
Then I think to myself - why tear down a habitable house?
Good blog Richard...can't wait to see the house as it progresss.
There has been so much interest in how we decided to build an energy efficient house, that we've decided to try to document the whole thing on tape. On Friday, we'll take the courses required to give us access to the Willammette Falls Cable Access studio and its unbelievable editing capabilities.
The goal will be to show that we won't sacrifice liveability in order to make an efficient house.
I've never worked on the backside of a camera before - I made part of my living under the lights. Whether that experience helps us gather the footage we need to make a coherent video record remains to be seen.
[I'm hoping that putting the goal out here in the quasi-public domain, it will serve to encourage our completing the record.]
Plans, or at least the timetable, have been revised, all for practical reasons.
We've decided to rennovate the studio before we begin the house. That will give us a place to live while the new house is, itself, being renovated next year. Finding a rental close enough to make caring for the livestock for a year is problematic and expensive of time and money.
The studio, now little more than a shack that was, in the early '60's, used by the owner while he built, mostly himself, the house we now live in, is showing its age. It's build on piers and is distincly flammable - a poor trait if you're backed up against the margin of a BLM forest that has a county road running through it.
Susan wants a cozy quiet place to work on her spinning. So, the site being amenable, we'll approximate an earth sheltered hobbit house.
Here's the plan: we'll lower the building by excavating into the hillside 4-8 feet. We'll pour a slab (with a grid of solar heated air ducts filled with marbles) and erect a steel arch building. We'll spray closed cell foam insulation on that and cover it, inside and out, with gunnite or a similar substitute for the Cob surface she wants but that's not really suited to our climate. The cement will protect the insulation from fire. We'll plug the ends with decorated cob walls, attach a pair of corrugated oval culvert pipes (3x5 or 4x6') on the sides of the building and install windows near their outer ends. That will allow us to use them as reading nooks and will allow us to have a little daylight even though the side of the building is buried - they'll extend from the side walls 6-8'.
Solar air panels will both heat and cool the floor, depending on the season. (In the summer, you reverse the flow and force the air through the collectors after the sun has gone down. Heat that's stored in the rock (in our case, marbles) bed is carried to the panels that radiate it to the sky.) Inside, we'll enclose a toilet and shower, install an efficiency kitchen which will double as a place to cook dyes and do other craft like things. A small wood stove to back up the solar heat, a small point of use electric demand water heater, lots of area work lights and maybe a small storage loft over the "bedroom" end, and you have a net 18x24' studio. Outside, we'll partially bury the building both to earth shelter it, protect it from fire, and make it appear hobbit like.
The deeply corrugated, galvanized steel arches, in 16 guage steel, have a dead load capacity of 324# per sq ft. The foam adheres well to clean steel and the gunnite/cob will adhere to and cover the foam. The interior floor will be stained and waxed (I like Kemko stains). The end walls are not load bearing and can be attached either at the ends of the shell or inside it. We'll inset them both with the end closest to the main house set in 6 or 7 feet to make a mud room. We'll install indusrial grating over a depression in the slab there that will make cleaning it a matter of some water from a hose. The only elaborate highlights will be the carved and arched front door and the small pane windows inset in the culvert pipes.
Hope it looks as good full sized as it does on paper.
Plans, or at least the timetable, have been revised, all for practical reasons.
We've decided to rennovate the studio before we begin the house. That will give us a place to live while the new house is, itself, being renovated next year. Finding a rental close enough to make caring for the livestock for a year is problematic and expensive of time and money.
The studio, now little more than a shack that was, in the early '60's, used by the owner while he built, mostly himself, the house we now live in, is showing its age. It's build on piers and is distincly flammable - a poor trait if you're backed up against the margin of a BLM forest that has a county road running through it.
Susan wants a cozy quiet place to work on her spinning. So, the site being amenable, we'll approximate an earth sheltered hobbit house.
Here's the plan: we'll lower the building by excavating into the hillside 4-8 feet. We'll pour a slab (with a grid of solar heated air ducts filled with marbles) and erect a steel arch building. We'll spray closed cell foam insulation on that and cover it, inside and out, with gunnite or a similar substitute for the Cob surface she wants but that's not really suited to our climate. The cement will protect the insulation from fire. We'll plug the ends with decorated cob walls, attach a pair of corrugated oval culvert pipes (3x5 or 4x6') on the sides of the building and install windows near their outer ends. That will allow us to use them as reading nooks and will allow us to have a little daylight even though the side of the building is buried - they'll extend from the side walls 6-8'.
Solar air panels will both heat and cool the floor, depending on the season. (In the summer, you reverse the flow and force the air through the collectors after the sun has gone down. Heat that's stored in the rock (in our case, marbles) bed is carried to the panels that radiate it to the sky.) Inside, we'll enclose a toilet and shower, install an efficiency kitchen which will double as a place to cook dyes and do other craft like things. A small wood stove to back up the solar heat, a small point of use electric demand water heater, lots of area work lights and maybe a small storage loft over the "bedroom" end, and you have a net 18x24' studio. Outside, we'll partially bury the building both to earth shelter it, protect it from fire, and make it appear hobbit like.
The deeply corrugated, galvanized steel arches, in 16 guage steel, have a dead load capacity of 324# per sq ft. The foam adheres well to clean steel and the gunnite/cob will adhere to and cover the foam. The interior floor will be stained and waxed (I like Kemko stains). The end walls are not load bearing and can be attached either at the ends of the shell or inside it. We'll inset them both with the end closest to the main house set in 6 or 7 feet to make a mud room. We'll install indusrial grating over a depression in the slab there that will make cleaning it a matter of some water from a hose. The only elaborate highlights will be the carved and arched front door and the small pane windows inset in the culvert pipes.
Hope it looks as good full sized as it does on paper.
I never cease being a kid with a new toy when I sit in front of this machine.
Since we're preparing to replace our house, one of the related projects is to increase our domestic water supply. Originally, I'd intended to drill a new well on what is technically a separate, adjacent lot, power it with a solar array so that we don't have to run new power
line 600 or more feet to the well site, and then pump up the hill to a
pressure tank and storage tanks. An additional benefit would be to
have a battery powered pump (24v) that would work even when the grid
is down.
This morning, I put the GPS on both sites and added the difference in
elevation to the estimated depth of the well and found that the total
head may exceed what an affordable, 24 volt submersible pump can lift (found those specs on the Inet too).
So, I called the driller who'd given me a bid on the new well to ask whether it would pay to go deeper with the existing well which, based on what I know about the original owner, might have been stopped when he had enough water for strictly domestic use by two people - 4 gallons a minute. If it can be done, we've got a $5000 head start on a 500 foot well.
The Driller said he'd need to see the original drillers log (1967) and, in the same breath, that many of those are no longer available. Google search argument, "Oregon Water well drilling log." That led to "Water Well Records;" that led to a search engine which started with current address of the property on which the well is located; that search returned the Section and
lot number which took me to 5 pages of wells in that Section. Found
mine and clicked on the well number. Adobe opened and displayed the
original drillers log, complete with signature, dated 1967. Elapsed time - about 90 seconds. I'm sure it will take a bit longer for the new well man to decide whether he should risk trying to deepen our well, that is if the State and County will allow it.
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