How to move a yurt platform

After taking the yurt down, we still had some daylight, so we started working on the platform, but it took all of the next day to finish taking it apart, and a Julie and I spent 1/2 of a 3rd day wrapping up. The platform was way more work than the yurt. Keep that in mind if you ever think of getting a yurt quick-and-easy structure. (It is possible to put them on the ground with no floor, but that's more temporary.)

Taking apart the platform was so hard that I wrote a question about it on the Home Improvement Stack Exchange. From that question:

Decking was 1 1/8" tongue-and-groove plywood, fastened with 3" Robertson (square-drive) screws. The deck was painted after installation, so some paint was in the screw heads. A regular cordless drill wasn't strong enough to turn these screws, but an combination drill / impact-driver was able to do it. However, maybe 1 in 10 screws had their drive heads stripped instead. Too much friction / too much torque. We used a Sawzall to cut those screws out. Went through 4 Sawzall blades.

Framing was 4" x 6" joists on 4" x 4" posts on concrete piers. Most lumber was pressure-treated, but about 1/3 of the joists were not. Beam-to-post caps were nailed in to the joists and posts, 3 nails on each side. We spent a lot of time hammering a Cat's Paw under the nail heads, and then prying them out.

Insulation was 4' x 8' sheets of 2"-thick foil-faced foam board, between the joists, secured with 1/2" x 1" lath strips, which were fastened with 2" screws. To be able to get the Sawzall in to place, we crawled around in the dirt under the yurt to remove the foam. These screws were also hard to remove, and sometimes we had to break the lath instead.

I was tired after each day of work, but the 3rd day left me deeply exhausted. The work of loading 30 concrete footing blocks kicked my butt. Many of them I had to carry up hill. I'm guessing they weighed 50 lbs each, so we put 1500 lbs of concrete in the back of the truck. Maybe more.

My new yurt location is pretty flat, so I don't necessarily need the posts. I can just lay the joists directly in to the brackets on the concrete footer blocks. However, I'm considering using the posts anyway, just cut short (6"? 12"?).  It would be easier to crawl under the yurt with a little more space. Getting all 30 blocks in just the right location, with the ground under each block perfectly flat, is tricky. Making all the blocks be exactly the same height is even harder, but cutting posts to the same length is easier. Also, I already have all the posts and brackets I would need. Downsides are more fastening required and the need for steps up in to the yurt.

How to move a yurt

Last week we took apart the yurt. I tried to find information online about how to do that, and couldn't find much. I wish I could have done time-lapse photography of the operation, but I don't really know how. So, here's a blog post that I hope someone will find useful when they want to do the same thing.

This yurt is a 30' model, which is as big as they get. That's 700 sq. ft. It seems like there's a practical limit at that size. It was made by Pacific Yurts in 2006. I wrote the company and they sent me a PDF of the construction manual, and said "just follow it backwards". That was helpful, but we still had to figure out a lot as we went.

It was built on a hillside. That meant that reaching some parts of the outside wall was really hard; luckily we had a long extension ladder.

1. Scaffolding

While the walls are only ~7' high on the perimeter, the center is more like 14' up. The instructions recommend scaffolding, so we rented some from an equipment rental place that was close by. We had a choice of 7'-long or 10'-long platforms. 10' would be too long; get the 7'. Each unit gets you 5' up, so two units give you a 10'-high platform, as recommended by the manual. Any taller wouldn't fit, and any shorter wouldn't be enough to manipulate the canvas cover.

We rented the scaffolding for a week for $55. That night I got sick with a stomach bug, and the equipment sat idle for 5 days. Finally I felt well enough to work and we assembled the troops. I called all my friends & a couple professional builders, and ended up with 4 adults: A pro, a young woman who helps in Reid's nature class, wife Julie, and myself. Reid was also with us.

2. Bubble.

There's a plastic dome in the middle of the roof, called the bubble. Under it is a small fly screen, which came off easily. After removing the bubble we tied on a 1/4" rope and slid it down the roof, using the rope to slow the slide. The instructions said to put it on a piece of cardboard, but we just flipped it upside-down. It was easy.

3. Walls.


The wall canvas hangs on small hooks from a string at the edge of the roof canvas. At the bottom it is held in place by a screw every couple feet. The screws came out first, then we unhooked and removed the walls. On the downhill side of the yurt this was tricky, and the long extension ladder was the only way were able to do this. I'm grateful that the guy I hired happened to bring one. We folded up the wall panels and loaded them in to the truck.

There were at least a dozen yellowjacket nests under the edge of the roof at the top of the wall. Luckily we were doing this in December, and all they were all in their winter homes underground.

Under the wall canvas was a foil-faced insulation layer, held in place by zip ties at the top. We clipped them off and the insulation panels dropped away. We folded & loaded these, too.

At this point, the outer walls were only lattice, which looked pretty cool. I could imagine using something like that in Hawaii in a remote area. Lots of airflow.

4. Roof material

The roof is a layer of heavy canvas, over a layer of foiled-faced insulation, over a light cloth layer, resting on a wooden frame.

A friend who has the same yurt said that getting the canvas on to the roof was the hardest part of the job. Two of us stood on the scaffolding, which put the compression ring at waist height. We grabbed the canvas on one side and started pulling, bunching it up in front of us. When it was all gathered, we passed it over our heads, and then pushed. The two on the ground pulled, and the whole thing slid to the ground in a clump. We spread the whole thing out flat (in the nearby septic drain field), folded it in half, then folded the sides in until they met, and then folded in half again. This clump we hauled to the truck. This step would have been hard with only 3 adults, and extremely difficult with only 2.

Meanwhile the light insulation layer was trying to lift off in the breeze. It is made of a series of wedge-shaped panels, taped together with aluminum tape, and they were trying to separate. Power lines from the street passed right over the yurt, and they threatened to touch. The wires are insulated, but I was still wary. Luckily we were able to move the insulation away from the power lines quickly. We rolled the insulation up, folded it in half, and loaded it in the truck.

The light cloth cover was easy to bundle up and carry away.

5. Rafters


The radial rafter system is clever. One end has a metal pin that fits in to a hole in the compression ring. The other end has a sawn slot, which fits around the tension wire at the perimeter. A screw in the end of each rafter helps make sure the wire doesn't pop out in a windstorm.

Before removing any rafters, we had to remove the "safety cable" that runs through some holes in the rafters. There are actually 4 holes in each rafter, to allow for an upgraded "snow and wind kit" but this yurt didn't have that element. The wire is held tight with cable clamps. My plain old step ladder was not quite high enough to reach this; make sure you can reach with your ladder. Once the clamps were removed, we unrove the cable and coiled it up.

To pull a rafter out, I stood with my back to the lattice wall and grabbed the rafter over my head. I pushed out on the wall with my body, while pushing the rafter inwards with my hand. When the wire was clear, I then pulled the rafter outwards. Another person in the scaffolding held the other end of the rafter to help pull the pin end out of the compression ring. I had this idea that I would remove every 8th rafter, then every 4th, then every 2nd, to keep the tension even. This was not helpful. I should have just removed every other one to start.

As the number of rafters decreases, the tension cable gets a little lose, and the roof system gets floppy. This is a risky part of the process. I wore a hard hat, and did hit myself in the head with a rafter once. No kids allowed at this point.

Eventually we got down to 3 rafters. I unhooked one, and had a helper hold it in place. Then I unhooked another & gave it to another helper. Then I unhooked the 3rd, and held it myself. The 4th adult was still on the scaffolding, and held the compression ring. We then lowered the whole thing until the ring was on the platform. We unhooked the rafters and stowed them away.

The rafters are quite long (maybe 15'), and would not fit in the back of my truck, even though it's a full-size truck with a long (8') bed. The guy I hired had a compact truck (Toyota Tacoma) with a lumber rack, so we used that. But before loading, we took down the lattice walls so they wouldn't be in the way.

We got to this point in about 2 hours; way faster than I expected.

6. Walls


The walls are a relatively light lattice framework, riveted at every crossing. One section covers approximately 3/4 of the area, and one covers 1/4 of the area. The doors go in between the two sections of lattice. They are bolted to the door frames and attached to the platform with metal brackets. The tension cable lays in the crotches at the top of the lattice; we removed the tension cable at this point.

We removed all the fasteners, then popped out the smaller lattice section. It's quite unwieldy. We compressed the lattice, which is tricky because it wants to bend instead of compress. I wonder if a brand new lattice moves more easily? It was noisy, and we may have snapped some of the wood. It's also really easy to get fingers pinched as you do this. (Hint: the more you compress the lattice, the easier it is to roll it up. So, compress all the way!)

The large lattice section was even harder to manipulate. For a while we left it standing in a cylinder on the platform. The wind blew it over the side and down the hill. This was a bad idea. We should have compressed it all the way and secured it somehow.

Once the lattice is down, the doors are not very stable. They are held in place with a pair of screws in to the platform. Get these screws out and lay the doors down right away.

At this point the yurt was completely disassembled. We hauled everything to my garage to keep it out of the weather until the new platform is ready.

Next time: taking apart the platform.

Meet Coach

I just bought an RV. The sellers called him "Coach":

It's very clean for it's age, and many of the appliances have been replaced recently. I'm enjoying getting to know all the different parts. It's like a boat + a truck + a house, so there's lots of parts!

Here's the floor plan:

It's old enough to be cheap, but not old enough to be a classic. It was on Craig's List for $8000. I took it to an RV mechanic and he pointed to a bunch of problems ranging from serious to trivial. I ended up buying it for $6000, and spent $2000 to have him fix the most important items:

• Reseal the roof
• Fix hot water heater
• Replace water pump filter
• Repair propane gas leak

For friends and family

I'm writing this blog for several reasons:

- For friends & family to follow our adventure.

- To keep track of what we did, what we were thinking, and where we spent money, for our future reference.

- As a resource for other people thinking about doing similar work. I deeply hope that our project inspires others.

However, there are some details of my house-building adventure that I don't want to share with the whole of the internet. For example <censored>. With that in mind, I've created a second blog for those details, at http://jbazuzihouse2.blogspot.com. If you want to see it, email me (JAY@BAZUZI.COM).

Chainsaw

While talking to a guy about clearing our land, he suggested that I operate a chainsaw while he ran his excavator. This would be cheaper than having him get out of the excavator every time he needed to cut a log, or hiring someone else to run the chainsaw.

I have about 10 minutes experience with a chainsaw, so I started by reading. I found this book helpful:

I didn't know how big a saw I should get. After reading online, I decided to get a Stihl. They're good saws, you can get parts for them, and the dealership is committed to supporting the saw in a way that, say, Home Depot is not.

The local Stihl dealer also does equipment rental, and they had just added a saw (Stihl 250) to their rental inventory. I figured renting would be a good way to compare saws and decide if I really wanted to do this kind of work.

I rented their 250 for 2 hours, and drove out to the land. I picked a downed Douglas Fir tree about 10" in diameter. It took several minutes to cut through, and there was a lot of smoke. Everyone I talked to said it was dull. I took it back to the rental place and they insisted it was sharp. As a total novice, I had no way to evaluate the problem.

The local hardware store also rents equipment, and they had a Stihl 260 available. I rented it for a 4 hours (same price) and went to cut the same log. It was perhaps slightly faster, but not much. I took it back.

I didn't know what to do. Why couldn't I cut a log? Were these places renting dull saws? Everything I read says there's no use trying to cut with a dull chain, so why would they do that? Maybe I was doing something wrong. Maybe I dulled the chain somehow?

I finally decided that I wanted to own a chainsaw anyway, and would work out the problems as I gained experience.

The Stihl dealership was steering me towards the 250 model, but I decided to spring for the 260 PRO model - more power, more reliable. I have a lot of cutting to do.

Strangely, some people seem to be happy to chainsaw with almost no safety equipment, while others cover themselves head to toe. As a novice, I figure I'm more likely to have an accident, so I decided to get the safety gear.

I walked out of the Stihl dealership with:

$530 Stihl MS260 PRO chainsaw

It looks like the 260 was just replaced with the 261. Having a little envy right now. What did I miss out on? I see the the bar nuts are captive. I've already lost one in the woods & replaced it.

$25 Filing kit

I also keep a small brush and screwdriver in here, so that's convenient. I don't use the file guide now, as I've learned to file freehand and prefer it.

$90 Chainsaw chaps

Since almost 1/2 of chainsaw injuries are to the legs, I thought this was a good idea.

$7 Quart of bar-and-chain oil

I had no idea how fast I would go through this stuff. 1 quart of bar oil lasts through about 1 gallon of gas. I later went back and bought a whole gallon.

Now I see they sell one based on vegetable oils that's partly biodegradable. Maybe next time.

$17 6-pack of 2-stroke engine oil (makes 1 gallon)

I already had a 1 gallon gas can to mix in.

$20 Lockable carrying case

So I could make sure the kids wouldn't get in to it. It's not an ideal case - it would be nice if it had compartments for all the stuff I want to bring along, like the chain file, bar oil, etc.

I bought this chain saw helmet from Amazon for $45. Having a face shield, ear protection, and hard hat all in one unit seemed very convenient.

I already have steel-toed work boots.

One thing I didn't buy yet is special chainsaw gloves. Long with leg injuries, many chainsaw accidents harm the left hand. Statistics say I should get these, but I hesitate.

Total bill so far: approx $800 including tax.

Yurt

Our neighbor offered to sell us her yurt. It includes the yurt platform, which is a significant expense. We have to move it.

It's 30' in diameter, for about 700 sq. ft. internal space. It was made by Pacific Yurts in 2004.

In talking to folks about yurts, I've learned that there's a lot of confusion about them. Many people think you're not required to permit them because they are temporary, like a tent. The building inspector I talked to didn't agree. He says that you can put one up for < 180 days without a permit.

My understanding is that the building department is complaint driven, meaning they won't notice an unpermitted structure unless someone complains to them. I bet you could put a yurt up without a permit for decades, and unless you pissed off your neighbor, it wouldn't ever be a problem. And if that did happen, the 180 day clock wouldn't start until that day. That's not my plan, though - I am going to permit it.

To permit it as a dwelling I'd have to install heat, plumbing, and a septic system. I don't want to do that, so I'm going to just permit it as a storage building. I can't live in it, and I can't install plumbing or heat, but it would still be very useful during construction of the house. And I have the option of converting it to a dwelling and renting it out in the future.

One advantage of going through this process is that it's easier than permitting the actual house we plan to build. So it lets us learn about the process and work out a bunch of issues (like roads!) without tying it to all the complexity of a residence.

To get the permit, I have to fill out a bunch of forms:

- A Master Permit Application, which is pretty simple in this case.

- Address request

- Road approach

- Stormwater calculation worksheet

In some ways it's simple. There's no existing "impervious surface" that affects stormwater. There's no plumbing, etc.

The county requires engineering calculations on the structure of the yurt. Pacific Yurts sent me the documentation. It's 87 pages long!

Road approach

I went to the county building department for information on applying for a building permit. I have to apply for an address and a "road approach". This turned out to be interesting. Here's a map for reference:

See interactive map

N. Jacob Miller is a paved, county-maintained road. Rainshadow Dr. is a private road that serves some upscale houses to the North. I think that those folks don't want to share their road with us.

When my area was platted, they drew in roads around each block, but none of them were ever built. My land is surrounded by Market, Fern, Moss, and Sutter streets, but they don't exist. It's all wooded, but people in the area cleared along the green lines marked above, and it's drivable.

I asked the building department if I could put a driveway in to Fern or if I had to go to Sutter, and they referred me to public works. There I learned that, since these roads weren't built within 5 years of platting, the county has no interest in them any more. So these streets don't really exist. I can put in a driveway to any of them, without a road approach permit.

However, an address would be on N. Jacob Miller Rd. The way the county does addresses is based on mileposts. They measure the distance from the start of the road to the address, in 100ths of a mile. Then they tack on an extra digit - evens on the right side of the road, odds on the left. In this case, we are 0.75 miles from the start of N. Jacob Miller, so possible addresses are 750, 752, 754, 756, and 758. And they are already taken:

To fix this situation, we have to create a new road (what would have been Sutter), with a new name, and number off of it. I can't use the name "Sutter" because it's already used slightly to the East. See it here, marked in yellow:

I may also petition to name what-was-never-Fern, because I'd like my driveway to connect there.

Once the naming happens, all the addresses around the new streets get new addresses, based on the same algorithm. For example, 754 N. Jacob Miller is about 500ft. down, so it might get 90 New Rd. If I don't name Fern, then 750 and 756 will get renumbered on to New Rd. If I do rename it, then they get numbers on Another Rd.

The name has to be unique in the county (here's the current list). It can't even sound like an existing name, so that emergency radio communication isn't confusing. It can't be vulgar or obscene. (Which is which?).

There's already a Memory Lane and a No Way in the area, so those are out. What names would you use?

Parcels in my area

Long ago someone platted out the neighborhood as 270' x 270' blocks, with 60'-wide roads and an alley through the middle of each block. Each block had 10 rectangular lots. It never got built that way, but you can see the remnants of that plan here:

See interactive map

The brown outline would have been a block, and the red is a single lot. You can still see the shape of the alley, too.

Since then, many parts of the county's rights-of-way have been handed over to the property owners adjacent, resulting in the complex set of property boundaries you see above. (The process for doing that is either "vacation" or "quiet title".)

The previous owner of my parcels did a "boundary line adjustment", as well as vacating the alley. So my parcels run North/South, while many others run East/West.

See interactive map.

An updated floor plan

It has been a while since I updated this blog. I don't have much new to say, but here is the latest design.

Things that have changed:

- Only one bedroom

- Kitchen changed shape - U opening West instead of South.

- Walls now 2' thick. The people who built the 1950 house I'm in now did the minimum then, and we suffer for it today. I figured as long as I'm going through the trouble of building the house, I want to over-do the insulation.

- Front door is now on the North side, near parking. The South side will open, perhaps a French door, but will not be a thoroughfare.

- The construction is likely to have large wood posts every 8' O.C. around the perimeter. On the south side, imagine the space between being almost all window, for solar gain and lovely views.

- Sketched in framing detail. Pairs of round posts in the corners, ideally from whole, peeled trees from our land. Pairs of 6"x6" milled timbers along the sides.

What's missing


The utility room may be too small.

We'd like some more closets.

I'm thinking the house could be a little bigger. We tried to buy a house last year at 1500 sq. ft. My design is about that, but has 2' thick walls. A 50' x 30' house with 2'-thick walls has 320 sq. ft. just in the exterior walls! I can add a little area and still call it 1500 sq. ft.

I threw a bunch of windows on the South. It's not quite right, just a sketch. Also, need a few windows on the other sides.

Slipform cordwood idea


I want to do slipform stone masonry for the first 2' of the walls. You rip a sheet of plywood in to a pair of 2' x 8' panels, brace with some 2"x4"s, and set them on either side of the wall as forms. Large rocks go in, followed by mortar. (To do a whole wall, you do it again 2' higher, repeating all the way up.)

I will attach my forms to my posts, making it easier to position them just right. I will only do 1 course of stone, as an accent and to protect against rain splash.

One of the problems in cordwood masonry is the detail where interior drywall butts against exterior cordwood. Cordwood typically has an uneven surface, and I want a clean, sealed joint with the drywall, for soundproofing.

My idea is to continue to use the 2' x 8' slipforms on the interior, as we build the cordwood wall. This will create a more even interior surface, which the drywall can butt against more cleanly. The exterior will have recessed mortar, as is common in cordwood construction.

Mapping out the land

I've been stuck on two problems. Later I'll write about the footing details, but right now I want to look at the mapping difficulties. This isn't the first time I've written about this problem, and it probably won't be the last.

The land is a full city block, 270 feet on a side. It is split in to two equal-sized parcels. The orientation is close to North/South, but appears to be about 3 degrees askew from true north. I can accept that error for now. (It appears to be ~7 feet off when I'm 1/2-way between two marked points, calculated as 'tan(3 degrees) * 270 / 2' but my trig is weak.). The great news is that it's already surveyed, with rebar at each of the corners.

I want to cut down as few trees as possible. I love the woods, and putting trees back is hard to do quickly. I know we'll clear some to build the house, and more later, but I want to do it incrementally. So, I walk around the land looking for areas that are already pretty clear, having few trees, or trees that are very small, or short-lived trees like Alder. I want to mark these down on the above map, but that is turning out to be tricky.

I tried using a compass and measuring tape, but ran in to a few difficulties:

- Taking a bearing on a compass is hard! Siting down the needle at a landmark is highly inaccurate. Maybe I can get within 5 degrees.

- The land is full of brush, making it hard to run a tape measure in a straight line.

- The land is full of brush (still?), making it hard to get around.

- The land is full of brush (no!), so I can't put up a reference string around the borders

I tried using the GPS unit that came with my Streets and Trips software, but it seems like the accuracy too far off for my purposes. I am going to try a GPS unit with WAAS next week.

As for getting around in the brush, I tried pulling Salal by hand (it works, but it's really slow) and I tried cutting with a machete (not much luck, maybe I'm not using it right). I'm going to look in to renting a brush cutter (a weed eater but with a blade instead of a string), and possibly buy a small tractor with a loader and excavator (should be useful in the future around the homestead).

Habitat for Humanity

I signed up with Habitat for Humanity, as a way to learn more about house building, on someone else's house. It seems like a good trade: they get my help, I get to learn. Perhaps I could draw some comparisons to apprenticeships.

The first day I got to build a set of steps. They work out of a semi-truck, with a door 4' off the ground. With an experienced carpenter calling the shots, we designed & built steps (6 of them), a landing (3' x 4'), and a handrail. Now that I've been up and down on it a bunch of times, I can say that we did a good job.

They are building 3 houses at once, right next to each other. The excavation of all 3 was done by professionals, as was the concrete work on house #3. The concrete work on houses #1 and #2 are volunteer-built. Some of the volunteers are locals (like me). The last two weeks were filled by the RV Care-A-Vanners, volunteers who travel around in their RVs building houses for Habitat. They're all at least a couple decades older than me, but they can beat me around the work site. Just when I think I'm keeping pace with them, I remember that they do this 5 days / week for two weeks, while just show up when I can. Wow.

On later days I helped build footing forms, then foundation/stem wall forms, then stripped forms off the concrete. Here you can see a detail of how we braced a corner before the pour:

The last couple times it was raining all day. Rain + concrete + excavated glacial till subsoil = pretty dirty work. I still managed to convince Julie to join me one day. Here she is looking sodden:

This activity has taken me away from directly working on our own house, but I suspect that the net result is a time savings, as my skills and knowledge improve. It has been especially helpful to compare the practices of the professional on house #3 to the way the volunteers work on #2. Getting two perspectives helps me see much more of the whole picture.

Lemonade

I worked on the "ferry" floor plan a lot, but couldn't ever get something I liked. It solved some of the problems in the "straight water wall" plan, but introduced some new issues, especially around the flow of the house. If I put the kitchen sink on the south side of the water wall, then the kitchen juts out in to the living area. Then the path through the house gets long and complex; it breaks the flow. Also, I never found a good place for an entry area.

After pushing and pulling on the shapes and not feeling good about the results, I decided to table it and try something different. I went back to the straight water wall plan, and pushed and pulled. A few things started to fall in to place. Finally things started falling in to place. I now present to you the result of that effort, the "lemonade" house. (The name is pretty arbitrary; I was drinking lemonade at the time.)



 Strangely I ended up with a U-shaped water wall like the ferry house that I had discarded. I think having it only 6' deep made things work out much better.

Things that work well:

- flow from one end of the house to the other is simpler than before
- kitchen isn't crowded against the South wall, nor is it so far back that no south light comes in
- It's 1246 sq. ft. heated area, so it should qualify as an ADU, if I understand the rules correctly
- 49'8' width is what works out well if I put 8" x 8" full-dimensioned posts on 7' centers, which is pretty arbitrary

I have some ideas about how the kids room will work out. Maybe a couple alcoves for beds, so the kids have their own spaces without having separate rooms. Maybe some closets in the middle to separate things a bit. Maybe we start simple and add more later. I need to understand the code requirements better, especially around septic system sizing, before I decide.

I wish the middle space was a little bigger. Our current house (which fits us fine) has about 100 sq. ft. more dedicated to the living room / dining room / kitchen. My drawing makes better use of that space, and part of the current living room is used for kids' toys, which could move in to the kids' room. On the other hand, making the public space as attractive as possible is good for bringing the family together.

I am thinking about the main entrance on the South being through a greenhouse. Imagine French doors to the greenhouse, which are kept open much of the time. Attaching a greenhouse to a cordwood building works well, as the thermal mass of the cordwood wall will moderate the temperature of the greenhouse (something greenhouses often struggle with). The greenhouse would help us capture a little more heat in the winter, and clean the air. It could also function as a mudroom, leaving that interior space open. It would be a beautiful space that makes a transition from the outdoors to the indoors, both emotionally and thermally.

I have spent almost 0 time in greenhouses, so I don't know how it would look, or how to make it beautiful, or if they're pleasant to be in.  Even thought I don't plan to actually build the greenhouse until well after the house is complete, I'd like to make the best plans for it I can.

Also, an interesting note about post strength. I ran through the math on the weight of the roof structure + snow, and looked at how strong the posts need to be to carry it according to code. For #2 Douglas Fir, the total cross-sectional area of all posts in the whole house, put together, needs to be about 7" x 7". Yeah, that's not much. Of course, the girt/girder/rafter/joist spans to hold all that weight would be insane...

Anyway:

- How would you adjust the spaces in this floor plan?

- Where would you put some doors?

- What do you think?

A point of reference

We're comfortable in our current house, although a few small changes would make it much nicer. To give us a point of reference, I drew the floor plan in SketchUp. I present it to you here:

1287 sq. ft. on the books.

The house was built as a rectangle, and then had two additions.

First the dining area was added to the kitchen. It's nice, with 3 large windows looking out at the neighborhood, although the temperature swings are wild. The East end of the large living room was originally the eating area. For us it's a kids' play area.

Later the bedroom on the North side was added. The hallway to that room was taken out of the bedroom on the West side, as was a small hall closet. The hallway takes 60 sq. ft. but offers very little in return.

I don't know when it was built, but there's a tiny water closet in the North bedroom. Toilet only, no sink. I imagine the original owner, a G.I. who had this house built as he started a family in 1950, had a hard time making the trip to the bathroom at night, 50 years later, so he had that toilet added. It belongs to our cats today.

There is forced air heat in the original bedrooms, bathroom, and living room. The North bedroom has baseboard electric heat, which stops us from putting furniture in useful places. The dining room has baseboard heat that we never turn on, because we're only in there for a short time each day, and because the floor is uninsulated, so it would be lost quickly.  The kitchen is unheated, but when we're cooking it's not bad.

A big complaint I have here is that there's nowhere in the laundry space to leave a basket of laundry. It only needs another 10 sq. ft. to be so much nicer.

While I'm at it, there is a cold air return in the floor in a high-traffic area. It hurts to walk on barefoot, and the kids' toes get caught sometime - very painful. Also, the hardwood floor finish is in very bad shape.

Our landlord offered to sell us this house, but it's more than we wanted to spend, and refinishing the floors would mean moving out entirely anyway, so what's the point?

Anyway, there's a point of reference for ya.

The "ferry" sketch

I was riding on the ferry to Keystone and came up with an idea that led to this floorplan sketch.

It has a lot of the same features as the  previous floorplan. The main difference vs. is that the wet wall is not straight; it's U-shaped. There's a bathroom on either side, and the kitchen sink would be to the south. Plumbing distances are even shorter. That leaves a much smaller utility room on the north side, instead of a huge attached garage I had before. That makes the structure a bit smaller, making construction more doable for this amateur.

The house less square, which is good for solar gain (more insolation on the South) and good for getting light in to the kitchen (previously the kitchen was much further from the windows).

It could better fit a shed roof, which might be good. A shed roof here could come down very low on the North, even to 6' high, as bedrooms and bathrooms can tolerate a low ceiling, while being quite tall (hopefully elegant) in the daytime spaces. (In the past I've lived in rooms with low sloping ceilings and hated it, but 6' should be OK.)

Square is better for central radiant heat (round is even better). Square also requires less exterior wall building for a given square footage (round is again better). So that's a compromise.

It optimizes for sunlight in the daytime spaces more than the sleeping spaces.

Note the alcove entering the rooms (possible bedrooms) on the East side, creating a transition from public to private space. The Northwest bedroom still needs that.

More to ponder...

Utility room

Many of the house floorplans I play with include an unheated utility area. The interior walls of this area are insulated. My understanding is that its square footage doesn't count for taxes or for the 1250 sq. ft. maximum ADU size.  Also, having a cool space like that right next to the kitchen is great for food storage and fermentation.

Additionally, I usually put all the plumbing in its walls, so I don't have to plumb in exterior cordwood walls.  This will make it much easier to repair and modify plumbing over time, which otherwise is a pain in the neck.

Sometimes I think this room will also be a mud room / airlock, used as the primary entrance by the people who live in the house.

I brainstormed a list of things I could put in that space that don't need to be in heated space.

• work sink
• domestic hot water heater
• boiler for radiant floor
• washer & dryer
• table to fold clothes
• recycling bins
• litter box
• server & wiring closet
• shoes & jackets

I also thought of stuff that we currently store inside the house or in the garage that would be better stored in this kind of space.

• spare rugs
• sofa cover
• off-season clothes
• art supplies
• files
• photos in boxes
• food (canned, fermented, dry)
• idle toys
• sewing machine
• spare litter
• soaps, shampoos, and other cleaning products
• broom, mop, bucket
• spare computer parts
• spare light bulbs
• vacuum cleaner
• basic toolset
• toilet paper
• sawdust for composting toilets
• laundry waiting to be washed or folded
• ironing board

The growing house

What if you don't want to build too big, but lots of small houses are too small? Another option is to build a small house that grows in time.

For example, a kitchen with an open space. At first you sleep in the open space and eat standing up. Then you add an addition with a couple sleeping rooms, and the open space becomes the dining area and social space. Maybe you add a den.

It has many of the advantages of the small houses approach, without requiring nearly as many walls. You have to get a lot of the planning right up front, though, or you end up with a very awkward layout. You also end up with huge exterior walls taking up interior square footage.

I think that an addition has to big enough to justify good construction. A tiny add-on space won't be worth the time, materials, and money of good insulation and foundation.

I suspect that we'll build the house in one go, but there are a few add-ons that might make sense.

An attached greenhouse is interesting. It can extend the growing season and sprout seeds. It can capture solar energy to heat the house more. It can act as an airlock to the main entrance of the house. It sounds nice to enter the house through greenery, year-round.

I'm toying with the idea of making the the greenhouse be a sitting room / enclosed porch, too. Somewhere that adults go to socialize or read. TV-watching and kids toys are in a different room, which could eventually become the 3rd bedroom. Not sure where this goes, just pondering it right now.

Build a collection of houses

One option I thought about for a while was to build a bunch of tiny buildings. For example:

• A kitchen, eating space.
• A shower, sink, toilet, drying chair, washer, dryer.
• Bed for parents.
• Beds for kids.
• Play space for kids.
• TV and sofa.
• Study.
• Workshop.
• Sauna.

Each could have a composting toilet and foot-pump handwashing station in the corner with a wall or curtain.

It would be easy to build the most important ones, move in, and then add more over time to match our ongoing needs. Some could be arranged in a circle, close together, making an "outdoor room" in between. Some could be nestled off in the woods on their own, for solitude. Framing and foundations get simple for small buildings. If we don't build the right thing, it's not a big deal. It's easier to be resourceful and thrifty on the small scale. If you don't have savings, you can get started without taking a loan, and grow as money allows. Many of the small buildings won't count as dwelling space for taxing. You can live in a finished space while working on the next one, instead of living in a house under construction.

I could experiment with different styles: One could be in the best sun spot, with solar panels on the roof. One could be round. One could have a living roof. 

We can even tear down one if it's really wrong without losing much.

However, there are some reasons not to do this:

Each one needs its own heating infrastructure. If there's a lot of thermal mass, then heating one up for just 1/2 an hour doesn't make sense. To get all the space of a full-sized house I'd need to build a whole lot of exterior walls, which means lots of materials, time, and money. Walking outside every time you go between rooms in the middle of winter is unpleasant. In the end, they'll take up much more space on the land. We're already a family of 5, not a couple getting ready to start a family. 

For now, we've tabled this idea. (In the U.S., to "table" means to set aside, to reject for a time; in the U.K. it means to open a discussion. I mean the first one.)

However, I'm still considering a full house with some outbuildings to be added over time.

House size

I've read the advice that an amateur owner-builder should build small.

I am trying to design a house that stays under the 1250 sq. ft. threshold, because the law would allow me (or someone who buys this land later) to add a new, larger house to the property, and count the small house as an "ADU" (Additional Dwelling Unit, to be rented out).

1250 sq. ft. is not unreasonable for us, even as a family of 5. 2400 sq. ft. is the average for new homes in the U.S, wow!

The house we're renting is 1287 sq. ft., and we're comfortable. I wish there was another 10 sq. ft. around the laundry, and an actual second bathroom with sink. But there's also a long hallway that wastes about 60 sq. ft. and the back bedroom is way larger than we need. This house is not well-insulated, but the one I build will be, with thick cordwood wall, probably 16" thick. The county measures external square footage, which discourages insulation (I could get R-35 with 24" walls, like they use in Manitoba) but I won't make the 1250 threshold, and I will be taxed more. (That way of measuring makes sense when you consider the effect of a house footprint on a neighborhood.)

So, 1250 is doable without giving up much.  Could we go smaller? Many, many people live in much less space.

We make good use of all the rooms in this house. One bedroom doubles as my study. Another as Julie's. Another is where Reid goes to play by himself. I don't like how we split up in to singles like that, and the fact that we spend most of each day indoors in front of screens. I hope that when we are living in a house in the beautiful woods, growing much of our own food, we will want to spend much more time outside. For now though, I need to use this computer just to figure out how we're going to get there.

I also know we can add outbuildings. Anything under 120 sq. ft. can go up without a permit, so I could add a couple of those as needed. Like a study where I can really get away from everyone to do work for money. Or a sauna!

An attempt at a footing

I was reading about footings and foundation walls, and tried to imagine how those might look in this house.

The purpose of a footing is to distribute the weight of the house so that it doesn't sink in to the ground ("settling"). Settling causes cracks in foundations, in drywall especially around openings, and doors that stick.

I would like this house to last for a long, long time, so getting the footing right is important.

A rule of thumb I've often read is to make the thickness of the footing equal to the width of the wall, and twice as   wide at is it thick.  A common insulated cordwood wall thickness is 16" (4" mortar, 8" insulation, 4" mortar). In Manitoba they build cordwood walls at 24" thick (4" mortar on either side, and 16" insulation, wow!). I want an energy-efficient house, but I need to balance that against how much wood I have, how heavy the cordwood logs will be, how much concrete goes in to the foundation, how much excavation the footing requires, and the fact that wall thickness is included in the official square footage for tax purposes. (Stupid, why charge people for good insulation? It incentivizes the wrong behavior.)  A 16" cordwood wall is about R-20, which is a common code requirement (although a well-built 16" cordwood wall will far outperform an R-20 conventional studded wall, because the studs transmit heat but are typically ignored in the calculations.)

Anyway...

A 16" x 32" footing, over the perimeter of a 40' x 40' structure requires about 21 (cubic) yards of concrete. At $75/yd, it's $1600.  That's just for the concrete, not for excavating or installing forms or anything else.  I plan to have a concrete slab subfloor, as well.  If you assume 4" thick, that's another 20 yards, or $1500 more. It's adding up, and we're not off the ground.

I like the slab for its high thermal mass for solar gain and comfort. It's also good for radiant floor heat, which is supposed to be very comfortable. I also don't have to build a crawlspace, so it keeps things simpler.  (Unfortunately, the systems you might put in a crawlspace, like waste plumbing, have to be built in to the slab, so that's a bit of work.)

If I'm going to all the trouble of pouring 21 yards of concrete in a footing, I'd like to take advantage of it for thermal mass. That means insulating the outside of the footing. I'll actually put Dow Styrofoam Blueboard panels down before pouring the footings.

In many places, the footings need to be deep, to protect against frost heaves. (As the ground freezes, it can move houses; it's very powerful.) I don't know what the frost depth is here, but it can't be much. It just doesn't get that cold, and not for very long. Still, a 16" thick footing will start off 16" below the frost long, so we're off to a good start. If the frost line is lower, I'll have to adjust.

Conventional thinking is that cordwood should start a foot or so above the ground. Codes often require 8" between grade and wood. The idea is that rain can splash up and invite rot. I could just pour a concrete wall there, but it's not that simple. I need a layer of insulation splitting that wall, and separating one side of it from the foundation.

One option is to use concrete blocks, which are 8" x 8" x 16" after 3/8" of mortar. (You can skip the mortar, and use surface-bonding compound, which is stronger and simpler for the novice, but the math is harder so I went with mortar.) I drew 3 courses of blocks, getting us 2' above the footing. I could go with 2' if I make the outside of the footing flush with the exterior wall, but in this drawing I filled in over the footing. Hmm...

To make the lower exterior wall more pretty, I drew stone masonry. When I first started thinking about house building, I read a lot about slipform stone masonry. It's absolutely gorgeous, and you can use found stones instead of paying for siding or whatever. But there are some issues: how to the the thermal mass on the inside of the insulation without building two walls? How to attach things to the walls on the inside? Could we find a sufficient supply of beautiful rocks in this area, where it's mostly glacial till?  But those issues are all resolved in this design, so I went ahead and included an 18" course of stone masonry on the exterior.

I could replace the interior concrete block with stone masonry as well.  Or I could use concrete block inside and out, for simplicity, if I make the wall 18" instead of 16" (8" blocks + 2" blueboard insulation).

In this drawing I know I ignored are drains to remove water from under the slab and around the footing. I don't know if they're required around here, but they seem like a good idea.

I also ignored the vapor barrier. It's so thin that modeling it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Still, getting it right is non-trivial, so I'll have to think about it more later.

Doing this drawing was a good exercise. It forced me to answer some questions that I hadn't hit before, because some ideas are impossible to draw.

A rough floor plan

Here's a floor plan that I've been working on. It's far from finished, but it's useful as basis for discussion.

Construction notes:

• Load is carried by large timbers (not drawn)
• Exterior walls are cordwood.
• Interior walls are conventional drywall over 2x4 studs
• The big wall north of the kitchens and bathrooms is 2x6 studded and insulated.
• Floor is poured concrete slab with embedded radiant heat tubing
• Slab and footings fully insulated
• Floor covering is homemade earthen terra tiles
• Garage is insulated and floor has unconnected radiant heat tubing, for later use
• South wall is full of windows

Features:

• Simple shape for cheaper roof
• High insulation, thermal mass, and south-facing windows for energy efficiency
• Under 1250 sq. ft. heated space, so codes will allow a large dwelling on the same property
• Noise of washer and dryer contained in garage.
• Attached garage contains holds functions that would normally be in heated space, making the heated space smaller.
• Open floor plan brings family together.
• Adults separated from kids at night.
• Door to garage is a functional entrance for the family.
• Short trip from garage to kitchen (for groceries).
• All plumbing is in one wall, easing construction and maintenance and keeping distance from hot water heater to kitchen short.

Issues:

• Kitchen is vague
• Not sure where front door should go.
• Not sure where sofa belongs
• No transition from public to private spaces
• Large fireplace would break the open space and block light to kitchen.
• Hot water to shower is not a short path.

The floor plan is drawn in Google SketchUp. If you're interested in taking a closer look, click on the image above.

More wires! I need more wires!

Cordwood construction makes exterior walls that are hard to change. A sledgehammer is required. Adding a new power circuit is tricky. My floor is also poured concrete, so no help there. I want to make sure to do what I can now so it's not a problem later.

I'm thinking of making putting a timber post every 8'. (Making plywood and drywall fit easily.) On one side of each post, I will run conduit with wire for power. On the other side of each post, conduit for low-voltage. In the middle of each panel, flex conduit left empty, for later expansion.

Code has power outlets every 12', so every 8' will be nice. And if that's ever too far, there's another spot just 4' away.  Goodbye extension cords.


I don't use ethernet now, except for short local runs. Wi-Fi is reliable enough and fast enough for me these days, and it keeps getting better. We don't watch cable TV. We don't use land lines. So the low-voltage may sit idle forever! But I know to build it anyway, because now it's easy and later it's hard.

I haven't though about interior wall wiring much. They're so much simpler to change that it's just not on my radar yet. I'll get to it at some point, though.

Pure Cordwood rejected

I was hoping to build the house with cordwood walls.  It has some of the beauty and low embodied energy of traditional log homes, but it's easier to build, better insulated, and way cheaper.  The walls look like a stack of firewood, with the ends visible.

The logs are held together with a matrix of mortar. The mortar doesn't go all the way through. It's 3" - 4" wide on each side, and in between is insulation, like sawdust.

The building department says this kind of construction isn't safe in this area, due to earthquakes. All the cordwood experts agree.  So now we've modified plans to do timber-framed construction with a corwood infill.

Hopefully we can use the wood we cut from our own property, but it will take a while to season. Also, there may be issues with grading the wood.  We'll see.

The trouble with insulation

It seems obvious at first that insulating a house well is a good idea.  As my brother put it, "It's a passive heating element. You do it once and you don't have to spend time or money on it again, unlike active heating."

Insulation is great. However, it's pretty hard to insulate well enough that no fuel heat is needed (in cold climates).  Let's take a closer look:

We measure insulation in R-value, typically per inch of thickness of a material. The exact unit is sq. ft. * degF delta / BTU.  

Concrete is R-0.08.  Softwood varies, but is around R-1.4. Fiberglass batts (what the pink panther sells) is R-3.1.  That means that 38" of concrete is about as good an insulator as 1" of fiberglass batts. 

The unit is kinda backwards; what you really want to know is "how much heat will I lose through this wall?" not "how well does this wall hold back heat".  For example, a conventional studded wall with 2" x 6" studs, fiberglass batts, drywall, Tyvek, siding, and paint will have an R value around 20 (which is the code requirement for walls in a lot of places). Suppose you keep the indoors at 70 deg F, and outside it's 40 deg F.  If the wall is 8' tall and 40' long, then the total heat loss in the wall is:

    (70 - 40) * 8 * 40 / 20 = 480 BTUs lost per hour.

Imagine a 40' x 40' house with no windows or doros, and a flat roof, with all walls, roof, and floor insulated this way. Wall area is 8' * 40' * 4 (320 sq. ft.). Floor & ceiling are 40' x 40' each (3200 sq. ft.).  

    (70 - 40) * (320 + 3200) / 20 = 5280 BTUs lost per hour.

Most of our heating happens over a 5 month period here, which is 3600 hours. That's about 19 million BTUs.  A cord of firewood is 17 MBTUs. Electricity has about 3400 BTUs per kWh; at $0.10 / kWh that's $550 to heat the house through the winter. Sound good to me.

There are some "free" heat sources in the house, like cooking, body heat, and computers. Models I've seen count these for 8 degF.  (Maybe I should become a server hosting colo facility, for the free heat).

What about windows? Windows are about R-1 per pane (not per inch). That's way lower than the wall, so we should avoid windows, right? But this is a house for people, not dry goods, and people really like windows. 2-pane glass is pretty common, so R-2 for glazing is reasonable. There are some super-expensive R-11 windows, but they are xenon-filled, which leaks out over time, and they lose their insulation value. They also have coatings that reduce the amount of solar gain.

If you have a lot of windows, adding insulation to the walls won't help much: the heat isn't going out there anyway.  

You also lose a lot of heat through "air infiltration" aka "ventilation". We typically want the indoor air to circulate outside, carrying out toxins and bringing us oxygen. Old leaky houses (like the one I'm in now) replace the full volume of air about twice each hour. The tightest houses today only replace 1/3 of the air each hour, but they have to work hard to maintain air quality. For example, they may use an air-to-air heat exchanger so the outgoing air pre-warms the incoming air. I'm thinking about "earth tubes" - long PVC pipes that snake under the ground to pre-warm outside air on the way in. They're passive once built.  

Since windows and air replacement are the main sources of heat loss in a well-insulated home, adding more insulation doesn't get you much. Doubling wall/floor/ceiling insulation won't cut your heat bill in half.  I did a lot of spreadsheet modeling this stuff, and ended up with numbers like this:

1: Exterior wall heat loss (BTU / degF / hr) 23

2: Roof or ceiling loss 56

3: inviltration loss 166

4: heat lost through glass w/out insulation 150

Restricting windows also takes away the potential for free heat from the sun. Solar heat is tricky: it is most plentiful when it's least needed. Awnings and deciduous trees are good for moderating summer sun while allowing winter sun. Still, we need the heat at night more than during the day. A well-insulated house with lots of south-facing windows will definitely be hot on summer afternoons. All those windows will mean cold winter nights, too. Ack! The solution is thermal mass. It evens the heat out between day & night. My floor will be an insulated concrete slab w/ earthen tiles over, so lots of thermal mass and conductivity there.  The walls have a mortar matrix that provides more thermal mass.

Get enough thermal mass and you can even the heat out between winter and summer. We don't get enough summer heat to do that here, but it works in many places.

There are "active" solar heat systems that are pretty cool, but more complicated. One is to dig a deep pit under the house, insulate it, put a network of (internet?) tubes through it, and fill it with gravel.  In the summer, collect solar heat on the roof and pump it down to the bottom of the gravel. The heat will slowly move through the gravel, and arrive at the house in time for winter. The math on this is pretty easy.  It's a neat idea, but way too complicated & expensive for us.

You'll notice above that the surface area of the floor & ceiling are 10x the area of the walls. Roofs are also expensive.  That suggests a two-story building, which cuts the top & bottom surfaces in half while adding only a little to the wall area. 

However, there are some downsides: working up high in the air is harder, especially for us novices. The engineering of a two-story structure is more complex.  A little floor area is lost to the stairwell. Some facilities have to be duplicated between top & bottom floors, so you aren't always running up & down the stairs to pee, or to get a screwdriver.

Of course, two-story is nice in other ways, too. It provides a clear separate of public & private spaces. It's easier to put all the plumbing together, if one bathroom is on top of another.  Maybe for the next house.

Anywhere, where does all of that leave us?

- Smaller is cheaper & more efficient.

- Insulate walls well, but don't worry about it too much; most heat will go out the windows and vents.

- Caulk well, but make sure you still have fresh air.

- Use good windows. More panes are good.

- Put most of the window area on the south side of the house.

- Have enough thermal mass for the window area. More thermal mass is good, but don't break the bank.

A visit to the city's public works department

While the land is outside city limits, it's within the city's water service area. That means that I get municipal water instead of drilling a well.

As part of the feasibility study, I went by the Public Works office to find out how much it would cost to connect to the water. They gave me this:

In addition, there's a "latecomer fee". Someone else in the area recently paid to extend the water main in to our neighborhood, at considerable expense. Because we benefit from it, when we hook up, we will pay a portion of that expense. The price is based on the "frontage" of the property: the length of the propery along the street. In our case, the parcels are each ~140 feet wide, so that's an additional $5000.

So:

$1,335 water meter - tap in to main line

$  250 water reservation - county

$2,522 system development charge water

$5,040 latecomer fee

Total about $9000. That's just fees to hook up to water. It's not the work we'll have to do, like digging the trench and connecting the plumbing. Since there are two parcels, if we wanted to build on both, it'd be $9000 for each parcel.

I was told that wells are about $3000 for a 100 ft well, but some are 300 feet deep at $9000. At that rate, a well might make sense. Especially because the ongoing costs of a well would be less than the city water. But I was also told that if there's city water available, they don't want you to dig a well, so I guess that's not an option.

In the long run, I think I can get our water consumption very low, by collecting rainwater and recycling graywater. I wonder if we'll ever be able to turn off the water service entirely? Ask me again in 10 years.

A visit to the county planner

Here it's called the Community Development Services: the portion of county bureaucracy that decides who can build what, where, and how.

I went to visit the Planner of the Day, who has open office hours so you can just drop in with questions.

I told them the tax ID, and they looked it up on the computer. They looked for sensitive wetlands, bald eagle nests, and landslide-prone areas. Nothing came up, so they said it should be OK.

The county health department has its offices right next door (I didn't even have to go outside), and they gave me a copy of the septic permits.

I wish I didn't have to build a septic system at all, using composting toilets and graywater to an orchard instead, but the rules don't allow that, so...

I do want to clear to the south for sun to the house and garden, and a drain field has to stay clear of anything with deep roots. Grasses & wildflowers are OK.

If I'm reading the design correctly, there's a space designated for a drain field, and then a second space for a replacement drain field if the first one fails (because it fills with roots, for example).

Maybe I can build in the designed "reserve" on the bottom-right, thereby letting the south-east sun in at the same time.

Making sense of the land

We walked the land the other day, and tried to get a better sense of its shape.

Looking at pictures from the air, I see that while it is densely wooded. I don't want to loose much woods if I can help it. We probably need to clear for:

• A yurt as temporary shelter
• A deluxe outhouse (with shower, washer, and dryer) to make things comfortable for my family while we're building
• A driveway. 
• A garden
• A septic drain field
• A "solar easement" to the south, so light can come in
• The house + garage

There's a slope down on the south side of the property, and I wanted to get a better sense of where it is. I tried walking the land with a laptop + GPS, and writing down latitude & longitude of key points. I then plugged the numbers in to Google Earth and got this.

There are 4 pins in the image that mark the corners of the land. The 'S' pin divides the land in to two parcels. I want to keep the option open of selling one parcel in the future. The 'Top of Rise' pin shows where the land slopes down to the South-East. North of that is pretty flat, except for the very north side of the property.


Measuring distances under 100 ft with GPS is tricky, because there is a built-in error in the GPS signal. If you stand still, your GPS will say that you're walking around at about 1 mph. By moving quickly between positions, you can get good relative measurements, though.

To help get better measurments, I just bought a 200' tape measure for $20 at Amazon:

Later that same day I went to measure my current kitchen at Amazon, and discovered that the tip of my 16' tape measure had broken off. Just as I took the last measurements, the kids caused the tape to be sucked up in to the body, making it useless. I ordered this replacement ($11) which will arrive tomorrow:

I did discover that my current kitchen has 15' of counter, plus a 26" square corner area. The range also has 15" of built-in counter-like space on one side.

Under contract

Yesterday we came to an agreement with the seller on price and terms. The property is now "under contract".

We have 30 days to perform a "feasibility study". I don't really know how this goes, but it includes things like finding out the costs of hookup to utilities, and asking the county about our plans.

In this case, we already have a septic permit, there's city water in the street, and electricity is also in the street. So it should go pretty smoothly.

Build a house

[reposted from http://jbazuzi.blogspot.com/2009/12/weve-been-looking-for-house-to-buy-and.html]

We've been looking for a house to buy, and haven't quite made it. We got close - an offer on one that didn't stick, and another that was already pending when we found it - but for now we're still looking.

Eventually I decided to revisit what I had learned about alternative house construction. Materials with low embodied energy, reclaimed materials, build-it-yourself, insulation, thermal mass, solar gain, and integrated design.

That last one is important. Integrated design. By that I mean thinking about how each part of a house design relates to the rest. For example, laying out the floor plan so the plumbing can all be together ("wet wall").

In Permaculture (and in nature) every element serves multiple roles. Chickens don't just produce eggs; they also consume food scraps, protect the orchard from pests, turn soil in the garden, and produce fertilizer. In conventional house construction, we use studded walls, meeting the needs like this:

strength - studs, OSB sheathing

fire resistance - drywall

insulation - fiberglass batts

beauty - drywall, siding, paint

thermal mass - none

Contrast that to Cordwood, my current DIY favorite.

strength - cordwood

fire resistance - cordwood

insulation - conrdwood

beauty - cordwood

thermal mass - cordwood

Furthermore, Cordwood is cheap and accessible for the amateur. No fiberglass to make you itch, either.

In addition to building our own house, we'd like to grow much of our own food. Chickens, ducks, goats, honey bees, a small orchard, and a big garden. Maybe pigs. You don't need a whole lot of space to do that, but I don't want to be buying a lot of food for the animals: I want them to roam and forage for themselves a lot. That means having a little land. I don't need to produce enough food to sell, but I do hope to produce more than we need and trade or gift the surplus.

Then again, I don't want some sort of rural McMansion. A hundred acres I can call "mine". 3000 sq. ft. of house at $120 / sq. ft., with active solar heat management and laminated "green" floors. Driving 20 miles just to see friends or by shampoo.

We've found 1.7 acres for a reasonable price. That's more than enough to grow all the food we can eat, but not enough to feed all the animals we could want. That's OK.

It's outside the city limits, which gives us more leeway with codes & construction methods. However, it's right over the line, so we're close to stuff, including a bus line. It also has city water in the street.

It's wooded. I have reservations about clearing land. But the alternative is to buy land that someone else has already cleared, which isn't much better. However, land that has been abused (e.g. gravel pit) and is super-cheap would be an opportunity to bring rich life back, which I like. Anyway, I love the woods so being wooded isn't terrible. And having a supply of wood for building and fuel is good, too.

In the new year we plan to put an offer on the land. Then we'll build an outhouse to explore the building techniques we're thinking about. Then a temporary shelter. We have a year on our current lease to get all that done and then start building.

I also hope to inspire others with my example, and by teaching what I learn. You don't have to have an enormous, expensive, toxic, wasteful home. It can be modest and comfortable and beautiful and cheap and healthy.

More to come, I hope.