blountlygreen
Blountly Green
Blog about straw-bale construction, sustainable living, and more!
11 posts
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Librarian on a Roof (Briefly)
For the record...me and heights are not the best of friends. I am mostly ok if I feel I have a good firm balance and something solid under my feet. Trusses did NOT qualify emotionally.
Needless to say, I was not exactly the most useful person for this part of the project. With a full time job (yes, as a librarian) I'm not working on the project as much as I would like. In this instance, my usefulness was depleted even further. I did try to make myself as useful from the ground as I could however.
Anyways, now that that disclaimer is out of the way, on to the roof!
First off, there are a LOT of roof styles out there. Since this was a relatively straightforward rectangle house, there was no need to get complicated.
So what did we do? Get complicated. Instead of a basic roof, we decided to do a hip roof. What is a hip roof you might ask? A hip roof is one in which both the sides and the ends have an incline. We could have done a shed roof, in which there is only one incline and is comparatively simple to build. We could have done a standard roof, with each long side inclined down.
Nope. We picked a hip roof. BUT we had a reason. While straw-bale is a sturdy building method, when it comes to building a house the more water you can naturally direct away from the building the better. Now, my dad's straw-bale house does NOT have a hip roof, and it's done perfectly well for two decades despite being two stories and two shed roofs (the second floor in dad's house is only half, so there is one shed roof on the first floor, and a second shed roof on the half second, plus the covered porch roof that's tacked on).
So it isn't absolutely necessary to build a more complicated roof. But it is really helpful. Dad wanted to make sure this time around the walls were more protected from rain, and I suggested the hip roof style. Dad liked it, so a hip roof with a 2 foot overhang was what we went with. Speaking from further ahead on this project, it's also done great so far. I can't say we've had horrible storms, but we did have straw up without stucco for a few weeks as we worked to get ready for stucco without any problems, despite multiple instances of rain. It maybe got slightly damp in areas depending on where the rain was coming from, but never very noticeably. Maybe we could have done a longer overhang on the sides most commonly exposed to rain here, but overall the 2 foot overhang is doing great.
Just remember, this kind of thing is dependent on location though. Alabama gets a respectable amount of rain, but in other places you might be wanting to prep for anything from snow to only a couple of inches a rain a year. Look to see what is a concern in your area and more specifically on your site, and go from there.
Anyways, the next concern was building the hip roof. Now, there are plenty of diagrams out there and we certainly could have done it ourselves. It would have been time and material exhaustive however, so we decided to go with a company that specialized in building trusses. They know how to do it, they know how to do it fast, and in the end we decided it would actually be cheaper to do it this way.
And we were pleased with the results. We put in our order with enough time to keep working on getting ready for the roof, and got them right about when we were ready for them.
They came labeled, they came with a diagram for where each one goes, and they made the whole process decidedly easier. If you want to do a more complicated roof and do not have a lot of experience with roofs, I highly recommend at least considering going with someone local instead of trying to build it yourself. The materials can be expensive unless you're harvesting the wood yourself, and getting all of the measurements right for something like a hip roof can be daunting if you've no experience with it. We were definitely happy with the experience.
As it was, getting some of those darn things up could be complicated. Trusses were lighter than beams might have been, but those bigger ones sure were awkward to maneuver. We got as much help as we could to get them up. This is also where people who are more comfortable with heights are REALLY useful.
From here, it was mostly a matter of getting each one up and putting in the braces between as we went.
We also put some temporary bracing up as needed.
Looking really good here (in my own opinion).
Next was the roofing material. I decided I wanted to go with a metal roof. I like the look and it is a longer lasting roofing material. Dad has tile on his, but those can break. And I really don't like shingles.
After talking to the company we found to buy the metal roofing from, we found out they had what amounted to (in my opinion) fancy bubble wrap. It was bubble insulation, with a shiny side to help reflect heat away from the house. We really liked this idea because more insulation is always great, so first we had to put that up.
Pro Tip: try to do this on cloudy days or when it's cooler. There was a lot of complaining about the reflected heat. On the plus side...the reflective properties of the material was definitely confirmed.
The white side was placed down, obviously, so that the reflective side faced the sun. Dad tried to drape it slightly between the trusses so that if water did make it down there it would stay well away from the wood.
Another pro-tip: be careful on windy days. This stuff DEFINITELY wants to blow away...it's bubble insulation. It's light. Be careful if you use this.
Dad DID manage to convince me to get up on the roof once. I made sure to take photographic evidence. Behold!
(I think dad was embarrassed about how hard it was to get me on and off the roof. Or at least bewildered. I think I took at least five minutes to get back off the roof to the ladder, and dad proceeded to do it in like thirty seconds. *sigh*)
At least the view was nice. As you can see, dad laid boards across the top of the insulation to screw the metal roofing panels onto. He covered these with tar paper for a bit of extra protection with staples to tack it down.
Pro tip: best way to cut tar paper we found is scissors. We tried a hand saw, a circular saw, and a blade. Scissors seemed to work the best, though it was time consuming. Sawing just messing up blades.
This is the metal I chose for the roof. I loved the color. They gave us screws that were painted to match the color as part of the sale, so you don't really see them.
And here we are with the completed roof! Well, minus storm gutters, fascia, or any of that, but still. As you can see in this picture, by this time we'd gone ahead and gotten the straw. Guess what we'll be starting to talk about next time!!!
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Holding up the Roof
When you build with straw, there are two different ways to do so: load-bearingand infill. The two terms are somewhat self-explanatory, but basically with the load-bearing method, the straw takes the weight of the roof, and with infill you put up posts to support the weight of the roof and fill in with straw.
Load-bearing means you can't put your roof up until your walls are up. This is more of a monolithic style of construction, where the entire building is made into what amounts to one large whole. An igloo qualifies as monolithic construction, for example, actually possibly the earliest example of monolithic domes. This is a perfectly valid way of building a straw-bale house and saves on wood. On the negative side, you're having to do a lot of work to protect your straw until you can get your roof built if you live somewhere with rain, and we have had a very rainy spring/summer.
This is why I decided to go with the alternative method of infill. It's easier, plus you can put your roof up first to help protect your straw until you get at least that first coat of stucco on. A book I HIGHLY recommend reading, if I haven't yet recommso, is Building Green. I LOVE this book, and hate that it got wet on my last move which rather ruined my copy of it. It covers a variety of methods, explains things in an easily understandable manner, and it is chock full of pictures and diagrams and tables. Beginners won't find themselves scratching their heads, but it also has a lot of great information for those more familiar with construction. It covers everything from principles of building to why it's important to design a building to the site it's being built on to walking you through the construction process. They actually BUILT a small guest house using all of the methods in the book so you can see what they write about in action. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Anyways, enough with my gushing. Using the infill method meant that we were putting the roof up first, so we needed some posts. Dad had a friend who'd recently cleared some trees off his property, so we were able to get some wood at a good price. It was mostly pine, and had some insect damage, so dad made sure his 'posts' were more like...I don't even know what to cal them.
Needless to say, these things are pretty darn sturdy. I took a lot of pictures while we were putting these together offsite at dad's house, and then proceeded to accidentally delete them later thinking I'd already downloaded them. Not happy about that, but here is at least the finished product. Two-three boards to either side with short boards connecting them together up the inside. Inner and outer bracing boards. Boards to connect the huge suckers down to the concrete in the foundation wall. These suckers aren't going ANYWHERE.
Part of why he built them as wide as he did (besides the added strength) is because by this point we'd decided not to have the exposed wood. We tried it out, and it took a while to do it at home, the rougher boards didn't look as good which would mean a LOT of sanding, plus dad was leery about all that naked wood. We came to a compromise on doing stone corners instead. The wood is going to later support a stone veneer that will help break up all the white of the outer walls (which is pretty much just a visual personal preference of mine). We have a lot of local rock quarries a short drive away and this will hopefully be even more watertight.
Here's a closer look on the connections from the posts to the concrete.
Here's an outside view.
Here we are with some of the smaller posts with temporary bracing and the top beams.
You can see that the smaller posts are actually two smaller lengths of wood secured to one another.
The smaller beams were secured similarly to the larger corners. I have pictures of just a smaller post, but the weather was crappy that day and you can't even really see it that well anyways. Here is one a little closer up though.
And then the carport area:
Even the posts here are neatly secured to concrete! You can also see we used the rest of the gravel to fill in so that area was flat, and we put some of the spare rocks around the edges for both shoring up and to look nicer. Underneath that gravel was a lot of rubble though-if you have or can get a hold of rubble, it's a lot greener and more cost effective to fill in those deep areas with crap that might otherwise be thrown away instead of paying extra for a lot of gravel or whatever else you might be thinking of using.
Next up, trusses and the roof! It's going to be another monster of a post, be warned!
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Odds & Ends & Sewage Systems
This is kind of a mish-mash of a few oddball things before we get going on supports & such. First, here's something I want to address from my last post that I forgot to mention, and that's how we sealed the side entrance into the crawl space.
Only two blocks high, but we did stuff some straw into the bottom.
We built this frame for concrete to go above so we could connect the whole thing together and give us something to put the straw bales on.
Then we filled in a bit with some concrete on the bottom.
And here's how it looked after most of the frame was removed. A bit awkward to work straw around, but we preferred it to having nothing there.
Next, let's address real quick the 'exposed' wood. Termites are, not surprisingly, something we wanted to make sure we avoided. So we will be stuccoing on the inside & outside (though the inside is a little more complicated and deserves a post of its own). Still, because we will be putting straw on top of this we decided to add a metal insect barrier:
This is getting a little ahead of ourselves in the telling, but I wasn't able to get any pictures of putting it down. Flashing is basically something that prevents water going someplace it shouldn't. It's frequently metal, and in this case is doubling to help keep insects from going up as well. We will be stuccoing up to that edge, and down to that, and the metal will remain there to help keep insects from going up as well as give us an obvious place to check in the future.
Next is our french drain (I'm not sure why it's called that). Basically, it's a drain pipe you can put around the house to direct water away. A big part of building a house seems to be keeping water out of your house. Anyways, the problem areas were the north side towards the road, where the land is higher and everything is sloping down into the house, and then directing that water away. So we dug a trench, laid down some plastic to help direct water down and away, put down perforated pipe at the bottom of the trench, put some cloth over the pipe to let water in while keeping other things out, and put gravel over that sloping away from the house. Later, we'll be putting larger rocks on top but this is what we've got for now. We took that pipe around the west side and french drain was complete!
Later, I am going to put in a terrace wall and make a large front garden, leaving room for a walkway around the house. This will serve two purposes: one, I hate mowing and am not a fan of large lawns in general. Two, it's going to catch the water run off from the road, and divert it to whatever flowers I plant instead of putting all the burden on the french drain. Hopefully it will also be visually appealing, but we'll see how it goes.
Here's where it comes out.
We had extra gravel, so we used it to level out a few places like inside the house and where the rainwater collection tank will go. I'm going to skip pictures because this is already a very graphic heavy post.
Lastly today, sewage! Fun stuff...
As you probably know by now, you don't have to dig down far on my property to reach rock. This is great for a solid foundation, not so great when you don't have city septic to connect to. We had someone come out and dig around, but we didn't find anywhere that would be a good place to connect a septic tank. We did some research, and there are some (expensive) options for places where septic tanks aren't going to happen. Here's a link to one article on the subject. Here's another. And there's obviously more information out there. One thing they all have in common is that they are expensive. I am one person living by myself, and everything was getting pretty excessive. My dad talked with the county, and convinced me to make a deal with my neighbor after making sure it would be ok with the officials. We'd share her septic tank. There is a concern about what will happen if my neighbor changes, but there are options out there if that happens and I'll deal with it as it comes up.
The first fun bit was finding it. This septic hadn't been cleaned out in a LONG time, so she could only give us vague directions for where to look. Since we have a major bamboo problem, this meant clearing out some bamboo as we basically dug a lot of places to look. Finally we found it, and next was connecting everything.
Basically it was a game of connect the pipe. There's a solution that you put on to clean and help bond, and then the glue.
Make sure this is pointing towards the direction you want it to flow...obvious when you look at it right, but if you're hurrying and not thinking BAD mistakes happen. Dad had decided to put a hook up spot for if there is a trailer at my place, which this particular piece was a part of.
Here's what that piece looks like on. Also, remember as you dig you want the pipes to slope down. Perhaps this is something else that should be obvious, but GRAVITY IS YOUR FRIEND.
And here's what it looks like closer up with the connecting pipe up, with a cap on. Caps are good. You don't want anything going into this pipe but what is supposed to.
And off we go! The land is naturally sloped, but we did still check it as we went and made sure there weren't any ill-timed bumps.
Now that that's over with, back to our regularly scheduled programming. This was a monster of a post to get through, but finally made it!
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Block it!
I'm alive! Boy, I loathe being sick. Sorry for the temporary interruption, but back to getting caught up!
So, we had our foundation footer, minus a couple of hiccups. Once the footer had dried enough we took the frames off (some of them were less cooperative than others). I apologize for not having pictures from the framing portion before and after but by this time I had gotten a full-time job. I am blessed to have a father who is willing to spend a large portion of his spare time on this project even when I'm not there, but it does mean there are things I am not there to help with or take pictures of. It's unfortunate, but having a job does help me actually PAY for a house so...
Well, the footer part of the foundation was done. Next was a foundation wall that would surround the crawl space and determine how high the floor of my house would be. We decided to use concrete blocks for this. Why not earthbags, or just do the whole thing in straw-bales? Well, with the earthbags it went back to why we decided not to build with them in the first place-we were and are unfamiliar with the process. Foundations aren't something you want to take chances on. Also, it would take more time to fill the bags with dirt, lay and tamp them, etc. As for straw-bales, we wanted them raised further away from the ground. Straw-bales are a pretty sturdy building material but it's better to take measures to keep them from getting wet, even once the stucco is on. To avoid splashback from the ground, we decided to do a concrete block wall as a base before starting with the straw-bales.
So, blocks it was. Not the most environmentally friendly option on the surface, but having a house that lasts longer versus needing to rebuild when it rots out around you means that much longer before the house will ever need to be rebuilt. A little more resources now to avoid a lot more in the future, basically.
For the blocks, my parents knew some people who did it professionally. They have a busy schedule, but turned out they were able to squeeze a small job in. It was a small crew but boy could they move. It might have taken weeks to accomplish what they did in a couple of days. As prep, we set up those wooden frames you see above. The point of those was to use to stretch out string to line the blocks up against. There was a lot of making sure everything was as close to perfectly square as possible, but the time to set up paid off. Those bricks were laid with precision.
If you'll notice, instead of doing the concrete flat all around we terraced it. This was done precisely to the height of a block. This helped counteract the slope on the property, which doesn't seem big when walking it but makes a huge difference when building. Also note that we used larger concrete blocks to more closely match the width of a straw-bale.
Since they were squeezing us in, dad didn't have as much time to decide where our pipes would go. It's a lot easier to do this while building the wall then after, so I highly recommend figuring that out first. We had to add a couple in later, and we're probably not going to use all the ones you see in this picture. Oh well. Live and learn. Someday we'll figure out rushing is bad.
Here you get a better idea of the slope. The high side is only three blocks high, where the low side is six. We could have done two high on the low, but since a lot of our wiring and plumbing will be through the crawl space we decided to make it less of a crawl space and more of an I can actually access everything without having to army crawl space. A little more expensive, but personally I would MUCH prefer to have a crawl space I am comfortable going down into.
A few things to note in this photo. We left an entryway for the crawlspace, though our main entryway is actually going to be through the floor of the house (more on that later). There are poured columns we did when we did the footer that will be used to place sturdy supports for the floor of the house. Also, we did a lot of work to smooth out the center of the crawl space. There were a lot of rocks we picked out so that the floor would be as smooth as possible since we didn't want to pour concrete. We felt this was a more environmentally friendly option instead of wasting a bunch of excess materials and money. It isn't needed and we'll be securing it from creepy crawlies another way. Also, for extra stability you can see the start of us creating a channel. You can see it a little better in the next pictures:
We simply made a cut down, and then knocked out pieces with a hammer. Pieces were thrown aside for use in rubble in the driveway, though some fell down where we couldn't retrieve them.
Then we started securing wood along the edges, to build the edge up for the concrete we were going to pour. By the way, this was originally done accidentally in untreated wood. Once we realized they'd given us the wrong product, we had to take everything down and redo. It was a waste of time and some materials, but we were able to salvage most of the wood.
Here you can see why we were doing this. We drilled and placed the vertical rebar while doing the block wall, so the vertical rebar is secured to the footer. Then we stuffed the holes without rebar with straw for insulation and ran pieces of rebar horizontally around the whole thing.
Finally we put concrete on top. This is a pretty freaking sturdy wall. The straw provides extra insulation and kept us from pouring concrete down every hole (which would be excessive & expensive) but the concrete and rebar help make it a seriously solid foundation that is connected from base to top as more of a solid whole then a bunch of stuff stuck together.
Tip: in the background, you see the bags we got the concrete from sitting on top. We soaked them before hand and having it shaded & moist helped slow the curing process so it would be stronger.
Well, there's more to come but for today I think we covered a lot! Looking forward to posting the next one soon! I've got the posts, roof, finishing out the crawlspace, sub-floor, and starting on straw to go. Phew. We're going to start on stucco this weekend. Let's see how fast I can catch up!!!
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The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock-Foundation
Once we'd cleared off the lot and had an idea for the house design, it was time to start working on the house. First we had to pick where the house would be. We moved stakes all over the place until we finally decided to cut down the tree in front and have it closer to the road. I loved that tree and was sad to see it go, but it wasn't in the best of condition. There was rot where the branches all came and met at the center point, and having the house further up kept us from having to cut some of the trees in better health further back to make room.
Our original plan for the foundation was to skip the crawlspace and build on a concrete slab. Yes, concrete isn't the greenest of options, but I wanted and still want a floor that is low maintenance, lasts, and stands up to pets. I loathe carpet. Hardwood floors are beautiful, but it is frustrating to me when they get scratched or their finish wears off. Tile is beautiful, if cold, but more importantly I despise cleaning grout. Frankly, part of my goal with this house is to make it as easy to maintain as possible, and floors that are going to require a lot of effort in the future had zero appeal to me.
So, polished concrete floors it was, or so I thought. By some lucky circumstances my step mother met someone while getting a hair cut that did polished concrete professionally. Dad was a little leery about not having a crawlspace that would provide access to things like plumbing and electrical, but admitted it would be great to have the slab and be done. It seemed heaven was smiling down upon us but that smile was false. The man we found was (understandably) busy so we ended up checking with someone else we knew about doing some preliminary work leveling and possibly even pouring the concrete before getting it polished. Unfortunately the slope of the property did not lend itself well to a concrete slab, and if we followed through we would be using a great deal of concrete to even things out. It was still doable, but the amount of concrete required went from defendable to nope.
So, concrete was out. We were back to a crawlspace to level things up, and as long as we were doing a crawlspace we decided it would be one you wouldn't be having to army crawl through. Crawl spaces freak me out, and I wanted to have one I felt comfortable going into. So we revised our plans while continuing with work on the site. We went ahead and had the site leveled and the stump removed.
Obviously, this is also something you can do yourself, either by renting equipment or getting lucky and having a friend who has some you can use. Or you can do it the old fashioned way with shovels and rakes. If that is the method you chose, I wish you all the best. May whichever higher power you believe in (if any) have mercy upon your soul. We found room in the budget to pay somebody.
Next was the channel for the foundation. We had that dug as well, and then cleaned it up. We also made sure to have deeper spots that functioned like anchors going down into the earth. There is undoubtedly a more official term for those, but my body decided now was a great time to come down with something but I'm determined to catch up so I'm just going to be lazy and not google the answer in order to just get this done and posted. Brutal honesty here folks.
Now, here is where the title of our post comes in. If you don't recognize it, it was part of a children's church song I learned when I was younger. I'll skip the full version, but it amounts to the foolish man building his house on the sand and it being washed away, and the wise man building on rock and it lasting. Northern Alabama contains the foothills of the Appalachians and I found them, because we've dug down and hit bedrock several times over the course of this building project. It's hard to see in the picture, but I promise you that's rock:
Suffice it to say, we had a feeling our foundation was going to be pretty darn solid. And finally it came...concrete day!
Now, can you spot something that doesn't belong in that picture? It might be a little difficult, but just there, to the left, big grey blob...yes! Why is there a bunch of concrete just poured out over the dirt?! Let me tell you. The guy who we ended up getting to do the concrete had told us he was coming on a Friday. He called us up I think either late Sunday or early Monday and was basically surprise, coming Monday! We weren't fully ready, and worst of all Dad had been asked to be a pallbearer for a family friend who'd recently died at the funeral that afternoon. Surely, SURELY that would change his mind and let us do it the originally planned day.
Nope. He had vacation coming up and he wanted to get all of his jobs squared away before or wait until after. And dad had worked with him before, it would be safe to leave him working on his own while dad went to the funeral, right...?
Nope. Now, don't get me wrong he's a nice guy, but he grossly miscalculated how much concrete we would need and poured the extra out in the area set aside for the carport. Dad had given him permission to do so, thinking it would just be a little and we were planning on building things up anyways, but there was a LOT. Best of all, it was poured in the area we'd decided we would be putting our water tank for rain water catchment and we didn't actually want it there, at least in that amount. We had to break the thing up into pieces. We do not, surprisingly, own a jackhammer and it took hours. We ended up using the pieces as rubble fill for the part of the carport where the car was actually going to go, but it was a waste I loathed. We had plenty of used concrete blocks we could have used instead and there was nothing we could do about.
This about wraps it up foundation wise. My piece of advice is if you've got people coming in, try to be there. There isn't much we could do about the miscalculation of concrete since we left that up to the guy we hired, but we could have hopefully at least had it put somewhere it might have done more good. Don't let yourself be rushed, if at all possible. If you aren't ready, you aren't ready. I know life isn't always perfect and you've got to do the best you can as we did, but just keep in mind things can happen and if you're not there, you can't control what decisions are made on your behalf. Also, bedrock makes for a darn solid foundation!
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And He Huffed and He Puffed-Designing a Home Part 3
First off-warnings about building a straw-bale house. These are serious considerations to keep in mind prior to the big decision. And it all comes down to the color commentary. "You built with what?" "Aren't you worried about it burning down?" and most 'original' of all, "Aren't you worried about the big bad wolf?" I tell you, practically everyone eventually just HAS to mention your house getting blown down. Maybe they think they're original, maybe they just can't help themselves, but it gets old relatively quickly.
Ok, ok, I'm mostly joking about it being a 'serious' consideration but it is very true that these and other questions are going to be ones you field frequently. If you're not in the mood to deal with hearing it and explaining yourself, just don't mention it. People are naturally curious and they're going to have questions. It's great to be an ambassador to greener building, but if it isn't fun anymore, just take a day off and don't say anything. You aren't obligated to explain your lifestyle choices just because you made ones different than most. That being said, here are some short responses to some of the common questions:
Building with straw provides great insulation with an r value of over 27 (different sources say different numbers, but they are all pretty consistently high). It is also far more environmentally friendly than conventional building materials. Straw has no nutritional value for animals and is instead a byproduct of grain farming such as wheat, whereas hay is animal feed. You do not use hay in straw-bale construction, only straw.
Straw-bales are safer than conventional building materials when it comes to fire. To quote my father, you could turn a blow torch on a stuccoed wall, and all you'd do is blacken the stucco. I doubt the same could be said of other options. This might be an especially useful answer if, as happened to us, the fire department decides to stop by and see what's happening with all that straw...
And if someone mentions the big bad wolf? Tell them the wolf can blow to his heart's content, because your house isn't going anywhere!
All right, now to the fun stuff! The House Plan. When you click the link, it should either open as a PDF in another window, or go to download to be opened in your PDF reader on whatever device you are using. If you have any problems, let me know!
Like I mentioned last time, I used Google Sheets to create this. One of the problems I faced doing things this way was the fact I wanted to try and get the entire house plan where I could see it all in my computer screen at once. I ended up making my squares represent 6 inches, and so while there are some things that aren't 100% exact, it's close enough. Plus our plan is to draw things out on the subfloor for a more exact idea of where things are.
When it comes to design, as I mentioned a large part is the property you're building on. My property is right off the road, with the road on the north side of the house. When you're doing passive solar the goal is to have a lot of windows on the south, so I put my pantry/laundry room and my bathroom on the north side. I'm not a fan of having a window in either of those rooms, and a nice solid wall of straw lets me block out some of the noise that comes from being close to the road. Plus I'm not the sort to want to watch cars go by.
The original drive was on the east side of the property, so I decided to go ahead and put my carport there. There was already gravel in the grass, and on the west side I had a city water connection in the way plus my neighbor who while friendly is rather particular about his driveway and grass being his (I've had to tell people repeatedly not to drive on it or park on his grass over the course of this project).
I did consider having a more public entryway, but I wanted my public area to be facing the south where you have the great view from the windows. This meant my main entrance is solely from the carport. Oh well, I'm not exactly the most social of people, so that's manageable enough. Speaking of the public area, since my space is relatively small I definitely wanted my kitchen and living room area to be open to one another. As I mentioned in Part 2, I found a great tip that it makes things easier when building to have all your plumbing close together, so I put my sink and refrigerator on the other side of the interior wall that closes off my laundry room and bathroom. Opposite the sink area I put in a bar to serve as my dining/prep area. I like having a lot of counter space for projects, so I was rather generous with the proportions.
I didn't want to have tiny bedrooms and I didn't want to make my house much bigger, so my public area was getting a little squished. One thing you have to consider about straw-bale construction is just how thick the walls are-in this case 1.5 ft., plus stucco. I was browsing through pictures of straw-bale houses on the internet, and saw something I knew I wanted immediately: a built in sofa with windows above. This would save a lot of space in my living room and make for a cool design feature.
To further open up the space, I put a double barn door on the guest room/office that can be left open when I don't have guests staying over. I really liked the idea of making that open, and in addition I am putting in sliding doors that will open onto a porch. Another tip I picked up looking at house plans was that closets can help muffle sounds, so I planned the closets to be in between the two rooms for added privacy. A contribution of dad's was to split the closet space into two with each one opening out to one of the bedrooms.
Back to the last two rooms, on the bathroom I am an infrequent bath taker and I hate cleaning a bathtub, so I decided to do a built in shower. Dad actually designed one for his house, and I wanted something similar but in not tile. Otherwise, I tried to space things out so it wouldn't feel crowded. My last apartment had a small bathroom, and I always felt squished. For the pantry/laundry, I might have liked it a little bigger but I decided to sacrifice that for the sake of the bathroom. We'll see if I made the right decision later.
There are other things I've done with the design, but I will get to those as they come up in talking about the building process. I've done my best to reach a compromise between building a house that would suit me, and one that would appeal to people in general and I think I've hit a good balance between the two. I'd love to hear what other people think about it!
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Designing in Circles-Designing a Home Part 2
Well, quick pro tip-don't decide to do weekly updates just as work is going to get busy. I'm going to try and catch up this week-goal is to try and post something every day for the next seven days! Let's see how it goes...
Onto our regularly scheduled content:
When it comes to designing a home, something I wanted to keep in mind was how much material goes into building a home. Short of digging a hole in a ground and calling it home, a house is going to take a lot of resources. Some people might point out the benefits of scavenging, but it depends where you live. If you're having to drive long distances for 'free' stuff on Craigslist and looking for building sites with a lot of scrap, probably in a big truck, that isn't as resource friendly as you might hope. It is also important to keep in mind building for longevity-using green materials is great, but if they aren't going to last well, you might want to reconsider.
Anyways, the point is is that I knew trying to design a 'green' home wasn't as simple as just buying everything with a sticker that says, "Environmentally friendly!" Not to mention doing that wasn't personally affordable, since it seems like businesses have learned that people will pay more to save the environment and will price accordingly even if it isn't justified.
So, my first idea was building a home from repurposed materials. I thought homes built from old buses, trains, and shipping containers was a pretty awesome idea (for awhile I was a huge fan of the TV show You Live in What?). At least in principle, but I wanted something that wasn't so narrow-cue in one of my personal favorites grain silo houses. It seemed a beautiful mix of reuse and a look that appealed to me (my dad, on the other hand, was horrified). So why didn't I go with that? This part of Alabama is more about meat production than farming, and several sources failed me when it came to finding anything used. I didn't like the idea of having something shipped across the U.S. for multiple reasons, which left the only option buying new which rather defeated the point. If you live in an area that has more silos available, however, I highly recommend looking into it. I think it's a really cool way to build while using fewer materials.
I said we went around in circles last post when it came to figuring out what direction we were going in and I wasn't kidding. Tiny home vs. small home. Round vs. square vs. rectangle. Wood vs. earthbag vs. straw. The debate raged for several weeks while we worked on prepping the site.
So, let's break it down for anyone in a similar situation. I really like a lot of things about the tiny house movement. It would have been quicker to build and used fewer materials. However, I ended up going with a small house instead (I am defining tiny as under 500 square feet and small under 1,000) because I knew I was going to have semi-frequent visitors who'd be spending at least one night if not more, and I didn't want them to feel cramped. Also, in line with my previous post I was concerned about trying to sell a tiny house if it ever came to it.
Next is the shape of a house. A round house gets you the best square footage and is also very resistant to wind (we get a lot of tornadoes so this was a consideration). Unfortunately, despite the larger amount of space you end up with some really funky room designs the smaller you get and things got crowded. If you are ok with an open house plan it might work better, but I was going with a two bedroom design at this point. After a house that is round a square one is best for footage, but the shape of the property was better suited for a rectangle, so that is what we ended up with. Don't forget to incorporate where you are building into your planning (more on that later).
Finally, building materials. Boy, this was a doozy. Dad lives in a beautiful straw-bale house and was quite hopeful I would follow his example (especially since he had prior experience with it), but my personal tastes lean away from the typical straw-bale look which is white or some shade of brown stucco galore. I like things a little more broken up color wise and definitely smoother. Earthbag construction was similar to strawbale in that it is often sealed with a stucco or plaster, and dad didn't have any familiarity with it so we put that aside pretty quickly. I found a Japanese technique I loved for wood, Shou Sugi Ban where you use fire to create a natural repellent to insects, weather, and, ironically, fire. The common technique is to burn the outside of the wood, clean off the excess char (unless you're doing an alligator look), and use an oil like linseed or tung oil to seal.
Dad was leery of doing a house in wood, and especially doing that much burning, so I took another look at strawbale and came to a compromise. If we could break up the stucco some and try to smooth the walls out more than he did on his, we were good to go on straw-bale construction.
With the size, shape, and materials nailed down it was time to do a house plan. I started out using a cool app called Home Design 3D that I had a lot of fun with. For ideas, there's a great great site called Dream Green Homes which specializes in plans that are made with environmentally friendly materials (including round plans!) It is obviously also a good option if you want to skip making your own plan and just buy one. One of the tips I got off of there is to try and design your house to have as much of the plumbing on one interior wall as possible, which made sense and was something I incorporated into my own design.
My best advice here is to look through as many different plans as you can, pick what you like, and play around a lot with something like the home design app I mentioned. Also, if you have the space use stakes and string or something to stake out your plan in the making. Being able to do that was what helped me decide against a round house and also part of what inspired me to do a bigger house. Make sure it is something you are ultimately going to be comfortable in, because once you start it is hard to go back.
And my last tip for this section is that I did my final plan in Google Sheets. Yes, you read that right. Google Sheets. I made my pixel sizes the same for the rows and columns, numbered the top and bottom, and used the gridlines and color options to design my house. Home Design 3D doesn't have a single paid version option, but instead several paid upgrades and it wasn't worth it when I was familiar enough with Google Sheets to make my favorite house plan there instead. This might not work on a bigger project, but for the size I ended up with it was fine.
Tomorrow I'll be talking about my house plan specifically, the different features I put in, and why. I'll also go over a little more in depth about straw-bale, including some warnings for anyone considering using straw-bale construction.
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You Can't Win for Losing-Designing a Home Part 1
You know how everyone tells you to, 'Think positive!'? Well, here's one for you. All that time spent trying to get the property ready to be built on it? Gave us PLENTY of time to figure out what kind of house we were building at what size. So, what were some of the considerations that went into building this house?
One: Space. I didn't want a lot of it. You see, I'm not the biggest fan of having a lot of housework, and I've realized over the years that the more things you have in your house, the more work you have to do. Another thing I realized is the more room you have, the more likely it is that you fill it up with things that you don't actually use. I didn't necessarily want to go tiny tiny, but my initial designs were about 400 square feet.
Two: Building materials. I didn't actually start out wanting to build a straw-bale house, but I did want to build something that was environmentally friendly versus a huge burden on the environment.
Three: Marketable. I am not planning on selling this place anytime soon, but things happen you could never plan for. Renting and needing to move is hard enough (it seems like death is about the only way to get out of a lease these days and even that's questionable) but when you own a piece of property you're stuck. That's pretty much it. If no one wants to buy your house but you can't live there due to work or some other reason, well...sucks to be you. Building an environmentally friendly house ought to be something that makes it more marketable, but not necessarily.
Those weren't the only things I was looking for in my house design, but those were the three major considerations. The problem was they conflicted with each other badly. Building small is definitely more environmentally friendly, but makes it harder to sell. Building with something like earth bags is great, but again...not an easy sell. But make something that is non-offensive and more likely to appeal to a greater number of people means that you're left with a house with no soul (and is quite likely NOT environmentally friendly, at least on a budget). Basically every option that was good for one consideration impinged upon another.
Discussions went on and on and on. I can and will go into more detail into our thought processes and why we ended up going the direction we did, but for an introductory post let's leave it at I was about ready to throw up my hands and go for a hobbit home. (No, seriously, they have those and there is a part of me that was extremely tempted.)
In the end it was all worth it. I came up with a house plan I really like and can't wait to see become a reality. Interior square footage is about 800, we finally went with straw-bale for building materials, and there are a ton of smaller details I'll be discussing in the future that both personalize it but do not, I think, detract from its potential on the market. It was a balancing act in the extreme but having people to discuss options and give you feedback is invaluable. The entire process was a learning experience, and hopefully one others can learn from as well. Or at least laugh at.
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City vs. Country
I wanted to take a moment to talk about the misconception that cities are the enemy of ecological responsibility. That is definitely not the truth, and in many ways the exact opposite is true. I know this sounds bizarre, but bear with me if you haven't heard all this before.
The number of humans living on earth is immense and increasing everyday. It is predicted that we will peak at about 10 billion, if I remember correctly, before we start going down. In the meantime that is a whole lot of people for the Earth to support for decades if not centuries to come. Living in a well-designed city actually helps because it typically means that a person is going to be using less space and personal transportation while there is that much more land available outside the city for say farming or wildlife preserves.
Just think about one apartment building and the number of families that live within as compared to a suburb that houses the same number of people. A typical plot in a suburb (according to a quick Google search anyways) is .25 acres. Say you have an apartment building that has 20 apartments versus a 20 house neighborhood. There goes 5 acres of land to houses that are probably bigger than necessary and land that's being used to grow grass instead of an ecologically more diverse garden. And that's not including the roads. Beyond that, another consideration is that most people who live in the suburbs have to commute, which means driving which means exhaust.
Figuring out how much space an apartment building takes up is a little more complicated, because apartment sizes vary and it depends on how many floors. So I'm just going to use the last apartment building I lived in for my mental calculations. It had about 24 apartments on 2 floors, and between the building and parking, even some yard it probably didn't take over 1 to 1.5 acres. In the ideal city, however, parking isn't really necessary because the area has access to both good public transportation and the neighborhood itself can satisfy most basic requirements of life with work, stores, and education within a respectable distance.
Now, take that to the country. If those same 20 families lived out in the country, odds are the lots are going to at LEAST be 1 acre in size. On the positive side, hopefully those families won't use all that extra land for just lawn and will actually grow some of their own food, but that's still a minimum of 20 acres of land being used for 20 families. And let's be honest-a lot of people out here don't garden, at least not enough fruits and vegetables to feed their family throughout the year. So still a lot of lawn. Not only that, but the more remotely you live the more likely you are to put those extra miles on your vehicle, so there's that much more exhaust in the world and gas getting used up.
That all being said, many cities in America are not set up in an ideal manner. One of the examples that springs to mind since I lived there for 18 months is Phoenix, AZ. Phoenix sprawls across the countryside. Most buildings are somewhere between 1-3 floors. Say you're lucky and live a couple of blocks away from a grocery store. Let me tell you, you are NOT going to want to walk even that short distance during the summer and then back loaded down with groceries. So most people in Phoenix have their own car and use it frequently. In addition, many people don't seem to realize they're living in a desert and water conservation is a good idea. Green(ish) lawns are relatively common, and pretty much every apartment complex has not just the lawn but multiple pools. Ok, pools are pretty wonderful during summers, but boy I wonder how much water ends up getting used for them. And don't even get me started on the golf courses.
Where you live has a major impact on the size of your ecological footprint. Of course, not everyone has the resources to do as much as they might want to do. Big business has made going green not only expensive but a consumer culture in its own right (which is a whole 'nother post of its own). And there are other considerations to take into account as well. For myself, while I was convinced of the benefits of living in a city for the Earth, my own sanity prompted me to seek out the countryside again. Not only do I love living out here, but I am exceedingly introverted. Give me access to materials to amuse myself and I will happily go without in-person company for weeks if not longer. Stick me in the middle of even a smallish city and I get stressed. I like to call my house-to-be my hermitage because I am truly looking forward to having my own little semi-remote spot in the world.
In the end, I think living green is all a matter of stepping back and thinking about how to lessen your impact on the earth on a daily basis where you have the resources to do so. Where you live isn't as important as re-examining the way you live and consume materials. Keep in mind that what might seem 'green' at first glance or is promoted as such doesn't actually mean you'll be saving the earth with it. When you're thinking about the consequences of the different choices you make as they come up in life and continuing to educate yourself on the matter, then you're going to be equipped to start making the changes that will make an impact on the world around you.
Here are some recommendations for further research into the matter in far more detail than I can cover in a single blog. I don't necessarily agree with everything in these but I really enjoy the way they make you reexamine a lot of the commonly held beliefs about what's important in the movement.
The Conundrum by David Own. This is a short read and I really enjoyed his upfront honesty about the fact that he isn't some paragon of virtue but much like the rest of us he's just trying to figure things out for himself.
Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand. I'll be upfront and admit that I didn't finish the whole book here. I enjoyed it, but got busy towards the end of it and moved and I'm not sure I even have the book anymore. That being said, this was my introduction to thinking about living green in ways I never had before.
And for a quick overview, Adam Ruins Everything is a favorite series of mine and episode 15 of season 2 was Adam Ruins Going Green which I highly recommend.
In case anyone's wondering, I don't make any money off of these links. They are just included for reader's convenience.
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Goodbye Trailer My Old Friend
So, everybody agreed I wasn't living in the trailer. Not even temporarily while my own house was built (plus, you know, room to build said house helps). That left us with one unfortunate and rather large problem-how to get the trailer OFF the property. Now, obviously we didn't want the trailer to go to the dump. One, that's a lot of trash to add to a landfill, and two, I didn't even want to think about how much it would cost.
Obviously, then, we needed to find somebody who actually wanted the darn thing. With the condition it was in, selling it for money just didn't cross our minds. Just getting it off the property without having to pay for it would be worth it. Not only had it not been moved in decades and was without tires, it had been set on a cinder-block foundation and had two small additions. Oh, and let's not forget the roof.
There are pretty much two ways to go here if you find yourself in a similar situation. Advertise through people you know, or advertise through neighborhood resources. We're talking Craiglist, the local radio station, whatever local options are available. Does your community have a Nextdoor account set up? Nextdoor is a social network designed for neighborhoods and I've found it pretty useful! Anyways, luckily we ended up managing to find a friend of a friend who was interested. Said friend had another friend who had the equipment needed, and then it was just a matter of arranging things around everyone's schedule.
PRO TIP: if you have to go the stranger method (which we came close to needing to do) I read a handy bit of advice on the internet. Even if you're planning on giving it away for free, get a deposit first. Tell them they'll get it back when things are removed to your satisfaction, otherwise people have been known to strip it of anything they find worthwhile, making a big mess in the process, and them leaving the rest to be cleaned up and what's left isn't going to be in a condition to get anyone else to come out.
I was really worried at first, because I thought everything they didn't get today was going to be left here. But here is where the going through people you know is awesome-the guy who wanted the trailer stayed to pick up trash, and over the course of the next few weeks came back repeatedly (despite working a full-time job) to not only get the rest of what he wanted but to help with making sure everything got cleared off to our satisfaction. He took the additions down to pieces and hauled away a lot of what had been left. I don't know how things have turned out since but I really hope that it's working out for him. I'm glad there was someone out there who had the patience to go and fix it up. In the meantime, we could move on with our newly emptied lot.
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Trash Aplenty, Trash Galore
If you're someone who cares about the earth or cleaning up the neighborhood, there is a certain pride to be had in the idea of buying a trashed piece of land with the intention of cleaning it up. You're getting it for cheap and you will be doing it and the community a favor. Odds are, however, that a couple of hours in you're figuring out just how big this job is going to be. The more you pick up, the more you find. There are layers, things you really, REALLY don't want to touch, and the concern that there just might be something hiding in the trash that you really don't want to meet with (ok, maybe that's just me. It was winter, but some of those places looked like prime wintering spots to snakes to my paranoid mind).
The truth is, that self-righteous drive is going to get burned away quickly. What you're left with is a grim determination that this is your land now and you'll be damned if you're going to live surrounded by this crap.
What kind of crap you might wonder? Tires. Furniture. Toilets (yes, plural), bathroom sinks (also plural, and more than the toilets which left me even more confused), bed-springs (plural as well), and 55 gallon metal drums that had previously been used to burn trash and were corroding around their contents. TVs, cans, bottles, dried and brittle linoleum, kid's wagon, windows, another burn pile with who knows what...the list could go on and on. The further I went into the bamboo, the more I seemed to see. And frequently when you picked one thing up, there was something below it. And then below that.
While I was picking up the trash, I just kept thinking about how I couldn't imagine living like this. Forget any environmental concerns, just living surrounded by a dump seemed a hideous way to live. And the fact that there was kid stuff in there implied that kids were being raised to think all this was normal.
Anyways, the truth is I'm going to be picking up trash for years to come. We did the best we could, but there were too many small little pieces to spot everything. I don't know if I'll ever feel fully comfortable going barefoot, not unless I just put a deep layer of mulch over every place I don't end up putting a raised bed on. Do I still have that self-righteous belief in my good deed? Not exactly. There was a definite satisfaction to getting rid of all the junk, but really I just feel sad that the land ended up in that condition in the first place and that there were people for whom that was normal life.
So, if you're looking at a 'fixer upper' whether it's a house or a piece of property, give it a second thought. It is a good thing you'll be doing, but it WILL take more time and energy than you will be able to anticipate unless you've done this before. The 'Go me!' feeling doesn't last, and if it's a larger piece of property it's going to take a long time to clean up. Just my little half acre took several days, and that was with multiple people chipping in. If you want to properly dispose of everything instead of just taking them to the local dump (we recycled some but not everything), it's going to take even longer. You'll need sifting equipment, a source of water to clean things up because recycling centers are NOT going to want that crap in the condition you'll find it in, an exceedingly enormous amount of free time, and possibly protection from local critters depending on where you live and what time of year it is. It's a huge commitment and I applaud anyone who undertakes it. Just make sure you know what you're getting into first.
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