Second Proofs

We now have the second set of proofs for the house.  The link now has a door to the south which will provide an airlock for people to come in and shake off the frozen north before entering the main house.  Still no roof on the link, though.

The elevator still is not located where I want it--might be an issue with supporting the first floor if it ends up there.  I guess I'll need to chat with the designers about it.

I'm also still not satisfied with the location of the dumb waiter--can't seem to find a place I like that will work both upstairs and downstairs, though.

I am still looking into in-floor heating with forced-air circulation for fresh air and cooled air in the summer.  This house might not need AC for temperature control in the summer, but humidity control will probably be necessary.

I have been in touch with an outfit that builds basements using styrofoam-block concrete forms which results in a concrete wall with styrofoam insulation both inside and out.

 More to come...

Don't tell professor

I am supposed to be doing my classwork, but DS says I/we need to answer some questions the designers had. Something about the elevator (place for a possible elevator to add later if the need arises) ending up in the middle of a bedroom. Not good, I suppose.


I don't like the support posts in the garage but the only way they see to make them go away is to suspend the upstairs floor from the roof. Oh yah, it's possible on these, but that will leave support rods running up through the upstars--an area we want to be free of such obstacles. I will look into solving the problem with a heavier beam across the ceiling of the garage--probably a much heavier beam.

Then there was the thing with an upstairs door where a door cannot be. Need to look into that.

And the link is too short. No room for an entry door on the south.

Speaking of the link, we plan on having the area over the garage to be a rec room or spare bedroom, so we need to have it linked to the main house both upstairs and down.

They put no roof upstairs.

From what I remember about MN winters, it gets too cold to run from the guest room across a twelve-foot, open, snow-covered breezeway to the bath in the main house.

Hmmm. Good view of the Northern Lights, though.

If Professor ever gives us a break, I will look over the plans with DS and see what can be done.

Designing the New

This week was rather busy:  organizational meeting for creating a technology club at school for students, help my daughter move, chaperon a dance, escort my wife to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and contact concrete and heating/cooling contractors for our new house.  Do I need to get all these people to write notes to my professor excusing me from doing a good job on my college work?  They will, well maybe not the contractors, but the students will.  Then again, I don't know if my students will either--I was late to the dance because I was so wrapped up in my classwork that I almost forgot to go to the dance.  I wasn't really late.  It's just that I had all the decorations locked up in my room so not even the other chaperons could get to it.  Maybe I need a note from my professor to the students excusing me for being late.

Anyway, we sent our tentative plans to AIDomes and they are now converting our rough drawings into real plans. This where we stand today:

This is what we are currently

planning for the garage--not much change from AIDome's plan.

The house, however, turned out to be a compilation of a number of models AIDomes had:

 

I cut and pasted (which explain the odd shape) parts of the models to show where we want things, now the engineers will turn our ideas into usable plans.  However, before they can do too much more, they want to know what I will use for my basement walls so they can design that part of the house.  I'm not sure they need to do anything more than locate the support structures.  We will plan the rest as we determine what we need.

I have also been talking with Innovative Power Systems about what I can install for heating and cooling as we build.  We want to cut our reliance of fossil fuels as much as possible.  They gave me a price and estimated time it will take for me to recoup my investment (10 years).  I am satisfied, but I want to see what else is available in Minnesota before I decide.

A geothermal system is still under consideration, but I want to learn more about the IPS solar thermal.  More to follow.

A sad day, an exciting day...

The old...

The shed site is ready, the old house stands in the trees.

Progress on the shed, the  house visible through the wall.

Now the spot is empty...

 ...and all that's left of the old house is this beam...

...hewn by my grandfather and uncles.  This was the main timber that supported the house for over 90 years.  Now I will see if I can make good use of it in the new house.

Out with the old...

I made progress preparing the site for the new house, but the old one still needs to be gone.  Cousin Steve has been taking care of that--he started last weekend.

I had a couple, actually three, rocks sticking out of the ground that had a tendency to attack lawnmowers.  They seemed too large to remove by hand, so I asked Steve to use his skidsteer to make them go away.  This is the message I received after he started work on the house and the rocks:

 "I've been working on the project, with good progress... (T)he house is down, ... the basement is 70% filled.... I tore into those rocks today... the small one is approximatly 8x3x3 feet, the other one is substantially bigger. Picture a 7x7x7 hunk of granite shaped like a (die)...What do you want done with these rocks?"

I asked my family:

T:  The adult suggested:
     Carve the busts of our grandparents
     Offer it to an art student' "Free 340 cubic foot granite block--you haul".

N. the Soldier/Dental Something says:
     from the little one: carve a lawn-mower eating monster (eating a lawnmower)
     from the big one: carve our grandparents--life size

E. the Mathematician, offers these suggestions:
     Break them into 32 pieces to make a giant chess set
     Break them into 3200 pieces to make 100 regular-sized chess sets
     Build a dog-size stone cathedral
     Make furniture for guests you're not fond of to sit on
     Carve one into a millstone and grind your own flour
     Stick a sword in one and claim that whoever can pull the sword out can be the ruler of the farm

I need more ideas, which I will post as they come in.

(Of course, I could push them over the hill.)

Water!

5:00 a.m.: Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. I feel like I'm swimming as I cross the yard.

The well driller arrived before 5:00 a.m. so they could get the well dug and be home by noon.

Why?

The temperature (around 80 as of 5:00 a.m.) is slightly lower than the current dew point. I can't take a picture because the fog is so thick I have a hard time seeing the drilling rig. My glasses are fogged over to the point that my computer screen is nothing more than a white fuzzy rectangle in front of me. I imagine the camera lens will fog up as soon as I expose it to this air.


-------

3:00 p.m.: We have water!!! It's well past noon, but we have water. Not cheap water, but good water, and lots of it. Forty-five gallons per minute pulled up from 336 feet below.

I'll have the pump installed in the spring just before we start building in the spring. Once it is running, water samples will be sent out for the official testing.









See the fog beyond the trees. You can't see, but the grass is still covered in dew.




The temperature this afternoon is in the upper 90s and the morning dew on the grass still hasn't dried up. But, we have water!

Tractors

It arrived. My sister's tractor that I will store in my shed while she is off defending our country again. She says that she needs to go again because big brother (me) didn't do it right the first time so little sister has to go clean up the mess.

The problem with the tractor is that I gave directions to the driver that would require him to drive only one mile on these soggy, over saturated gravel roads. His partner grew up in this area and thought he knew a better way which required them to travel twenty miles with a heavy load on these now damaged roads. And, he delivered the tractor and extra equipment (including a pair of duals for the tractor) to the wrong farm. I do not have the equipment to pick up the duals and transport them. Maybe one of my neighbors has a loader tractor.

The silver lining? I saw a black bear bounding across a neighbor's wheat field. I took a picture, but I don't know how it will turn out.

OK. So it didn't turn out so great. I can still see that it's a bear running across the field.


Speaking of bears and pictures...Last night, on the way home, I noticed a spectacular orange sunset in my mirror and a black bear sitting in the middle of the road on the next hill in front of me. So I stop, grab my camera and hop out of the truck...my air-conditioned truck...into the 90+ degree, 75+ dew point countryside. Instant fog on the lense, I clean the lense, and try to wind the film---end of the roll.

The bear is now standing and watching me.

I hastily fished out another roll; loaded it--it slipped so I had to reload; cleaned the lense and prepared to shoot the sunset.

The bear is now jumping up and down, waving.

The sun has set, but I take a few pictures of the golden orange over the trees. I turn to get a picture of the bear. Too late. With a humph and a back-handed brush off, the bear saunters off into the woods. Another five minutes of fame lost to old technology. Get a digital camera and you won't have this problem!