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Building a modern home in the woods

johnnyrodgers.is

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Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#271

Post by lcvw »

MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #50

"The bigger issue was that the energy demands for the house, which included hot water heating for the pool and hot tub, outstripped the electrical supply we could get on a rural residential build: 400A" Am I the only one who almost spit out his coffee when reading this paragraph? I mean, building a remote home in the middle of a forest is a cool idea, sure. But then end up feeding the whole thing with 400A worth of e…

400A is an absurd number. I live in the northeast have a heated pool, electric water heater, and am putting in heat pumps and it all runs off a 200A. 100A is the standard hookup in my area. I have no idea what this person is doing (are they heating the pool in winter??) but those numbers are absurd. Also a propane pool heater is far cheaper then electric, converting propane to electricity is really crazy when you could just have propane heat, hot water, and pool heater.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#272

Post by hinkley »

cromulent wrote: post #257
dleslie wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Pemberton, no less. An outdoor pool, _very_ large windows, open/not-enclosed outdoor patios, etc etc. They've basically planned to heat the outdoors when it is below 0C a few months out of the year; and most of the year it's below 18C. And all that exposed, non-insulated concrete. The thermal mass they have to heat is practically unbounded. Bonkers. They're going to have a hell of the time with the weathering on t…

Single-glazed windows, by the look of it. I was expecting triple.

Edit: I saw someone else building a cabin with similar windows recently. They are double pane, they are just some sort of frameless unit, held together by the strip of black material around the edge. Whether they work probably comes down to how well the installer seals around the edge of the window.

And while the sliding glass doors look like they are single paned, look at the quadruple reflection. Isn't that usually caused by multiple sheets of glass in close proximity?

The external framing is also 2x6, so someone was thinking about insulation. I think it's just that after declaring victory on a well insulated house they then decided to heat the outdoors anyway by directly heating things that are out of doors.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#273

Post by mediaman »

burmanm wrote: post #261
cromulent wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but wood-heated right, and emptied before it goes solid.

No, a lot of saunas in Finland are electric heated. But they're still only 3*16A at most (and usually a lot less, but that depends on the size of the sauna). I think mine is ~7kW and still heats the sauna to high temperatures, just takes a bit more time. I still don't get though, if living in rural area, why not heat the pool with wood. It just has that sensation that electric heater doesn't provide.

Is this for a wood-construction sauna with a heater warming up rocks that you can steam water off of? That's a lot less mass to warm up, mostly air, and a lot less ongoing energy loss than a big heated pool.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#274

Post by odonnellryan »

dleslie wrote: post #169
ttul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kids may not have a trust fund, but to have already bought and sold a Vancouver townhouse with enough equity to buy raw land and build a fairly baller house on it… they definitely had parental help.

If you bought a house _anywhere_ in Metro Vancouver and held it for ten years, you could likely finance this project if you sold it now.

You would have net $3m+ on any of those homes?

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#275

Post by mediaman »

skeletal88 wrote: post #164
zrail wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My house has 350A split across two meters because we have a ground source heat pump which has a special electric rate. I don't think we ever actually use that much power.

Where I live we have to pay to the electric grid for the amps on the main breaker. Because the grid has to be able to provide those, needs to be planned accordingly, needs to have the proper diameter cables and transformers, etc. Even if we don't use them. So having 300A "just in case we need it" would be insanely expensive on the monthly bill. This amount of apmeres is more like for a workshop, small industrial or o…

Many utilities will do this based not on the amperage to the house but the peak kw used in a billing cycle - a capacity charge. This helps incentivize reduced peak usage. In your scenario it's strange because you have zero incentive to keep your maximum usage below the breaker amount, other than the per-kwh cost.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#276

Post by Ekaros »

mips_avatar wrote: post #251
crowbahr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European you probably don't have an outdoor heated pool & hot tub in a frigid northern climate. I also think it's ridiculous, for what it's worth. 400A is a wild amount of electricity for a supposedly high efficiency, modern home.

You'll find a hot tub/sauna in most Scandinavian cabins.

These are usually pretty small spaces. So heating them isn't that much of an problem. And going from 22 to 80 for a few hours a week or day isn't too wasteful.

Hot tubs are also rather small.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#277

Post by DoingIsLearning »

Aeolun wrote: post #36
thex10 wrote: post #32

> Geothermal wasn’t viable on the slope and with the space we had to work with, so we switched to an air source heat pump for exchange. The bigger issue was that the energy demands for the house, which included hot water heating for the pool and hot tub, outstripped the electrical supply we could get on a rural residential build: 400A. We eventually settled on supplementing our electrical generation with propane, whi…

400A?! My house can make do with 60A, and my previous one with 40A Do they use 350A to heat a swimming pool? Talk about a waste of energy.

When they say 'Developed' nations are the major CO2 emission contributors per capita due to their unsustainable lifestyle I think of this graph:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

The split is almost bi-modal, not pointing fingers but this bundling seems a little bit of an unfair generalization, not all nations pollute alike.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#278

Post by ajuc »

tiborsaas wrote: post #197
nathias wrote: post #91

why do people find these abject squares beautiful?

I don't know, but it's beautiful. Maybe because of the ratios, maybe because it looks so intentional, it relaxes me. At the same time, I find these boxes horrible: https://nlc.p3k.hu/uploads/2019/07/ferencvarosi-helytortenet...

I wonder why people always post commieblocks photographed in a cloudy day in the winter. Usually also just after they were built so no trees yet.

In reality that's how they look like (3 photos from 3 different districts in my city):

https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecni...

https://d-art.ppstatic.pl/kadry/k/r/1/7e/04/5ed7c0329f818_o_...

https://d-art.ppstatic.pl/kadry/k/r/1/79/a3/52da7c5466e91_o_...

And frankly, they are much better designed than most modern neighborhoods built today in my country. A school, healthcare, some local shops, library, park, playground, sport infrastructure in 10 minute walking distance and public transport making it possible not to have a car.

Also - for the CO2 emissions that canadian house causes you could comfortably support about 100 families living in the commieblocks. With no fancy solar panels nor heatpumps.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#279

Post by hinkley »

fartcannon wrote: post #7

Leaving out the actual financial information makes this post a little useless. Before I can imagine it, I want to know if I can do this or if I need to be a trust fund baby.

This is one of those, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it." situations for sure.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#280

Post by Ekaros »

greedo wrote: post #154
mizay7 wrote: post #119

Always intrigued by this idea. But the thing that I never see addressed in these discussions: what's the plan for schooling? just do small local rural schools? do online supplementation? This is the sticking point that keeps me from going far down this path.

My kids are grown, but when I think of building in the woods/mountains, I'm now thinking of medical services.

I would also think about services in general. Then again I suppose that as European my travel tolerances are much lower.
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