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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

#331

Post by nkurz »

nybble41 wrote: post #319
wrycoder wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that an air/water heat pump on the tub, with say a COP of 8, would be less expensive to operate than propane or straight electric. But, I couldn't justify the capital expense. (Small hot tubs are electric.) I like my wood/propane mix for heating, because it's immune to power outages. At some point I'll get too old to cut/split/haul wood, though, and will have to figure something else out. I'm not sure why the…

> Small hot tubs are electric. S̶p̶e̶c̶i̶f̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶w̶a̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶s̶m̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶u̶b̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶y̶p̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶f̶r̶i̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶i̶r̶c̶u̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶p̶u̶m̶p̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶d̶i̶c̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶r̶s̶.̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶s…

I don't think this is true. Could you source this? I've had several small outdoor electric hot tubs, and all of them have had dedicated heaters. The couple times I've had problems with the heater, the symptoms involved the pump running constantly and the tub never reaching temp. I'm sure there is some friction heating, but I don't think it's anywhere near enough to reach standard temperature.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#332

Post by zoobab »

adamcharnock wrote: post #188
newby wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much! Another question if you don't mind - how difficult was the bureaucratic aspect? Registering with regulator etc... what would you consider the biggest hurdle?

Well this is going to vary hugely by country. I think that got easier in Portugal from 2017, so I was a little lucky in that regard. I think it is also fairly straight-forward in the UK/US too. We had to pay a €700 one-off fee, and we need to fill in a report (i.e. spreadsheet) once per quarter with our total customers (and various other bits). We also need to log netflow data due to the EU counter terrorism directiv…

Data rétention directive, France does not want to obey the CJEU ruling because of 'national security' jocker card. And they make fuss about Poland not respecting EU law.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#333

Post by KaiserPro »

glxxyz wrote: post #312
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #210

First comment from my partner was “I don’t know if this is the Parasite house of an Apple Store” :-). But really, so many weird decisions here that make no sense: why would you put your kid’s bed next to your bedroom in a new build? Why the bathrooms next to the bedrooms for your kid? Why cement floors and no floor heating? How did you end up at 400A/96kw of service (my car charges slower than that!). Why not buildin…

That exposed wood with no rain protection will age terribly. I've seen quite a few houses for sale with this sort of design that probably looked good new too.

it _looks_ like its carborised, ie slightly burnt, so it should last pretty well.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#334

Post by bradly »

claudiulodro wrote: post #25

The way to do this if you're not wealthy is to get a cheapo plot of land on the Oregon/Washington coast ($<100k for up to .5 acres) and put a manufactured home on it. It's way simpler, cheaper, and the construction on manufactured homes has improved a lot over the years (they're framed with 2x6s to survive transport, and this makes them sturdier and better insulated than most traditional houses). I did it and it's be…

Also in BC/PNW you can buy old houses that are going to be demolished. Some friends on Lopez Island had an old home shipped over and plopped on their 40 acres where they then started growing wheat and baking bread.

https://www.nickelbros.com/residential/homes-for-sale/

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#335

Post by nkurz »

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…

It strikes me as high too, but it's possible that he needed more than a 200A 240V main panel to meet code for his very large solar panel system. In the US (I don't know about Canada where the house is) there is a 120% rule, which limits the amount of electricity that the solar panel is allowed to feed into the panel: https://unboundsolar.com/blog/electrical-panel-requirements-....

The idea is that you don't want more energy in the panel than the panel is designed to handle. Practically (if I understand it right) this means that the breaker for the solar panels is limited to 20% of the panel rating. A 200A 240V panel would limit you to a 40A 240V breaker, which (according to the link above) means a maximum of 7.6kW of backfeed solar.

In the article, he says he has a 11.6kW solar array, which would require (if I'm calculating right) at least a 60A 240V breaker (maybe plus some required overcapacity?). Since this isn't allowed on a 200A panel, he may have needed to bump up to the next largest size of 400A unless he wanted to go smaller on the solar array. So while it sounds like overkill, it's possible there is more reason for it than just a desire to heat his wife's outdoor pool in the winter.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#336

Post by willidiots »

cols wrote: post #168

Beautiful house and there was a day I would have been extremely jealous but... I live in Oregon and in 2020 chose to (was not officially in an evac zone but the smoke was awful) evacuate when the horrible Beachie Creek and Lionshead [0] fires ripped through the Santiam Canyon. Houses that my wife and I had looked at possibly purchasing were torched, as well as some of the most pristine ancient forest I've seen [1]. M…

I live in the forest in rural norcal and everything you say rings true. We had a huge fire come within 3 miles of us last year. This year's obviously going to be just as bad given the prolonged dry winter. The neighborhood is aggressively managing the fire risk, yet it seems it'll never be enough.

It can happen anywhere though. I have immediate family who lost their home to a fire last year - they lived in a town of 20,000 people, among grasslands in the suburbs.

IMHO California and PNW homes need to be rethought, starting now - much like how we stopped using unreinforced bricks due to earthquakes. Stop building houses out of flammable materials. Use intumescent coatings. Intentionally fireproof your landscaping. I was hoping that was the focus of this article but.. nope.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#337

Post by d23 »

I wish he mentioned the total cost. It's nice that this amount of information is provided for those that would want to do similar, but by the same token, I'd need some sort of ballpark cost estimate to know whether I should even begin thinking about something like this.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#338

Post by Mandatum »

brailsafe wrote: post #313

That Slack money must be nice ;) With no intention of attacking the author, but as someone renting in Vancouver, I think excluding costs while regularly hinting that they didn't have much of a budget seems a bit off, if not even just to add a transparent datapoint to the corpus of potential Canadian/Vancouver salaries that have been stagnating for years, while Johnny and his family likely saw massive appreciation on…

This is the type of house that gets published in architecture and "Home" magazines as inspiration. The thing is most of those houses do a bit of media and advertising to help pay costs. It's partly sponsored and used by architects to sell their services. The "FU Money" emanating from this article is palpable.

Good for OP - it's amazing, but boy sometimes the shit you read from tech folk is so detached from the regular every-day experience of regular people. "Building a modern home in the woods", really?

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#339

Post by adamcharnock »

clinton_woo wrote: post #321
adamcharnock wrote: post #122

I've done this in Portugal, but on a smaller scale and pretty much with only my own labor. I purchased 6 hectares (15 acres) for mid-5-figures. I've built an A-frame studio house for around €10k (excl tools), and installed a 5kw solar system for about another €10k. The house has air conditioning and underfloor heating (water-based, heated using wood from the land). I've also brought a 50-year-old tractor and started…

Sounds cool, like a fantasy. How far is the house from stores like groceries and other necessities? Must be out of the city I'm guessing? So you'd have to do a long drive every now and then to buy things?

I can walk to the nearest village in about 10 minutes, although it doesn't have much in the way of amenities.

The nearest city is about a 20 minute drive away. The region capital is about 30 minutes away. Lisbon & Porto are about 2.5 hours away each.

Anything I go to regularly is 20-40 minutes away.

The roads are of high quality and mostly empty. Petrol is about €1.80/litre, a return trip to Lisbon costs around €80 in fuel in my 2019 Suzuki with a 1 litre engine, plus around €20 in tolls assuming you take the motorway.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#340

Post by adamcharnock »

gdubs wrote: post #316
adamcharnock wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe, no. There is no-one to see in. It is because I made a miscalculation in the house design. I was hoping that the awning would prevent the worst of the summer sun from hitting the windows, but it did not. So I got some custom canvas made up which I can use to keep the sun out. [1] [1]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bbe9z3risocrl5e/IMG_20190909_12531... Edit: Clarity

Our large west facing windows get way too hot so we had this 3M film installed that essentially tints the windows and blocks UV. I’m a HUGE fan of it — in many ways it actually improved the view out the window by reducing glare.

That actually sounds pretty interesting. Maybe I'll look into that for this summer. My concern would it feel too dark in the winter.
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