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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

#361

Post by dleslie »

lazide wrote: post #357
dleslie wrote: post #163

We recently moved from Vancouver to the Island; and made a similar calculus about locations at which to live. I have a friend who ended up with 160+ acres in the interior, whereas I've settled on a quarter acre on the central island. There's a reason for this difference... What's I found _conspicuously_ absent from the author's considerations was anything at all regarding their children. Elementary schools, family do…

Dual income no kids maybe?

They have two kids, it's shown in the article, and mentioned.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#362

Post by throwaway48375 »

rhacker wrote: post #129
wrycoder wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm running a small hot tub in central New Hampshire. I figure it costs me $15 per month in the winter. Edit: Service in the US is generally 200A or 400A. I'd say 400A is overbuilt for what they have, but that doesn't mean they actually use much of that capacity. For example, I average 1000 kWh per month, which is about 1.39 kW 24/7, or 12 amps average on my 200A service. The 200A is to have headroom for peak demands…

It's funny how removed we are from reality. Even if $15/month might be cheaper than a propane bill, it would be far far more expensive against the planet to heat it with gas/coal burned at a factory 100 miles away, converted to electricity, then converted back to heat inside the spa water heater.

That area is almost exclusively hydroelectric power.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#363

Post by potatolicious »

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.

Growing up in that part of Canada I have some worries about that flat roof. "Rural BC north of Whistler" is the sort of area to expect snow, and structures need to be designed to clear said snow...

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#364

Post by brailsafe »

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…

Minor edit: The median salary earned in Vancouver at a tolerable savings rate would require 35 years to pay for a minimum downpayment on a detached home, if not many other kinds of properties.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#365

Post by potatolicious »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #345
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…

Why not build with concrete and stucco?

You could but would it make enough of a difference? Having the structure remain standing, but the entire landscape be totally destroyed (including all major infrastructure like power) doesn't seem like much of a victory.

Not to mention a large portion of damage from wildfires is smoke damage, which your concrete house isn't immune to.

A fully concrete/steel home would likely remain structurally sound, but you're still dealing with intense property damage for everything inside and most probably uninhabitability due to lost infrastructure in the area.

Not to mention during a wildfire you'd still have to evacuate.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#366

Post by brailsafe »

Mandatum wrote: post #338
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 regula…

Well.. it depends. I'm not making any uncharitable assumptions about the author's intentions. The entire article could say "I bought a house near Vancouver" and you'd be expecting the person to be extremely well-off, because it'll cost $1.5m anyway. It's obviously a little disingenuous to call it a "modern home in the woods" because it's definitely not a humble bungalow, but whatever. I just find it a little silly to keep implying budgetary constraints and keeping costs as low as possible, but not providing any context for what that really means.

The house does look pretty nice, and while I don't care for Pemberton much, it's seems like a decent build.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#368

Post by lobocinza »

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.

That's the 'value engineering'.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#369

Post by potatolicious »

tejohnso wrote: post #195
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…

The size and extravagance of this thing is rather off-putting. I was expecting a modest off grid passive house.

What gets me is that the space doesn't seem to get you very much - it's a 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath house.

I dunno, maybe my thought is unrealistic - but if I were to splash out a ton of money for a palatial rural manse, I'd shoot for something with a bit more space than a large-ish suburban home.

Especially because one of the most common uses of such a property is entertainment - forget having folks stay over unless you make the kids bunk?

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#370

Post by turtlebits »

dpatru wrote: post #351

Thanks for posting this. It’s a beautiful house. I’m sorry for all the negativity.

It's just another nice house, there's nothing interesting about the house build. No real construction details.

It is "modern" in architecture, but makes a lot of aesthetic choices over function (flat roof, no overhangs, a heated pool in a cold climate).

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