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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

#381

Post by Litost »

worik wrote: post #379
adamcharnock wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to be able to suggest something, but I think I just made up the design from my own head. I had a rough plan, and I made the rest up as I went along. If you send me an email (see my profile -> website) I can share with you the construction photos.

Sounds like you do not have the building inspection hell of many places. Local governments often insist that every aspect of the build is documented before you start (which is unachievable) and any deviations from the plan require stopping work and re-documenting at vast expense in professional fees and charges from the state.

We tend to be quite building inspection heavy over here in the UK but I gather if you work with people who know the system well, you can get off-grid style buildings built. Hopefully this is quite a useful example that featured on two episodes of Grand Designs.

Original: https://vimeo.com/28848933

Revisited (apologies for the C4 link which requires hoops to watch): https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs-revisited/...

Ben Law's website: https://ben-law.co.uk/

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#382

Post by dan-robertson »

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…

The choices don’t seem particularly shocking to me, so I don’t understand why they seem so obviously bad to you. For placement of bedrooms, I think the question is where else to put them. I guess they could have the office/4th bedroom next to the master instead but what the rooms for is obviously somewhat subject to change. For the bathing part of a bathroom being near bedrooms seems logical. There appears to be a small lavatory off the kitchen area but maybe it isn’t ideal not having a proper lavatory connected to the living space, especially if they actually do as much entertaining as they planned when designing it. I don’t know how to square your statement about architects seeing dumb money with the fact that many things you suggest they do would be more expensive and therefore increase the architects fees.

I don’t understand the comment about how fast your car charges at all. I suspect that electrical heating in the winter is the main thing that would push up power usage (especially with double-height rooms) but I’ve no idea really.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#383

Post by anonAndOn »

brailsafe wrote: post #373
anonAndOn wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to need to figure out what trades you want to do and what ones you'll need/want to hire out. Volunteer to work on other people's projects for free (or beer) to see what you enjoy working on. For example, Habitat for Humanity and other home building charities often need bodies and can be a good way to sample different aspects of a build. Then, start small and try your hand at something simple like a shed.…

This is a great suggestion. I'd probably add some level of preliminary education, but do you know if Habitat helps with or requires that?

My limited experience with Habitat is they will train you on the job for whatever they're doing that day. If you can drive a nail or use a miter saw, you'll be greatly appreciated.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#384

Post by thatfrenchguy »

dan-robertson wrote: post #382
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…

The choices don’t seem particularly shocking to me, so I don’t understand why they seem so obviously bad to you. For placement of bedrooms, I think the question is where else to put them. I guess they could have the office/4th bedroom next to the master instead but what the rooms for is obviously somewhat subject to change. For the bathing part of a bathroom being near bedrooms seems logical. There appears to be a sm…

> or placement of bedrooms, I think the question is where else to put them. I guess they could have the office/4th bedroom next to the master

Do I really need to tell you why it’s better to not share a bedroom wall with your children? :). If I had a choice, I 100% wouldn’t.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#385

Post by a2tech »

hinkley wrote: post #272
cromulent wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I'm sure those are at least double pane. Modern windows (especially high end) can be both energy efficient and nice looking. Same goes for their concrete walls--its quite likely that they have insulation in wall cavities or embedded directly in the concrete itself. That being said--I'm sure it still costs a pretty penny to heat in the winter. Its just probably not as bad as you might think.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#386

Post by dan-robertson »

vonseel wrote: post #217
subpixel wrote: post #207

This reminds me a lot of time I spend reading Dwell magazine a decade ago. Since that time, I've moved past the point where building such a house is impossible for me financially, but I've also moved past the point where such a house is attractive to me. I saved up a lot of back issues of Dwell thinking I'd refer to them when building a dream home, and in a move a few years ago I threw them out. It felt exactly like…

Yeah, it blew my mind that having a pool was so important to someone in a cold place like Canada. We have a pool in Texas and while it was installed with propane heating 30 years ago, the heating has really never been used as it’s not efficient to do so. I can’t imagine how much it would cost to heat a pool in the author’s climate.

Well it’s cold in the winter but I thought Vancouver was reasonably warm in the summer.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#387

Post by dan-robertson »

porknubbins wrote: post #297

This house and lot are incredible and I would love to build a modern home in the woods, but I feel like this article was missing a disclaimer somewhere "Step 1 be rich" - even though land in Canada may not be super expensive this project was clearly in the one to several million dollar range.

Sure but step 1 is reasonably attainable for lots of people working in tech in North America. It seems like a ‘have (two?) good tech jobs for a while and get a bit lucky’ money rather than ‘inherit some enormous fortune’ money.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#388

Post by notatoad »

porknubbins wrote: post #297

This house and lot are incredible and I would love to build a modern home in the woods, but I feel like this article was missing a disclaimer somewhere "Step 1 be rich" - even though land in Canada may not be super expensive this project was clearly in the one to several million dollar range.

The whole tone of this article with respect to money is really frustrating. The guy is obviously very wealthy, but doesn't want to admit it. he really wants to feel as if he's sharing the struggles that normal people have, like getting a mortgage, but the "struggle" is just a vanity thing for him - he wants to feel like he's still normal, so he's pretending to have financial worries that he doesn't actually have to have.

if he could just admit that he built a silly house because he's rich AF and he can, it'd be a lot more respectable.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#389

Post by revnode »

dan-robertson wrote: post #382
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…

The choices don’t seem particularly shocking to me, so I don’t understand why they seem so obviously bad to you. For placement of bedrooms, I think the question is where else to put them. I guess they could have the office/4th bedroom next to the master instead but what the rooms for is obviously somewhat subject to change. For the bathing part of a bathroom being near bedrooms seems logical. There appears to be a sm…

> The choices don’t seem particularly shocking to me

Did you see all the glass? And the snow? Those two don't go together, even with triple glazing. Then again, if you have major $$$ to spend on heating, I guess it doesn't matter.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#390

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

i_love_music wrote: post #130
antisthenes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of cognitive dissonance required to say "we want to limit impact" on one hand, and to run a 400Amp electrical connection to heat your hot tub and pool in Canada, is staggering.

The lack of self awareness of people is staggering. How is it even possible to be this blind to it?

Greenwashing is a state of mind.
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