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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

#421

Post by elihu »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #229
folkrav wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snow removal must be... fun.

I can't believe no one at any step of the process gave them a warning about flat roofs, huge glass windows, having a pool, etc. in frigid mountain areas with tons of snow. I feel like there must be a lot more to this story, like cycling through different architects and engineers until one would finally not tell them the idea was bonkers.

I wonder if the pool can tolerate freezing solid in the winter, or if it cracks the concrete? Flat roofs might be okay if they're built right. In Oregon, people would look at you funny if you built a house with a flat roof, and yet almost all our commercial buildings have flat roofs, so apparently it works out somehow.

(Oregon has one semi-famous flat-roofed house that I'm aware of, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I suspect FLW hadn't actually ever been to Oregon: it looked like a house that belongs in Arizona or California. Anyways, the eventual owner of the land the house is built on wanted to tear it down and build a mansion, and after much protests they allowed some people to come in and take the house apart and reassemble it near Salem. After putting it back together, they found some of the original contractors who had built the house originally. Supposedly they took a tour of the house and declared that it must have been properly reassembled, because the roof leaks in all the same places.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_House_(Silverton,_Orego...

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#422

Post by mleonhard »

JALTU wrote: post #80
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…

In my short experience, there is a very practical difference between "manufactured" and "modular" which is explained at the Ideabox site link below. We have seen/stayed in one of these Ideabox homes and they seem a good balance for a house when you're not a "I want to build my dream castle" kind of person (that's me). https://www.ideabox.us/

Ideabox's cheapest home is a 780 sq ft 1BR for $230K. According to their cost estimate, the total cost would be $420k. This seems over-priced. Pre-fab homes should be cheaper than custom-built homes. A new home of that size will not cost $400k in Wyoming or Kansas.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#423

Post by stickfigure »

potatolicious wrote: post #365
paulryanrogers wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stil…

My property (rural acreage an hour north of SF) burned twice in the last two years. Black hills everywhere. But looking around now you'd never notice.

Whether or not your home burns makes a huge difference. PG&E had the poles replaced in a week. If you've cut and mowed defensible space, your house will be fine and life goes on like normal. The problem is, folks love their tree-shaded homes and love building at the tops of ridges.

At least in my district, mandatory evacuation is not actually mandatory and (I say this as a firefighter) we aren't going to force you off your property. Especially if it looks like you're prepared. But you really need to be prepared. It's not hopeless - you really can make a huge difference but you have to put the work in long before the fire arrives.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#424

Post by uncletaco »

twobitshifter wrote: post #402
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sound insulation is a possibility and when your kids are young they often need attention in the night.

When those kids get older they will probably need attention from a therapist having lived in the woods alone with their parents. I hope their schools are good.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#425

Post by Kluny »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #384
dan-robertson wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The walls are concrete, there's probably no sound transference at all.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#426

Post by Kluny »

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…

I think it's a cashflow vs capital thing. I'm in a similar situation - my wife and I aren't making much money at the moment, but our condo increased in value by so much that we were able to buy a million-dollar property. Granted it would have been a 300k property about ten years ago, but here we are. And due to the condo sale and the magic of financing, we have about 100k leftover to spend on renovating it and making it feel worth the money we spent. But we don't have much cashflow, so we need to spend that money as efficiently as possible, because once it's spent it will take a LONG time to build back up.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#427

Post by stickfigure »

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.

A pool heater just expands the swimming season. You don't heat it year 'round, but it may be the difference between a 4-month pool and a 6-month pool.

Also it's fun to throw parties with a nighttime 90 degree pool. Our pool costs about an hour and $10 to increase each degree. Sometimes it's worth it.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#428

Post by JamesAdir »

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…

Totally agree. I can't warp my head around the effect of this house in environmental impact including using cars all the time, disrupting local fauna and the energy costs.

Re: Building a modern home in the woods

#429

Post by kerbs »

glxxyz wrote: post #328
lcvw wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cou…

My rural home never uses more than 4kW (and even that's rare), so under 20 amps. I can't imagine needing 400A supply without building a machine shop or something.

He said he plans a wood shop in the post
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