Thanks for posting this. It’s a beautiful house. I’m sorry for all the negativity.
Building a modern home in the woods
351–360 of 508 posts
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#352Earlier 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…
So in NH I am paying just over $4.20 a gallon for propane and about $0.18 a kwh for electricity. With those prices a propane heater for my hot tub would cost more to run. Also a heat pump heater for the hot tub would optimistically get around a 3-4 COP in warmer weather and 2-3 in the colder weather but either of those would lower your price to heat it considerably but the capital expenses neglect those savings. Sour…
Interesting, thanks. Looks like burning shelled corn is the way to go. Or coal.
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, everyone in the region was (I live near Kelowna). BC Wildfires last year were apocalyptic.
Pemberton (where this home is located) is much wetter than Kelowna, so I think it's less of an issue. It's similar to the difference in Washington between the west slope of the North Cascades (such as Mt Baker, which holds the worldwide single season snowfall record) and the east slope of the North Cascades, which are dry and have large wildfire seasons.
Even the Olympic peninsula (rain forest) burns periodically. I’ve seen the burn scars from apocalyptic sized fires in central Ontario too. The Amazon burns when someone ‘helps it’ a little.
Everywhere dries out enough it will catch fire at least some of the year. If there is forest, there will be fire.
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#354Thanks for this - I have what you might call champagne taste on a beer budget. I've always wanted to live in a small, but highly efficient house in the woods. You know, something that looks like it came from an architectural magazine. But I am consistently blown away by what even pre-fab homes cost. I clearly don't have the budget that the author does, but the process felt eerily similar to mine so far. It's never me…
Usually the county clerk will have some pointers. Always double check lot lines, plat maps, zoning, permit and ownership history yourself. Use the realtor provided information as helpful pointers to get started, not ‘the truth’. They often aren’t trying to mislead, just not questioning things they are told or that are convenient for them to believe, but there but there are also some outright frauds.
Also, pay for your own independent well inspections (it has a well right? If not, uh oh), septic inspections (the soil type is okay for a septic system the county will approve right? If not, uh oh), and walk the property a couple times at different times of the day and night.
Sometimes there is a noisy train line, or airport landing patterns change during certain times, and what was a mellow quiet plot can be noisier than LAX during Christmas.
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#355And that's why smokejumpers need to die every year. Because people need to build luxury homes in the forest.
They die so that we may truly live! (pounds shields)
Seriously though, every NA forest community I’ve seen is similarly screwed. There is a reason the firefights always get seen as heros - those communities would not exist if it wasn’t for them.
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#356I did not know software engineers could get this rich. It seems outlandish. That house must have cost a fortune. Or am I just way under-paid compared to the rest of you? Also, who checked off on the flat roofs in that location?
Would be nice if they were a little more transparent about these numbers instead of being incredibly vague. Salaries in Vancouver have not kept up with housing costs.
You’d probably just get really angry - likely well north of $1m in raw construction costs.
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#357We 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?
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I'm also looking at buying a house in California, but I too am afraid to buy a home anywhere that could realistically burn in the next 10-30 years. It's a shame since it rules out many of the best (and more affordable) areas of the state.
Almost everywhere in California could burn in the next 10-30 years. Huge fires around LA every year. The Oakland hills fire burned down thousands of homes. Santa Rosa burned twice in three years. Santa Cruz, etc. Maybe somewhere in the central valley or the Mojave desert would meet your requirements.
The desert burns too.
Source: I live there
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#359Earlier 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.
There are a lot of people willing to take an idiot's money.
Re: Building a modern home in the woods
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would be nice if they were a little more transparent about these numbers instead of being incredibly vague. Salaries in Vancouver have not kept up with housing costs.
You’d probably just get really angry - likely well north of $1m in raw construction costs.
I can see why it would make some ppl angry, but I know how much the house is worth, and it's not much different in the city, but in terms of what it takes to get it done in $$ I haven't a clue, so it's something to be curious about. If anything, it would be a consolation if the development costs were not that far removed from the current value, meaning the person has a lot of money (obviously) but didn't necessarily make out with crazy short term profits.
With that information, you can kind start to think through whether or not it'd be feasible to do it at a smaller scale given some of the fixed costs in preparing the land and so on.