Deck House project 9961 Archives - Page 2 of 4

Happy MLK Day! A three day weekend leads to: Workshop design thoughts

Woke up this morning (Monday, Martin Luther King day – which is a stock exchange holiday, so one of my few official 3 day weekends) and we had a surprise overnight snow storm. The forecasts didn’t seem to predict this and when I went to bed last night at 10pm, there was no precipitation. Not … Continue reading “Happy MLK Day! A three day weekend leads to: Workshop design thoughts”

Woke up this morning (Monday, Martin Luther King day – which is a stock exchange holiday, so one of my few official 3 day weekends) and we had a surprise overnight snow storm. The forecasts didn’t seem to predict this and when I went to bed last night at 10pm, there was no precipitation. Not a big deal, but was enough on the ground for Dave Ohmstead came around for the first plow job of the season. He plowed it nice and large so there is plenty of room for future plowing if needed.

At my house, not really needed I don’t think at the moment. Earlier this weekend, I dropped by to see what, if anything had been done since I was last there and there was giant puddle at the bottom of the driveway. That should go away quickly however. Not much happening since my last post – though I did snap a photo of the geothermal setup as it comes together. Not a lot of remaining room for the hot water heater!

But this weekend, thoughts have been back on continued design thinking around my wood and metal shop. This prior post here did a bit of discussion about wood working benches (at the bottom).

Today, I thought I would share some further ideas. My Dad and I have been discussing his shop and our currently it has become overcrowded – to the point of a bit of an obstacle and de-motivator to actually making use of it as a workspace.

Here is the current layout:

My Dad is not really doing much furniture or sculpture at the moment – what he does do quite a bit of is laying things out to look at them, and work on them. Various equipment repairs and hammering on things too. In order to free up room, we are thinking of moving some of this out and over to my shop. I was planning on getting a number of basics that are duplications of what my Dad has – and will probably still do so, but this way, the things that are not used often and are in the way on South Street, can move over to Bedford road and be available as needed after a short drive. This will save me, in some cases, from having to make some expensive purchases (or hard to find equipment) so it will be a win-win.

The current thoughts are the welding equipment, the gas forge (which my Dad doesn’t like as much as his coal forge) and the metal lathe would move over. These take up a LOT of floor space and in some cases haven’t been used in over 10+ years.

My Dad got kind of excited that I was interested in doing this and he dug up his old paperwork on the metal lathe (a South Bend 9″ model). It is not the oldest piece of equipment in the shop (some of the blacksmith gear is really people old) but it is about 80 years young. He purchased it from Atherton Loring Jr, who bought it new from Woodcraft Supply in 1935 (Woodcraft sells great stuff still – a definite ‘go to’ supplier) A metal lathe is a great tool – one of the few tools that is capable of replicating itself (ie – it can make all the parts needed to build another lathe from scratch). South Bend was an interesting company, they were a world dominating precision instrument manufacturer from the early 1900s to the 1950’s and the 9″ lathe was a signature piece of equipment for them.

My Dad purchased this from Mr. Loring in the 1970s. He passed away in 1977. The original purchase price was $159.30 in 1935 – which was a fair amount of money in the middle of the Great Depression. It has been very well cared for ever since and is in great shape. It should easily have another 80 years in it. It will likely be very handy when I get to working on restoring/reconditioning the Myers Self-Oiling Water Pump that I picked up – click link for more details – currently it is sitting under a hunk of plastic and covered in snow.

Interesting and kind of oddly, I came up with this when I did a Google search on Mr. Loring – an oil painting of him when he was 6 years old. Their family seems to have been a bit colorful?

Anyhoo – here are my tentative thoughts on shop layout – note – while sort of to scale (the proportions of the shop are relatively correct since it is 23′ x 22′, I haven’t actually measured anything. I won’t start the new wood working bench mentioned in my other post till Paul and his team no longer need the covered space the shop provides right now

Let me know what your thoughts are?

Design Philosophy Series: Building a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch – A visualization

Deck Acorn has given me permission to post up a photo of the 3D rendering their Design department did for my house – this was still in the pre-visualization stage of things as we were working on finalizing. I was pretty sure that I would not need an outside architect based on what I had … Continue reading “Design Philosophy Series: Building a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch – A visualization”

Deck Acorn has given me permission to post up a photo of the 3D rendering their Design department did for my house – this was still in the pre-visualization stage of things as we were working on finalizing. I was pretty sure that I would not need an outside architect based on what I had seen from their in-house Design team (that is a design step they walk through with you – can their in-house service do what you want or do you need the particular genre style an architect that fits for you?)

– this output locked it in perfectly and we were off to the races!

Rendering of my house from Deck after we settled on the main design principles

To mangle a quote – “The new NSTAR is here, the new NSTAR is here, the new NSTAR is here!”

For those of you who are not cross wired like me – Steve Martin classic bit here on Youtube NSTAR (aka – national grid or something) came on Friday and installed the electrical power hook. Woo-Hoo! Paul’s team has been busy roughing in the drywall as well. I think the contrasts between the glass, the … Continue reading “To mangle a quote – “The new NSTAR is here, the new NSTAR is here, the new NSTAR is here!””

For those of you who are not cross wired like me – Steve Martin classic bit here on Youtube

NSTAR (aka – national grid or something) came on Friday and installed the electrical power hook. Woo-Hoo!

Paul’s team has been busy roughing in the drywall as well. I think the contrasts between the glass, the mahogany window trim and white walls will work really well

Also – the mason’s are working this weekend – presumably because it is still warm (50’s) and it is easier to work with the mortar this way. The entry to the house is via a ramp up from the carport area leading to the front door and then a patio area. The patio area / ramp will be about 6 feet wide and be flagged in blue stone. There will a low stone wall, capped in blue stone around the edge that will also work as seating in the sunshine.

And a couple of photos relating to the kitchen. As I have noted in other construction and design posts, the center island will be a design feature and the main dining area. The island will be at a normal table height, to allow regular dining room chairs instead of bar stools. To get the under the table knee area, we are going to steal another idea from the Atomic Ranch books and use something I saw there – an aluminum I-Beam to cantilever support the counter top. To help the machinists interpret my poor drawing, I hacked together a wooden model out of some plywood on Saturday. Note, because the only wood I had was a bit warped, things are not very square and they don’t fit together too well – but it gives you the basic idea. See below

A model of the aluminum I-Beam structure for the island. Not to scale, even with itself, as the only material I had easily to hand yesterday was some luan plywood that had been covering up sliding window that got broken last winter when ice rammed through it. The plywood was not very flat. Basically the idea is that the box in the back represents the casework cabinetry from the factory in New Hampshire. The I-Beam will sit on top of a box built onsite and lie flat to the back of the cabinet. The counter top will lie flat across the I-Beam and the cabinets -with the I-Beam projecting several feet in order to provide cantilevered support for the countertop — A model of the aluminum I-Beam structure for the island. Not to scale, even with itself, as the only material I had easily to hand yesterday was some luan plywood that had been covering up sliding window that got broken last winter when ice rammed through it. The plywood was not very flat.
Basically the idea is that the box in the back represents the casework cabinetry from the factory in New Hampshire. The I-Beam will sit on top of a box built onsite and lie flat to the back of the cabinet. The counter top will lie flat across the I-Beam and the cabinets -with the I-Beam projecting several feet in order to provide cantilevered support for the countertop

Finally, I stopped by Carlisle Artisan’s to pick up some gifts and found these bowls – they looked great and fit with the whole mid-century theme of my house

Two bowls I picked up for my new island countertop from Carlisle Artisans

Design Philosophy Series: Building a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch – turning feelings and thoughts into ideas on paper

Please see the prior post here for the answer to the question – Why build a mid century modern house in the early 21st century At this point in my process, I had the land, the permits (thanks to the Fields hard work prior to selling the land to me!), and a builder picked out. … Continue reading “Design Philosophy Series: Building a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch – turning feelings and thoughts into ideas on paper”

Please see the prior post here for the answer to the question – Why build a mid century modern house in the early 21st century

At this point in my process, I had the land, the permits (thanks to the Fields hard work prior to selling the land to me!), and a builder picked out. I also had a lot of years of thinking about the feelings and features I wanted out of a house and some interesting photos of other projects (see my Idea Book on Houzz.com for Kitchen, Bath, Bath and Bath ideas )

Fohl alternate concept site location and plan layouts This was the initial Deck idea overlaid on the original plot plan and 5 bedroom house building permit that came with the land
458A SDSB_FF this is the final stamped and approved plot plan

I purchased a copy of Google sketchup – because that is what Deck was using for pre-visualization and that turned out to be unnecessary as I gave them PDFs only – lol. I started planning layout ideas for them to work from.

I had the general idea of layout for passive solar gain – orienting the house for the sun and correct calculation of the eaves for sun in the winter and shade in the summer – but what next? For simplicity, I wanted the utilities to be compact and central within the house, and the amount of wasted space with hallways to be minimized. We put the mechanical room, the wash room, kitchen and bathrooms all back to back in the central core of the house – and with easy access to the outside via a carport. The original thought of a 3 bay garage (two for the wood/metal shop) had gone out the window due to cost.

Centrally locating all the utilities does a couple of things – one, it reduces the run of water (less leak opportunities and cost) and it puts these spaces in well insulated interior areas while leaving views from all the more public areas.

This photo on Houzz really made me sit up and take notice and has been a central reference point throughout the project – we are copying a lot of the ideas here. Specifically note:

The layout of the house overall – the entryway /main door is to the left. We used this idea as well
The right hand side of the kitchen leads off to a more private area – with a blocking wall. I incorporated this flow by having the bedrooms and bathrooms in that direction – separating the public space from the private
The sink and main appliances are along the back wall with cabinetry flanking the sink. This fit well with my idea of placing all the water flow back to back in the core of the house
The island is a both a cooktop and a table – and is at table height instead of counter or bar height. I experimented and decided that the cook top at the 29″ of a standard table would work for me
There is an overhead, custom lighting drop panel. One thing I realized is that the island would not naturally have overhead lighting since the roof could be quite a bit above you at this point. This is a key design feature

We decided not to follow the design here with a few items

We are not going with the color scheme of the tile! Instead I am planning on white subway tile with an accent color tile stripe
The stainless steel ventilation hood has been removed in favor of a down draft vent through the floor and out under the building

In terms of bathroom design, I never, ever take a sit down bath so my initial thought was to have open air walk in showers (aka – Wetroom) for both baths. Ultimately, I decided that both for flexibility and cost, to put a shower/tub one piece in the guest bath. However for the master bath, I went for the wetroom feel. This ideabook on Houzz.com (I mashed Kitchen and bath together for no particular reason) had several ideas on how to design a walk in, curbless, shower.

Due to self imposed space constraints, I made the bathrooms big enough for use, but not palaces – under the idea that you used them and then left – the limited square footage was better used elsewhere. This I think is going to lead to the wetroom needing a glass partition that will keep the spray organized – just because there is not going to be enough square footage to have a ‘section’ for the rain fall shower that is isolated. That is ok I think.

The vanities in both baths will be floating for easier cleaning.

In terms of bedrooms, again, I kept them purposely small since my habit is not to hang out in the bedroom. My thought is that you sleep there, store your clothes there and change. Otherwise, they are not used. A smaller room is easier to keep warm and doesn’t waste as much space. The layout we came up with managed to keep the hallway run to an absolute minimum

my version 6 room design layout that I gave Deck - this is what they designed the house from — my version 6 room design layout that I gave Deck – this is what they designed the house from

In the next Atomic Ranch post, I will tackle the great room

Design Philosophy Series: Building a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch – Why?

This is a post that I have been mulling over for quite some time – why did I decide to build a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch house as opposed to some other design style? What is the thought process behind my house? I think I am going to post this as a new thread/category because … Continue reading “Design Philosophy Series: Building a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch – Why?”

I think I am going to post this as a new thread/category because I doubt I can pull everything together in one sitting

Recently the Concord Museum started a special exhibit called “Middlesex County Modern” that is exploring the modern architecture in the county where I grew up and now building my house, as well as the impact on the community and design world. Diane Williams – my project manager at Deck Acorn turned me onto the exhibition and Deck Acorn is one of the prime sponsors. It was a small but very interesting exhibit with many models of important early mid-century modern houses, photos of the various movers and shakers around the time the Gropius House was built and the influence that MIT and Harvard played in developing new post war design ideas. If you are around, the exhibit runs to March 20, 2016 and I would recommend it. The museum itself is also very interesting.

The house I grew up in is one that my parent’s built on 5 acres of land in Carlisle, MA, Middlesex County during the late sixties – so right in the late/middle of the explosion of mid century modern. It is a CORE house. Core, along with Tech Built, Acorn, Deck and other companies I am sure, have essentially collapsed into Deck/Acorn/Next The structure of their house is very bring the outside in with sliding glass doors in almost every room.

My parent's house in Carlisle - note the low slope roof and lots of glass — My parent’s house in Carlisle – note the low slope roof and lots of glass

This house did a lot to shape my thinking around what a house should be like. Carlisle, while not as rural now as when I was growing up (the population has climbed from 1600 or so to a bit over 5K in a 50 square mile town) – it is still pretty open, so a house can still be built that is very externally oriented.

With this as background and thinking about the raw land I had, I came up with a prioritized list of what was important to me.

Bing maps, bird's eye view of my property. Orange dotted lines are an approximation of the lot lines (the lot is a "pork chop" with the required footage on Bedford Road. The old Bates dairy setup with the large barns and outbuildings abuts my property and now belongs to the Kimballs, who have a string of ice cream stands that are very successful — Bing maps, bird’s eye view of my property. Orange dotted lines are an approximation of the lot lines (the lot is a “pork chop” with the required footage on Bedford Road. The old Bates dairy setup with the large barns and outbuildings abuts my property and now belongs to the Kimballs, who have a string of ice cream stands that are very successful

My plot plan, printed out on 8.5' x 11" paper and brought to the my raw land at 1pm in the afternoon on January 26, 2014. We oriented on the property lines and calculated the sun on the horizon and the location of the sunset while standing on what was the approved location for the house (that came with the deed, pre-approved building permits) — My plot plan, printed out on 8.5′ x 11″ paper and brought to the my raw land at 1pm in the afternoon on January 26, 2014. We oriented on the property lines and calculated the sun on the horizon and the location of the sunset while standing on what was the approved location for the house (that came with the deed, pre-approved building permits)

Prioritized items that I wanted to address or include in the house design

I needed a builder – Deck / Acorn while Internationally known, is very local and houses like these (as well as my personal experience looking at their houses around town for several decades!) led me to think they could tackle my project

A house on pilings in a difficult location

bringing the outside in, with walls of glass

In the next post of this series, I will tackle how I transitioned from a wish list of check boxes and a feel for the property into design ideas and how to implement them.

Insulation is in and the concrete team produce a work of pure artistry

Good morning all NSTAR might be coming in the near future – but I am starting to wonder if Paul will be able to get the Generac placed and running before they get organized and arrive – lol There have been some beautiful fall days here in New England and the weather, on average, has … Continue reading “Insulation is in and the concrete team produce a work of pure artistry”

Good morning all

NSTAR might be coming in the near future – but I am starting to wonder if Paul will be able to get the Generac placed and running before they get organized and arrive – lol

Paul's Kubota tractor and a warm sun shining. The tractor is for leveling and lowering the grade in the garage in preparation of pouring the concrete floor — Paul’s Kubota tractor and a warm sun shining. The tractor is for leveling and lowering the grade in the garage in preparation of pouring the concrete floor

There have been some beautiful fall days here in New England and the weather, on average, has been very mild. There has been some frost and some rain, but not very much so far. The picture above gives a good feel for it. Paul and his team have continued to be very productive in this environment

The orange Kubota tractor was onsite to do some site leveling but also mainly to lower the grade of the garage. The original Deck Acorn plans called for a 7′ garage entrance. Paul thought I would like a 7′ 6″ entrance better (and the subsequent lower grade) and he suggested we lower the planned height of the floor. This gives the building less of the planned linear flow horizontally – but we looked at the ground and realized it just felt better in terms of the grade of the overall property, and while 6″ doesn’t sound like much, it means that the interior of the shop is now an 8′ ceiling AND we don’t need a concrete ramp up to the garage once the final grade is done (which we were afraid would crack in the future).

The concrete team did an AMAZING job. I was assuming I would need to put down a layer of epoxy or a product I saw on Jay Leno’s Garage webseries – SwissTrax. My Dad’s shop has a rough concrete floor and it is very difficult to keep swept up and clean. However, my new shop floor is already like a crystal still millpond – it is fantastically smooth and even. They did an phenomenal job on it and on the concrete pad for the Generac generator (which I forgot to take a picture of yesterday).

I really, really like it. I may still put something like SwissTrax or padding down, but for clean up purposes, I think we are good to go!

On other fronts, the insulation is blown in (two stages – a foam sealer and then standard pink fiberglass). This includes the work under the house – though everything, inside and out still needs to be closed up. The ducting and exit of the bathroom fans into the underside of the roof was also completed (so they do not have to pierce the roof itself)

Whoops – I forgot to show you what is behind the pink fiberglass – an hard foam product that blows in and cures very hard. They also put in fire stop on the poke throughs

Fall has arrived in Carlisle and progress is continuing on my house project

edit at 6pm – added Geothermal details at the bottom of the post I have been doing some work travel and so it is has been a couple of weeks since any post here. Fall has arrived in a definite way – it got very windy last week and a majority of the trees are now pretty bare … Continue reading “Fall has arrived in Carlisle and progress is continuing on my house project”

edit at 6pm – added Geothermal details at the bottom of the post

I have been doing some work travel and so it is has been a couple of weeks since any post here. Fall has arrived in a definite way – it got very windy last week and a majority of the trees are now pretty bare as you can see here the maple next to the big white pine at the end of my driveway is still hanging on – but winter is coming!

Not much of the fall leaves are still on the trees here in Carlisle

Lots and lots of progress at the house construction site – my Dad has been over taking pictures and talking to Paul Hebert and his team, so I have some shots to share from across the last few weeks and some we took yesterday. When my Dad and I were there yesterday, Paul was there with his mechanic working on some of the equipment. Apparently we have the electrical inspection(s) complete to the point where NSTAR/Eversource can connect live power to the house – which is great – assuming we can find them and actually get them to show up.

We talked about the grade of the carport and workshop floor, the patio entrance ramp and some other things – including the very, very neat air pressure valves he is using as end blockers on the vents for the dryer, the bathroom fans and the kitchen venting. He is running hard tin ducting either under the floor or in the ceiling trusses out under the house at the pilings or along the exterior wall by the bedrooms under the roof – all to minimize the number of roof piercings. It is a very neat set of solutions.

Paul also told us that he hopes to have the pad built in the next week or two for the generator and the propane tanks.

Finally we talked through a lot of stuff about the custom work with the aluminum i-beam for the kitchen island. A friend of my Dad’s has agreed to do the welding and machine work for us – we agreed that we would wait and do final measurements from the cabinets themselves.

Apparently some portion of the design team came by last week from Deck / Acorn and they were VERY pleased with what they saw – they had a lot of questions for Paul regarding some of the product and finish details he has been applying to the house – the house is getting more and more interesting to a lot of people!

Various external resources (will launch a new window)

Everlast roofing – this is a video done by a roofing company in Maine that is near the Everlast Roofing factory – it is super interesting how they make the product and it really convinced me that they were the manufacturer to go with. This was Paul’s number one choice in terms of product – highly recommended. https://youtu.be/hKP1XSpPfCw
the geothermal unit – Comfort Aire –
- This Old House explaining how a geothermal heat pump works. My system is an OPEN LOOP ground water system (re-circulation of potable water in the water column of my 600′ well. This is a clear explanation of how the systems work – but the sample home owner’s system looks like a retrofit and is really way more complex than my ‘designed in from scratch’ platform

Edit – more detail on the Geothermal unit – my Dad and I went over to look at the house in order to remind ourselves on the make and model

Fall 2015 in Carlisle – a short construction update and other things

Fall has started to arrive in Carlisle and it is a misty Saturday here. Things are continuing to move apace at the job site. As you can see below in the pictures, things have moved forward quite quickly during the week, with lots of progress on the electrical, sprinkler system, fireplace and the cedar siding … Continue reading “Fall 2015 in Carlisle – a short construction update and other things”

I did a mid-week update here. Below is a latter shot my Dad took (the date stamped photo) and the rest are from today, Saturday 10/3. You can see how things are really moving along!

On the way home, we stopped in at the new Clark Farm Stand which is only a few hundred yards down the street (on the way to the center of town). I wanted to see the ‘new’ barrels that they have in the shop – they are made with wooden hoops, possibly very similar to the type that was milled on my property back in the day. The Farm Stand is a great place – very cool post and beam structure and lots of really fresh ingredients, food and what not. Here is a link to the Farm Stand website – it is an extension of the rejuvenated Clark Farm that has kept the name of Guy Clark, even though he passed away a number of years ago.

Finally, I remembered that I had some shots I took last weekend when my Dad and I went to go look at the dam at Greenough Pond. The Greenough Land is a very large conservation parcel (200+ acres) owned by the Carlisle Conservation Foundation (a conservation non-profit that also owns the abutting land next to my parent’s house). My parents were involved in this purchase in 1973. I remember as a kid, helping Peter Webster (he and his family lived there at the time and were farming it.) bring in the hay from the fields several times. I have a very strong memory of riding across the top of the dam on the fender of his John Deere tractor with other kids scattered all over and several large loads of hay bales on the trailer – we were heading to the old barn across the pond. This barn is still there, probably thanks to its slate roof, but is pretty beat up now since it has not been in use for several decades – the town has recently decided to tear it down. But a really special property and I have a LOT of great memories of hunting for frogs and turtles here as well as hoisting hay bales, jumping from the rafters into giant hay piles and just enjoying the summer.

I have also included a snipped picture of what the Barn used to look like – from the cover of the very interesting (at least to the locals – lol) retrospective of The Mosquito. If you are reading this and are not from Carlisle, The Mosquito is the local town newspaper – its very name gives you a good idea of the local proportions of dry land vs wetlands!

As we move into Fall, exterior stuff is happening

Deck house is known for their classic cedar tongue and groove vertical siding – there was a bit of a delay for installation as we were waiting on delivery from California. But it is here and going up and my Dad caught a shot of it today. Tyvek vapor barrier and then the siding is … Continue reading “As we move into Fall, exterior stuff is happening”

Tyvek vapor barrier and then the siding is going up as of this morning – some of which has already been trimmed

Chimney is progressing too – looks fantastic!

ok – the word has been passed – pasta is ready – a more substantial update over the weekend hopefully 🙂

Chimney stack going up - the roof is now penetrated and the exterior, above roof line work is going to be proceeding soon — Chimney stack going up – the roof is now penetrated and the exterior, above roof line work is going to be proceeding soon

Tyvek vapor barrier and cedar siding going up

Kitchen & Bath design thoughts and other things

My prior post on the electrical, fireplace, kitchen and bath details grew into a monster of a post – so I decided to leave out my thoughts on why and how did we get here? and instead break them out into this post. This photo on Houzz.com early on became one of the design touch … Continue reading “Kitchen & Bath design thoughts and other things”

This photo on Houzz.com early on became one of the design touch points when I was talking about the layout of the house with Deck. It had the traffic flow layout that I was looking for and it just seemed “right” to me. The house entry is on the left, the kitchen and casual eating area is in the center, and off to the right, is the traffic flow to the private side of the house. This is actually how my house is now laid out – it fits the site well in terms of orientation and ground slopes.

Last week, when we were looking at the giant beam over the center of the kitchen, talking about roof penetrations and other things, Paul mentioned down draft ventilation and his personal good experience with it at his house. That triggered the changes to the layout described in my prior post. The main thing was the deletion of the overhead stainless hood/ventilation system. While talking with Shelby at the design center I realized that, because of the light in the Houzz picture, the hood wasn’t very ‘present’ – so what we are doing comes even closer to what the mind’s eye imagines when looking at the Houzz photo.

We are going to do a white subway tile with an accent color – probably orange or red – not the mix and match in the Houzz photo. The hanging rectangular light fixture will still be made – Paul is going to construct it from maple wood and hang it from cables.

It is interesting how we are getting closer to the feel that the photo evokes even as we in reality depart from it!

In the bath, I really was not interested in having a tub for my everyday usage – I can’t remember the last time I took a bath and I really, really don’t like how water always leaks around a shower curtain into parts of the bath that are not designed to be water proof. So the master bath is being designed for showers only and will have a walk in shower structure. Again in white subway tile but with some sort of accent color. Both bathrooms are specifically designed to not be large and opulent show spaces – mostly because I don’t spend much time getting ready for the day and this way, on cold winter days, they will heat up easily (plus – as part of my design philosophy of putting all the utilities and mechanicals in the core, they shouldn’t get too cold!).

Finally – ceiling fans. One thing occurred to me this month – the sprinkler system is going to be pretty high up near the ceiling – and on a series of really hot days, it could get pretty hot up there – which is probably not good long term for the wax in the sprinkler heads. So I thought about re-circulation. We have near ceiling make up air for the geothermal heating system but a fan may still be a good idea – hence pre-building a mount point.

If I install one, it probably will be one of these – a 52″ inch Haiku, with polished aluminum blades from Big Ass Fans

Finally – while we were wandering around the site yesterday, the Fields (my neighbors and the good folks who sold me the land) dropped by. I had never met them so it was very, very nice to finally speak with them. Their son Chris informed me that he was the one who spoke with Comcast when they quoted $65,000.00 for cable to be dug and run to all the houses on our common drive. Apparently also, if I had a land line put in, Verizon is no longer selling DSL internet service. So, in order to get internet service, I either need to spend uber money on a conduit from the street or go with a service that provides structured internet via the cell network – like this one from Verizon. Essentially they mount a commercial antenna on the outside of your house and you can sign up for 10, 20 or 30GB of data per month. I am thinking I will go this way – at least for awhile – maybe Verizon will bring FIOS to town at some point in the future. I would do satellite for TV services.

As the house comes together and there is more to see, I am going to start working on a post about the design process and influences. More on that in the coming months.