Woo Hoo! Good News!

the house plans

Exterior View of the planned house. I don't want to build a roof like that over the deck. But, I was unable to figure out how to define a roof type that is different from the main house with this program. I think that I'd like a shed roof on the deck. Maybe put the solar panels on the roof.

Also, imagine this whole design lifted about 3 or 4 feet off the ground.

Upstairs- Bedroom and a bathroom with a composting toilet. The whole shower thing will come in later.

Downstairs- The front door is on the left by the stairs. That area is split off in large part to have a wall spanning the whole building for structural integrity. That little room in the entry is for the composting part of the composting toilet and some storage.

A couple more decisions were made.

1. We will raise the house up about 3 feet from the concrete pilings to give us a crawl space under the house.

2. We are going to use spray in cellulose (fire/pest retarded newspaper) insulation and will likely do a little spray in foam initially to seal things up and make it all that much more efficient. Also, we are going to do it ourselves. The negative things that people say about cellulose are that it settles a lot and that it molds and catches on fire easily. However, from the research that I have done, including the perusal of Bob Vila's site, I have determined that these problems can be easily solved and refuted.

• If you use too much water in your cellulose mixture when installing it, it will take a VERY long time to dry out (up to a year). But, if the mixture is right and you give it some time to breath and dry out before installing Sheetrock/ replugging the hole, you should be fine.
• If the newspaper is treated, it is actually LESS flammable than fiberglass. I read one story about a woman who had her cellulose and fiberglass insulation stored in her barn while she built. There was a fire and the fiberglass stuff went up in flames. The cellulose insulation was the only thing left after the fire. And, it was so effective that the bags of cellulose that were piled beneath other bags, still had their plastic bags intact after the firefighters put out the flames. Now THAT is impressive!
• It is recommended that you actually OVERSTUFF the wall cavity with cellulose because of the fact that it settles.

The reasons I am choosing cellulose over fiberglass are:

• Cellulose doesn't cause cancer like fiberglass. I think that that is all the reasoning I need. Fiberglass is often made from recycled materials these days, but its still awful. Just think about it, which would you rather have floating around your house, newspaper particles or GLASS particles?!

The ground is softening at the house site. I'm watching carefully to see if the ground retracts. When we went to a Cold Climate House Building class in Anchorage, we learned about insulating around the foundation. The teacher of the class lives in Fairbanks (where it gets to 60 below) and knew a lot about this. At the time, I kind of blew the concept off because I'd never heard of it before. But, now I am thinking that he is on to something. Basically, he advised insulating with blue board below ground, around the foundation. I can now understand why. But, even if we had done that, I wonder if it would have made a difference because there was no home, producing heat above that foundation.

Meanwhile, my loan is officially available to me. Woo Hoo!

Springtime Planning and worrying

we have been approved for a Home Equity Line of Credit and should be getting the funds tommorrow. This past weekend, we drove to Soldotna to go to the Home Show and to do some pricing at Home Depot and Lowes. We found that the cost of lumber is exactly the same at the two stores but that Home Depot had better deals on most of the other building supplies. Doors however, were more varied and much cheaper at Lowes for some reason.
Today, I took the day off and have been wandering around the property trying to figure out what I can be doing that is OUTSIDE work because it is SO nice out. But, mostly I need to do some more cost breakdowns. So far, it looks....expensive. The subfloor and lumber for the first floor alone will be eatting up most of the loan. However, because it is a HELOC loan, as soon as we pay it off, its available to us again. Our goal, is to have a roof raising on July 4th.
I am thankful for the ash at this moment because it has melted the snow so quickly. It gives us more time to work. However, I think that we are seeing some heaving that we weren't able to see in the past because previously, the snow was covering the house site until May. The earth under the house site has heaved about 6 inches! I was in a bit of a panic when I first saw this, but I now think that we could solve this problem with drainage around the house, and skirting in the house to warm the earth beneath it a bit more.