The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Let's Talk About Building a Home! Home Design, Energy Efficiency, Building Tips, Etc
Talonrazor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I am planning to build a house in about five years. I am hoping to secure the land next year, with laying down a slab around 2013. I want to start designing the house now though and thought I would get some more ideas, tips, and just general brainstorm from you guys. So let's talk about designing and building a home! I will first lay down some basic summary for my position and what I want but feel free to do general home design advice!
I live in Alaska, where it is balls cold all the time. I want to build a very efficient house. The goal is to have a secure, reliable house with reduced energy costs and the ability to be off-grid if need be. I will be building this place myself, both I and my fiancée come from families with construction backgrounds. My father is a process operations engineer on the North Slope but used to ran his own construction company and her father is a mason with tons of concrete experience. In four years we will be debt free, have reliable careers and complete our education. We don't have kids yet so it is a good time to build.
With that in mind, I am planning to build a two-story, three-level ICF house. Insulated concrete forms offer a lot of advantages and I like the idea of both security and heating efficiency. I am planning 10" concrete walls with sprayed foam on the interior side out to R-30. The interior walls will be built with false framing to allow wiring, etc. Heating will be radiant in-floor heating, and the floors will be all concrete slabs. I plan to sink my footers 10' and then have a daylight basement with 4' or 6' elevation from ground. Main floor and then a second-story on top of that, all with concrete floors with in-floor radiant tubing and a woodstove. I plan to insulate the attic with spray foam up to R-80. For datacom stuff, I plan to wire two Cat6 jacks, a standard telephone jack and a coaxle jack in every single room, all leading to a master terminal.
Now for the parts I am not sure about. Since I will have thick walls with big ledges, I want to sink some kind of storm shutters/insulating panels above each window inside the wall. This way I can seal off all my windows for both insulation and storm purposes. I am not sure what the best method would be of doing this though.
I also want to try heating the house using a geothermal heat exchange pump. However, I am looking for good resources to read about how to do this and not finding a whole lot. Anyone have any experience with geothermal heat pumps? Are they cost effective? How big would I need for a 2500-3200 sq. ft. house? I plan to eventually install a generator for backup power and long-term plans include solar panels and wind turbine to eventually shift away from grid power to completely self-contained.
What kind of stuff would you design in your home? I have a grab-bag of different ideas I want to do, such as light switches on each side of every room, tubes in the wall for audio/video equipment cabling and 3'0" doors. I helped my father-in-law build his second house and my father build a massive garage/workshop in addition to renovate his place so I am basically taking their ideas and improving them. But what are some ideas you guys might have? Some other ideas are:
- Walk-in master closet with shoe room for the wife
- Vault/panic room in basement, concrete "box" with storage for dry goods, supplies, valuables and enough room for a few cots and plumbed for a toilet.
- Attached pull-through garage with connecting mud room with washer/dryer, coat racks and benches for snow gear removal
- Rec room with my gaming table for RPGs I plan to build
- Most main room lights built with dimming circuits
- Use of "focus" lights that hid on top of cabinets and walls to cast soft glow lights (my father-in-law just built a house with this, it is awesome).
- 360 degrees of security lighting, with flood lights on each corner of the house.
- Small tower on top of the house for stargazing, etc. (helped a friend build this on his house, not that hard or expensive to do but totally awesome. Plus can shoot moose from the tower).
tl;dr Plan to build a house in a few years, want ideas for cool things to do, construction tips and geothermal heating and ICF building advice
I live in Alaska, where it is balls cold all the time. I want to build a very efficient house. The goal is to have a secure, reliable house with reduced energy costs and the ability to be off-grid if need be. I will be building this place myself, both I and my fiancée come from families with construction backgrounds. My father is a process operations engineer on the North Slope but used to ran his own construction company and her father is a mason with tons of concrete experience. In four years we will be debt free, have reliable careers and complete our education. We don't have kids yet so it is a good time to build.
With that in mind, I am planning to build a two-story, three-level ICF house. Insulated concrete forms offer a lot of advantages and I like the idea of both security and heating efficiency. I am planning 10" concrete walls with sprayed foam on the interior side out to R-30. The interior walls will be built with false framing to allow wiring, etc. Heating will be radiant in-floor heating, and the floors will be all concrete slabs. I plan to sink my footers 10' and then have a daylight basement with 4' or 6' elevation from ground. Main floor and then a second-story on top of that, all with concrete floors with in-floor radiant tubing and a woodstove. I plan to insulate the attic with spray foam up to R-80. For datacom stuff, I plan to wire two Cat6 jacks, a standard telephone jack and a coaxle jack in every single room, all leading to a master terminal.
Now for the parts I am not sure about. Since I will have thick walls with big ledges, I want to sink some kind of storm shutters/insulating panels above each window inside the wall. This way I can seal off all my windows for both insulation and storm purposes. I am not sure what the best method would be of doing this though.
I also want to try heating the house using a geothermal heat exchange pump. However, I am looking for good resources to read about how to do this and not finding a whole lot. Anyone have any experience with geothermal heat pumps? Are they cost effective? How big would I need for a 2500-3200 sq. ft. house? I plan to eventually install a generator for backup power and long-term plans include solar panels and wind turbine to eventually shift away from grid power to completely self-contained.
What kind of stuff would you design in your home? I have a grab-bag of different ideas I want to do, such as light switches on each side of every room, tubes in the wall for audio/video equipment cabling and 3'0" doors. I helped my father-in-law build his second house and my father build a massive garage/workshop in addition to renovate his place so I am basically taking their ideas and improving them. But what are some ideas you guys might have? Some other ideas are:
- Walk-in master closet with shoe room for the wife
- Vault/panic room in basement, concrete "box" with storage for dry goods, supplies, valuables and enough room for a few cots and plumbed for a toilet.
- Attached pull-through garage with connecting mud room with washer/dryer, coat racks and benches for snow gear removal
- Rec room with my gaming table for RPGs I plan to build
- Most main room lights built with dimming circuits
- Use of "focus" lights that hid on top of cabinets and walls to cast soft glow lights (my father-in-law just built a house with this, it is awesome).
- 360 degrees of security lighting, with flood lights on each corner of the house.
- Small tower on top of the house for stargazing, etc. (helped a friend build this on his house, not that hard or expensive to do but totally awesome. Plus can shoot moose from the tower).
tl;dr Plan to build a house in a few years, want ideas for cool things to do, construction tips and geothermal heating and ICF building advice
Talonrazor on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Perhaps an in ground hot tub and heated tile floors in the bathrooms for those cold Alaskan winters.
Edit: Granted all of those things would probably require a lot of energy and wouldn't help you be energy efficient.
They sell "happy lights" so that's definitely a good plan.
Also, a water filter system. UV is expensive, but effective.
The siting of the house is crucial. A properly sited structure can take advantage of solar orientation to maximize light and heat from the sun -- as well as avoid frost pockets, brutal northern winds, and other less desirable elements. Good architecture becomes almost an extension of the landscape, and there exists a harmony between the two. I don't know if you already know where your site will be, but make sure you do a proper analysis of the site to find the most suitable location to build. Will you be retaining the services of an architect/landscape architect/engineer at any point?
This should cover all your geothermal questions. If not see the list of companies at the end that I am sure could answer any more.
There was also another article in PM where a guy built his own off the grid, energy efficient home. It went on for a few months from slab to complete home. I am having trouble finding it but it seemed to be damn close to what you are trying to achieve. I think he even used IFC throughout.
I think this is it, not sure though http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/2422966
Home Inspection and Wind Mitigation
http://www.FairWindInspections.com/
Find yourself an architectural style that you find attractive and set about integrating that into your design. It's very difficult to go wrong with straight up Neoclassicism or Beaux-Arts.
But of course Gothic Revival is pretty bitching too.
My personal favourite remains Art Nouveau, however.
There are, of course, a myriad of other styles. I would simply encourage you to find one style -- preferably one that isn't the disgusting modernism of Le Corbusier -- and build yourself a beautiful house. Architecture matters, and good architecture no matter the style will not only look good forever, but will definitely increase the value of your home, if that's a consideration.
Moreover, good architecture is definitely preoccupied with questions of efficiency and practical concerns like heating and cooling. Read up about Monticello, for instance, and you'll find all sorts of very interesting designs that attempt to mitigate the stiffling heat.
Good luck.
I do plan to have a good-sized "gun library" closest that will be sealed and climate controlled in the master suite. I am a bit of a gun nut (once again, Alaska), so I would like to a place to secure them. The wife gets a shoe room, I get a gun library
The entire floor will be a concrete slab in all levels (over which I will lay tile, free-floating wood floors, carpet in bedrooms, etc). The entire slab will have in-floor heating, flexible tubing which runs hot water to heat the entire floor. It will be way I heat the entire house. It is awesome, both the father-in-law and my father have them in their houses and it is the only way to heat. As for the hot tub, that would be awesome. I do plan to install a six-foot long jacuzzi tub in the master bath. I love me a good jacuzzi tub.
As for UV lights, built-in ones may not be so practical but we do have "SAD" lights that are essentially sunlight lamps. They are pretty neat and portable. I do plan to incorporate a lot of soft, focus lighting to make sure the place is well-lit, as well as good orientation to the sun.
Iceman.USAF, thanks for the link. It looks pretty good, I will have to really study it. A heated driveway would be amazing. I heard about a system with the geothermal pumps that heated the house during the day but during the night it swapped to the driveways to melt the snow and ice. Up here in Alaska, a system like that would be crazy awesome. The problem is I am not sure how much cost would be to heat an entire driveway. I need to study that a bit more. As for water, I plan to sink my own well with a filtration system.
Gaffero, thanks for the compliment. I am not really a "greenie" and my goal isn't really to build an "environmentally conscious" house but rather to build a self-sufficient, low cost house that can go off-grid if need be. I believe in personal responsibility and practicality, so I want a house that I can be self-reliant in (which I believe has a lot of the same goals as environmental movement, so it's not so different). I would even like to do some basic farming/gardening, with goats and chickens for further self-reliance.
Your advice is good, I do plan to carefully select where the house sits. Good sunlight exposure is essential, I want to try solar panels at some point as well as a "green roof" on auxiliary structures I plan to build later on. I am hoping to select property late next year. It will be in the suburbs of Alaska so it should be multiple acres. I do not plan to hire an engineer or professional to examine plans at any point. There is enough experience in the family to do-it-myself and I am building a very basic structure, essentially a giant rectangle with a slight cropping on the front.
Liquid Hellz, thanks for this link. It looks really good, I am reading over it now.
saggio, good advice as well. I already have the general look of the house down, I am basing it off of my father-in-law's new house. It has a quarter-half of stonework on the bottom of the house. I plan to do stonework on the bottom fourth of the house, stained with a dark acid wash to make the slate very dark, followed up by a dark green stucco treatment and dark trim. It will make the house really pop, the slate stonework looks amazing.
Once again, I believe strongly in self-reliance and personal responsibility. No one is responsible for my security but me. I also am a bit of a survivalist because I like the cool gear. Is a lot of my designs overkill? Yes. Will I ever a lot of it? Probably not. But it's damn cool to have it! A lot of features I am working into the house are simple and inexpensive but cool from a security point of view. For example, the master bedroom will be reinforced with a secondary sliding metal security pocket door controlled by a keypad. If someone busts into the house, just go to the master bedroom and slide the second door recessed into the from closed. Boom, there is no way for the attacker to get in. I will also be wiring camera cables throughout the place for surveillance and recording and embedding a simple motion sensor into the driveway to detect cars. For the panic room downstairs, I am looking at possibly doing a complete concrete-block bomb shelter complete with metal vault doors and NBC filtration from these guys: http://americanbombshelter.com/. It would be accessible via the basement through a short tunnel. Once again, do I really need a filtered bomb shelter? Most likely not but it would be awesome plus I have a cool firesafe vault to secure shit into. And it may even be too expensive to build.
What are some other ideas you guys have? What else would be cool little things that improve a house or stuff you always thought should be in one? It could be anything! For example, I am thinking about installing a fireman's pole in the master bedroom to slide down into the basement. Why? Because it would be awesome. And could double as a good stripper pole for when the wife decides to thank me for her big ass shoe room.
Also, in addition to the main staircase, why not consider a small spiral staircase? I friend of mine's parents had a small metal spiral staircase to the basement from their bedroom because house was so spread out.
Unfortunately spiral staircases are not legal in most states anymore. Something about fire concerns blah blah inferno blah blah
I'm a NAHB Green verifier and have worked in an architecture firm for 10 years (though I've never done a job in Alaska).
Why concrete deck? Why not just go wood subfloor and LVLs?
Keep in mind (if you don't know already) that raident floor heating will dry stuff out like crazy. My grandmother has heated floors and everything wood that is touching the floors is flaking and falling apart due to being super dry and hot year round.
If you have any specific questions or plans or anything, I'd be happy to take a look
I like the versatility a concrete slab offers me. I can lay down some free-floating wood floors or tile or whatever I want. Plus, I love a good heated slab. The drying out won't be so much of a factor and I can install humidifiers if need be. With an ICF house I am actually going to be fighting moisture and mildew and I plan some kind of good air exchanger. Speaking of which, what would be a good system to run for air exchange in an ICF house? I have been looking at coating the ICF walls with this stuff and I want some kind of good ventilation system. Not sure if I need to have a heated air exchange or how that works exactly with ICF.
What is a good forum to ask about general DIY home building, ICF houses, etc?
Right. I just finished wiring RJ-45s in my father-in-law's house, he had a single Cat5e to each room. The problem we ran into was using an RJ-11 off of a Cat5e was reducing bandwidth. So I was thinking of running stand-alone telephone cables and not even using Cat6s to carry telephone. Or is this just too overkill? I know the Cat6 has an insane amount of bandwidth. I plan to run everything into a terminal with switches and routers. What other kind of media cables would I need to run besides Cat6?
So I will tell you one very important thing.
In the real world, not all rooms/spaces are made out of exactly 5 by 5 foot squares.
It is okay to go narrower/larger.
How much was it to install? What is the tonnage? How big is the house that it is heating? Do you know what they pay a month for heating?
Arivia, duly noted. Heh.
I don't know how much it cost to install it. They actually just redid it a few years ago because the original pipe was leaking. My dad rented a trencher and I dug the trench for the pipe. Beyond that, I don't think it would cost much more than installing a regular heat pump. The house is about 3200 sq. ft. I will try to find out the tonnage and their bills during the winter.
I'm not to sure about the spray foam insulation. My favorite choice is stone wool as it isolates well and it's great fire protection as well. (http://www.roxul.com/home)
As for ideas for the house you have some nice ones already. Here is something you may wanna add to the list:
- Sound insulation.
- Solutions for network cabling and easy replacement of those (A house should last for decades and CAT-6 will only go so far).
- Overhead windows
- Electric windows controlled by a computer. Sound silly but for instance it lets you go to bed with open windows having them close a little later without getting up.
Also if you do go with the idea of heating the drive way and so make very sure you can disconnect that system from the house system. It will take load of energy to heat the outside and you may find it to expensive some day and then it will suck if it's not easy to stop using it.
Consider the following:
- underfloor heating; far more energy efficient than external wall mounted heaters.
- double/triple glazed UPVC windows - supposedly standard in most residential properties, but then I've seen properties which aren't UPVC, and the result is horrid cold glass of death. Note that I don't use that particular technical term in my reports.
- geothermal heat - are you a Hobbit? Would you like to be a Hobbit? Then simply build your house into a hill, thereby benefitting from a large amount of passive geothermal warmth.
- geothermal heating plant - expensive... ostensibly you drill deep down into the earth below to naturally extract bio-heat. It requires four or so dig points; I've seen clients consider it but rule it out from a cost perspective; it's worth noting though.
Do bear in mind that I'd recommend speaking with a qualified Quantity Surveyor before embarking on any of the above advice - I value buildings in their completed state, rather than recommend how they're actually constructed.
The best of luck with your future home!
A few practical home ideas:
- You're in a bloody cold place, and in winter you have very limited sunlight (if any) keep the largest windows facing south to maximize solar heat gain in colder months
- You mentioned building concrete slab floors with radiant floor heating, are you considering other floor materials to cover the concrete or just using exposed concrete? I'd recommend using some traditional floor surfaces to "soften" your floor and increase sound absorption.
- My parents installed R4 insulated steel roller shutters they could lower over their windows in winter / night to keep the house warm - it improves thermal performance of closures and also provides additional security.
- For heating, depending on your location you may be able to use a water-source heat pump which is quite efficient and can be less expensive than ground source - look into both and see which suits your design and location
I like the ICF, radiant floor heating, and geothermal ideas for a near-arctic home. Sounds like you are on the right track.
Also, stick with a style that suits the environment as best you can... is this a rural home or a city home? Use local stone and lumber where you can because they are usually less expensive and make your home fit into its surroundings better.
Good luck!
You should only run one service on each Cat6 drop, eg if you want data and analogue phone running to a room, you should do a Cat6 for the data and an additional Cat6 for telephone. Wires 4 and 5 (Pair 1) are used in data networking at Gigabit speeds or faster only (10MB/s and 100MB/s only use pins 1,2,3, and 6).
Cables. I plan to frame my interior walls as normal 2x4 framed walls attached to the ICF exterior walls. This will allow me to run all my cabling inside the frames as well easy access to cables if need be. It will be a lot eaiser to reframe and resheetrock a wood wall then to cut into a concrete one. The advice about the Cat6s is a good one. I was thinking running a telephone line alongisde the 6s would be cheaper for a dedicated phone line but I might just do three Cat6 jacks and a coaxial jack per room. Now what about using shielded vs. unshielded lines? Should I worry about using shielded cables if I am not running them next to electric line bundles.
Insulation. I like the idea for sound insulation. I plan to insulate the master bedroom for sound and maybe a room that I can play my instruments in/use as a recording studio. I also like this Roxul stuff. The house will already be pretty fire-resistant with ICF walls but Roxul would help even more. I have heard good stuff about spray foam though so I need to do some more research. Any other products people recommend?
Windows. I plan to get some windows with good R-value. I also plan to look at installing rolling shutters into the thick walls to seal off all the windows and doors for both security and insulation. For those of you with expierence with insulated rolling shutters, what products did you use? How well do they seal and how expensive is it?
Floors. I will be using concrete floors with radiant heating and I plan to try staining the floors. Some rooms I want to keep the concrete floors bare while others I want to use free-floating wood or bamboo floors. The bedrooms I plan to use carpet.
I do like the idea of having a rainwater basin. During the winter, if water supply was a problem we have tons of snow to melt.
Roomwise, I know I want a good craft/hobby room for the wife and I. I enjoy finescale modeling, as well as drawing, writing, electronics and bookbinding. She likes to sew, knit and general crafts. I've been looking at specialized cabinents and creating some custom desks for the hobby room. Anyone seen anything really cool to stick into a hobby room?
Any other ideas?
I know Alaska is a bit more built-up and accessible than where I live, but I've heard from a few friends here who own/owned houses and looked into similar setups to what you're describing. And in almost every case they ruled it out because of the huge initial costs. Even with an electricity rate here that's 2-3x higher than the North American average, they were looking at break-even points of 10-15 years down the road. Solar panels were low-output this far north, wind generation isn't stable enough to use on its own, and IIRC the largest expense by far was the battery banks required to make it through the peak demand/outages. I genuinely hope that your scenario can play out differently, since I love the idea of being self-sufficient and energy-conserving. But definitely ask around before you really design a house around technologies that just aren't feasible for your location/climate/financial situation.
Cat6 stranded is about $200-250 for a 1000' box. Cat5e is about $100-150 per 1000'. Four wire telephone is about $75 for 1000'.
Cat6 = $0.20-0.25/ft
Cat5e = $0.10-0.15/ft
Telephone = $0.08/ft
Personally I'd use Cat5e. I don't have much need for anything higher than Gigabit network and one box would probably wire a single story house with plenty of leftover.
When I lay data cable I always lay it at least 12" from electrical, never running alongside if at all possible, though crossing over regular 120VAC lines shouldn't cause any significant interference. I do purposely avoid crossing higher amperage lines (dryer/oven/furnace feeds), usually I try and bypass them by 12 or more inches. The only time I've ever used shielded Cat5e was when I had a rush job on a weekend and thats all the local supplier had in an unopened box.
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
A few thoughts on what I would love in a room like that:
PS. I would not isolate a house with foam ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CthAnahTd5U&feature=related
I've seen one setup where a guy who had a 30" range hood above a desk, basically a homemade fumehood without the sides. It was hinged to the wall and the exhaust port had flexhose on it so he could fold it out of the way when he didn't want to worry about hitting his head.
A specific example: That teacher I mentioned discovered one day that they had started putting in the ventilation and fume hood for her stove, only they were doing it four feet to the side from what the plans said. This was naturally not very compatible with the fact that the stove was going to go into the originally specified location.
Here's another one: The guy who wired the in-wall ethernet in my parents new house put in two jacks in the office, one in the music room, one in each bedroom, one in the family room downstairs, and one in the living room, for a total of eight. He then wired things up so that the four initially in use were connected to a four-port router in the basement. You can imagine my surprise when we discovered this while investigating why the jack in my brother's room wasn't working.
The lesson is trust no one.
I am thinking strictly for future-proofing to use Cat6. So if you recommend running the telephone off an additional Cat5 line, why not just a two-cord telephone line? A box of Cat6 cable and a box of telephone line would do the entire house and I could save the Cat6 cable for data(I am planning a three level house, daylight basement, main floor, second floor). Telephone line is cheap and I don't see the need for more then a two-line phone. I rarely use house phones like it is and I am planning to mostly use my house phone as a fax line.
I really like this idea. I planned to do a wood-stove in the basement with a brick fireplace on the main floor. What kind of wood stove did they get? Did they custom fit hot water pipes to the stove? How does the feed pipe working come off of it? Does it feed directly into the main loop? I'd like to know more how they did this, I'd be interested in installing the same thing.
I have looked at solar panels and a wind turbine. The problem is they are very expensive and not extremely practical for Alaska. Eventually, I plan to install some in the house to make it capable of being off the grid but I am trying to do as cost-effective of a house as possible. I am attempting to use a geothermal heat ground exchanger if possible, if it is not too much.
I like these ideas. I had planned to do a small exhaust system above my modeling desk but a secondary exhaust fan in the middle of the room's ceiling might work out well.
And JHunz, I do plan to do a lot of work on the house myself, as well as family members who have extensive construction experience. My in-laws own a masonry business and my father used to run his own contractor business and is now a BP engineer. I am planning to attend a four-week basic electrician's course for this project as well. We will be keeping a sharp eye on everything!
As for insulation, I am still trying to find the most effective setup. I think I will have to use spray foam in certain areas but I am liking some of these rockwool products. I may use those batts in the stickwalls that build off of the ICF exterior walls.
EDIT:
Some additional ideas I had for the hobby room including plumbing a sink for sculptures and modeling, creating flush cabinents in the walls, a walk-in closet for more storage and a wall to use with dry-erase markers.
So you want to futureproof using Cat6 over Cat5e, but you'd rather put two-pair telephone cable in for the phones instead of Cat6? ;p
A Cat6 can run analogue telephone and later be converted to Ethernet, but the only thing two-pair will ever be good for is telephone.