January 28, 2005 Lots of Details and "The Sims"

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Carport

Our carport arrived this Monday. We’ll have to wait until the house is in place to install it. Otherwise it will block access to the building pad. The driver broke down just a few miles from our site so David jumped his big rig with our little Scion, I’m sure it was quite a sight.

Landscaping

I was reading the newsletter of the local Audubon Society chapter and saw an “advertisement” from a volunteer of the National Wildlife Federation who offers free landscape consultation and design. The service is provided as part of NWF’s Backyard Habitat Program . The NWF has a Directory where you can get in touch with a consultant, or habitat steward, in your area.

The habitat steward that came to our property looked at the health of our trees and recommended that we leave a few dead trees for woodpeckers and owls. He also helped us identify some of the unknown plants on our property, devised a solution for the recently deposited soil from the storms, recommended placement and types of new trees, vegetation and a pond. Basically, he worked with what we had and recommended additions to help the property function better. We plan to landscape with native plants and his specialized knowledge of natives and “green” landscaping was very helpful.

Fleshing out the Details

We were very restless last Friday because we had not received any word about the engineering and we both stewing about it over the weekend. Monday morning we could finally inquire and/or harass someone about it. I was happy to hear on Monday that the engineered plans were completed and we just needed to send back the revisions. Our revisions ended up being a week long, all day job. It set us back another week, but there was no way of getting around that.

I wondered how the details of taking the house from concept to reality was done. Because it was never discussed when it would be done, I was always a bit anxious that it would be completed to my dissatisfaction. When I found out that I would be involved in working out the details I was very happy. Doing this was therapeutic and it feels like we’ve made a lot of progress this week. The project manager I’ve been working with was terrific. She is the daughter of the owners, as our chosen modular factory is a family business. I was very impressed with how creatively she worked around problems while showing great respect in preserving the original design.

The first and greatest problem we had during this process was that we noticed that the title 24 report stated that we had a “ventless” evaporative cooler. Title 24 is legislation that essentially requires that new homes built in California have a certain amount of energy efficiency. We’ve been having trouble getting our house to comply with the regulations because we are planning an all-electric home so it is more cost-effective to install a solar system a few months after we receive our certificate of occupancy. The State of California highly discourages the use of electricity for space and water heating because gas is much more efficient. We were only able to comply as an all electric home because we were using an on-demand water heater, which doubles as a furnace for in-floor hydronic heating, and an evaporative cooler instead of refrigerated air.

Our project manager said that it was worthwhile to have the title 24 engineer amend the report so that the design complied with the constructed house. Otherwise, we would run the risk of holding up the state inspections (or be penalized) if the house weren’t constructed to the exact specifications. Unfortunately, we discovered that if we added the vents we would certainly flunk the Title 24 compliance. Michael, the engineer at Title 24 Express was instrumental in devising a solution for us. We thought of many ways that we could have the ducting for the vents installed and to be hooked up only after the solar panels were installed. Two days later, I realized that the electric water heater was causing all the trouble and opted for a propane heater instead. The expense of switching out the heater later was a smaller financial compromise than the other options we weighed.

Some of the other things we worked on were: placement of switches; overhead lighting, finish choices; gathering exact measurements of cabinetry and appliances that will be installed on site; vent placement; cable/phone jacks; ceiling heights for each room (some of the ceilings need to be furred down to accommodate the vent ducting); beam strength and roofing details. It was really cool to see our plans develop from concept, if only on paper. We also made a trip to Ikea to look at the actual fixtures to make sure they would fit with what was being stubbed out in the house.

The Sims

I feel confident that I made the correct decisions with regard to placement of these elements because I’ve already planned the interior of our house. David thought I was taking the cart before the horse (or house) but I think my early planning came in handy. We did something a little bit funny to figure out how the traffic would flow in our house. David and I just bought this computer game, Sims 2 It’s a people simulator and it gave us perspective that architectural design software couldn’t have done. It’s also fun to play.

Here are some screenshots:

View from the Family Room

Hallway

Master Bedrom

Entry view

Please forgive some of the ugly furniture and cabinetry, the Sims don’t have a DWR. Also, we had to take liberties with the windows; it would have been nice if we could have recreated the composite windows that are in the design…

We noticed a few things about the traffic flow. First of all, the Sims most often enter the kitchen “the back way” if they’re coming from the bedrooms. Second, the Sims use the guest bathroom more often than the master bathroom. Another thing we noticed is that sometimes the Sims use the sliding glass door near the front door as an entry. Food preparation most often takes place on the center island. Also, the Sims threw a couple of parties and there was plenty of open space for everyone to move about. I don’t know how scientific this was, but we had fun doing it.