Burners integrated into the counter top

I’ve been on a “small house” research kick.  I’ve run into some really interesting stuff (1)(2), but disappointingly, no built small houses that really use space as wisely as I think it could be used (note links with neat apartment stuff).  I haven’t seen very many Murphy or flip type beds or unconventional space saving stairs or . . . you know what I mean.  I don’t see a lot of people taking lessons from the Japanese on space management.  I’ve seen some really crafty stuff from that nation.

I did see a video of one guy’s apartment that really maximized the space using a custom built-in.  That was cool.  But I’ve seen a lot of tiny houses (marketed specifically as “tiny house”s) that used conventional storage to consolidate.  Ho hum.  And not very efficiently.

In some of my later wanderings through the www, I ran across a narrow house built from a stack of four 20′ containers.  In the corner was a fairly small circular staircase that punched through all four containers all the way to the bathtub on the roof.  <wince>  Yeah, I’m gonna throw my naked parts right out there for all to see . . . NOT.  The really brilliant thing I saw in that whole setup, aside from the really crappy use of space, was a counter with an ingenious integrated gas stovetop.  It was BRILLIANT.  Okay, other than if anything sloshed or boiled over it would run across the counter unchecked.  That could get really ugly.  That could be fixed by pressing a very shallow pan into the counter where the stove was installed or pressing a small gently rounded rib around the perimeter of the burner location.  Let’s say the burners integrated into a flat (unrelieved) countertop is a great idea, just not the best idea for people who really cook unless you’ve got a way to trap the spillage.

Modular gas, three burner or four

I saw one cook top that was set so everything would sink down into the countertop so only the nubs of the burners, knobs and pot supports stuck up.  That was pretty cool.  I don’t know how you’d clean any gunk out of the crevasses around the burners and knobs and the price was more than I could swallow at $4k, but it was pretty cool regardless.

Then I found a European company that made modular cooktops specifically designed to be integrated into a countertop.  NOW we’re talkin’!  And they make an induction top as well!  And they come with an integrated drip pan.

If you search on Foster gas hob you’ll see another couple styles, one with round burners in a curved stainless counter, another with three square burners in another curved stainless counter.

This shows the fence staple holding the reinforcing wire in place. The post is wrapped with tar paper and the staple is nailed right through the tar paper into the post. It's not nailed in tightly so the fill can wrap fully around the end of the wire.

Because we’re nearly to the top of the reinforcing wire, our next step is to add another section of reinforcing wire above the current layer.  I’ll do that after this course has had a couple days to set up and I can strip off the forms.

This is the last course of eps-crete I can add without putting up some sort of scaffolding to stand on.  That’s a pretty nice milestone!

Today’s mix went really well.  We’re getting better at prepping.  We’ve switched over to using two half-gallon stainless bowls as measures.  They’re easier to fill AND easier to empty and clean.  We’re using one for the wet stuff and one for the dry which simplifies things greatly.  I also pre-measured and pre-mixed the paint and water so I had no waste and no mess during the eps-crete mixing.

Cleanup was much easier today and the bucket of warm soapy water used to wash us up during the build wasn’t needed.  That says a lot for the improvement in our method.  I’m hoping this wasn’t a fluke because last time we did this, it was a mess.

West end of wall

Top down section

We’ve gotten another section of the wall done.  This one’s a lovely celedon green.  Wadly’s off to shop and have coffee with a friend today so I’m not expecting anything productive to happen around the farm.

Here’s the west end of the wall as well as a top-down cross-section so you can see how the eps-crete infill wraps around the post.  In the future, when I extend the building west, the foundation will be extended.  I should have wrapped the foundation around the inside of the post as well.  Hind sight.  I also should have done my electrical run and fastened the four-gang box to the 6-6-10-10 before putting the infill in place.  Again, hind sight.  This stuff is easy to shape after the fact so I can run a channel for the conduit and box before I build the next wall.  It just would have been much easier to fasten it to the reinforcing wire BEFORE doing the infill.  This is definitely a learn-as-you-go project.

Tedi supplying perspective

We have snow today for the second day in a row.  I’ve got the eps-crete forms moved and the paint mixed and I’m ready to put in another layer of eps-crete but . . . yeah, snow.

The picture shows one course of eps-crete in varying hues of red and white below two courses of gray.  The next two courses will be a nice celedon green.  The color is irrelevant. It’s free latex paint in the mix which is being elegantly and effectively recycled.  The wall is going to have a surface coat inside and out when it’s complete.  I plan to use lime plaster on the bedroom side and some form of exterior stucco on the sun porch side.  When I get to planning those coats I’ll start worry about color.

While I’m stuck inside I’m doing research.  I ran into this page on making lightweight concrete.  They use a mixer and the recipe results in a much soupier mix than what I make.  Theirs is pourable.  Mine isn’t.  It is common knowledge that, with concrete, the more water you add, the weaker the resulting product.  I’m not saying their recipe is bad, but the extra water would also not allow me to use the super light forms I’m built.  They pull the forms in hours, not days which I think has to do with my recipe using both latex paint and more eps in my mix.

My recipe and system works.  I like the result I’m getting with the mix I’m using.

2nd pour, a nice consistent bluish gray. First pour, yeah, not so much.

The first pour is red and four different shades of pink/white. The second pour is a consistent bluish gray.  None of the color will be visible as it all gets a skim coat.  I’m using lime plaster inside the bedroom and burlap dipped in cement slurry on the sun porch side.

I like this stuff. Epscrete is easy to mix, easy to work with and easy to clean up after.  It makes great thermal mass insulation.  That’s not as much as an oxymoron as you’d think.

This wall is ~6″ thick.  It is the dividing wall between the sun porch and the future bedroom, both conditioned spaces.  All the outside walls will be 10″ thick.

For reference, This much wall (~10″x12′) was mixed in 3½ batches.  I don’t think Wadly and I were out there more than an hour and a half and that included cleanup.

The piece above nearly filled the receptacle to the top.  Hopefully Wadly and I can use it up this afternoon.

Result with concrete lath mounted over original wood chipper screen.

I finally got to rescreening the wood chipper to use it as an EPS grinder.  It looks like it will work okay.  The foam pieces have to be small enough to fit in the hopper, but once introduced to the blades, the foam gets ground fine enough to do the job.

We’ll load the chipper into the back of a stable vehicle so we have a drop for mounting a collection bag.  I will be making it out of sun shade cloth if I can’t find a collection bag locally that will work.

I was doing some research on insulating glass and ran into an archived article on passive solar overheating.  The article is about half-way down in the archive, so scroll, scroll, scroll.  The title is “For passive solar, it’s so long slanted glass.”

Let’s be clear, I’m not advocating one way or the other, vertical versus slanted glass.  I’m looking at the home’s original design and I’m saying . . . where’s the thermal mass?  With all that solar gain during the day, the design has to encorporate enough thermal mass to absorb that heat so it’s available when the temps drop at night.  Without it you have Death Valley heat during the day and Siberia cold at night.

If, in the original design, there had been heat collection tubes that collected the heat during the day and directed it in the ground under/around the home, slanted glass had a chance of providing more even heat.  Not ideal heat, but better than the desert/arctic cycle the family experienced.  This is all about overall design, not the advisability of vertical versus slanted glass.  It was bad solar engineering.

Don Stephens of Greener Shelter separates the solar collector from the living space.  With separate solar collector boxes he’s able to direct the heat into the ground beneath the home where it can rise slowly into the home.  If you read back through some earlier posts, you’ll see where I talk about that and how I’ll use his technology/expertise when we build the house on the hill.

I ran into another interesting thing as well.  Some bright mind has come up with a transparent film that could conceivably be used for generating electricity from solar exposure.

Passive solar ala The Natural Home

Every couple of months I research new house plans. One of the site I love cruising through, even though not much changes there, is The Natural Home. I love the feel of those houses, though I can tell from the pictures I would need taller ceilings. I have a problem with claustrophobia and space over my head helps a lot. I am not comfortable with ~8′ ceilings. <shakes head> I feel like the world’s pressing down on me. Terry doesn’t mind small dark spaces and low ceilings. <shiver> For me? No thanks. Our current living room ceiling is 9’6 ” high and that’s pretty close to perfect though another six inches wouldn’t hurt. I know the additional height effects heating but for my comfort, it can’t be helped.

So let’s take the “natural home” style of house and see what I’d do with it. Here at our location our snow load is 64lb/sf. You might wonder why it’s that high when Boulder Colorado is somewhere between 30lb/sf and 60lb/sf depending on where you look.  We can get three foot of snow (seldom but it does happen) followed by inches and inches of rain which is soaked up and held by the snow making the snow VERY heavy.  The roof structure has to be engineered to hold that weight.

As the front part of the roof is fairly flat, I would run 6×8′s or 6×10′s from side to side where the beam marks are located held up by 6×6 posts. Spanning the beams I would use 2×10 rafters on one foot centers with the spaces between filled with papercrete. I’d need to talk to my permit guy at the county to see if that would be adequate.  I’ve got a local guy who can cut me #1 clear lumber in full dimension, I just need to know the sizes.  Rogerson cut full dimension 2×10 joists for the floor of the loft in the shop.

When looking at the inside images from The Natural House there are things I like and things I don’t.  I think the clerestory is a great idea.  For a house buried into the side of a hill, the clerestory brings light and air into the back half of the house.  Sizing the overhang correctly keeps the heat out in the summer and in during the winter.

I don’t much care for the sloped glass in the front, though I understand it’s an essential element of that design but for me it adds a crowded feel to the planter area.  I’d rather put in some form of in-floor heating (PAHS is my first pick) and have the luxury of vertical glass with a glass roof above the planter bed.

Because we have a lot of cool gray days (little solar gain), I’ll need to find a way to moderate the heat loss without covering the windows in quilts.  I saw an episode of This New House on DIY TV on super efficient windows.  The frames were closed cell foam insulated fiberglass and the glass panels had suspended film (up to three layers) inside.  A good example of this is the zero energy house using Southwall’s Heat Mirror technology.  While I’d love to use recycled glass panels, for our home, I don’t think that’s a smart solution.  Recycled panels are a real craps shoot.

Another of the things I don’t care for about the Natural Home is the rectangular bays front to back.  I’m an art deco gal and I like angles and curves.  In playing with the Natural House concept, I’ve fought this for the last couple years . . . loving the concept of the Natural Home but hating . . . despising the rectangular bays so much there was no way I could consider building/living in one.  Last night it finally occurred to me to angle the interior walls.  I can’t do anything about the posts needed to hold up the beams, but I can do something about boxy rectangular rooms.  By angling the wall I can get the closed in feeling where it’s needed (bedrooms and utility) and the open feeling where it’s needed in the kitchen and main living space.

One more change . . . to the planter just inside the front windows.  I have two options.  If it’s raised I can sit on the edge and garden.  It would need to be about 20″ tall which means the windows would need to be set about 24″ from the base/floor level.  If I don’t raise it, I would want it curving into the living space with stones set for walking through it with a strategically placed pond for feeding a grow wall partition in place of the south wall of the bedroom.  I really like the idea of that . . . hmmmm.  I love the idea but that may be a little ambitious.  I can always keep it as a future enhancement.

Judy of the woods do-it-yourself desk chair.

I occasionally do mad spates of research.  This morning I was trying to find a comfortable and supportive desk chair solution.  I spend hours at a time sitting at my desk and finding a chair that supports me properly is proving to be difficult.   That’s not the reason for this post.

In looking at desk chair images, I ran across the lovely image to the left.  This sort of thing makes me smile.  It’s an excellent example of someone thinking outside the box!

Judy’s chair struck a chord.  My current desk chair is being held in a relatively comfortable position by a length of cord, a cargo strap and a length of mountain tape (1″ wide flat nylon tube).  I’m not perfectly comfortable, the chair is still tipped a bit too far back, but I am *more* comfortable than I was before the cord, cargo strap and length of mountain tape.

The moral of this tale is, when we can get beyond vanity to cost effective function, we truly have come to the point where we can be thrifty and self-sufficient.  Judy of the woods looks to be a sister of my heart.  Check out her blog.  There’s a lot of interesting stuff there.