Natural House Design

I agree totally. The house we speak of was trying to force some poor design elements and the very basic issue of how it was gonna be sited was not even a consideration. I notice that many of the early federal and colonial houses in the US are really well sited. Most have their spines parallel with a local prevailing ridge or face south . We live in an old tavern and the tavern was located just shy of the top of a hill"sort of in the brow" That is ideal for weather and passive solar. Back then it was just common sense and no issues of passive solar or fengshui.
One of the really stupid things I see in suburban/rural homes today. The builder builds the house, puts in a septic system and then drills a well last. Im sorry,The well should control the site. You can optimize a wellsite and give yourself the best water supply but noooo, that aint the way its done in most of the US thats not in the arid central area of the country. Back in Pa I had to testify for a home association that had members with no water in their lots. They all bought homesites and had a single builder develop the area. He waited till thye end and drilled wells and about 1/3 of the homes had duster water supplies (less than 1/4 gallon per minute sustained pumping) Most homes couldnt have 2 people take a shower after each other, and noone could do anything for hours after they did a load of wash. The wells were a consequence of the land left after building and septage systems.I found them a wellsite for a public supply and they went back to the builder in a suit. The court threw the whole thing out and the people , who had no idea about water systems, they just wanted their lives made whole, wound up starting a water company under the PUC system . Since then the township established a series of ordinances making the builder prove that each home will have water in accordance with the regs of Adams County and the State.
Most builders have no real knowledge of what makes a quality total house. We all know about how they are building with 2 x 4 lumber and cheap everything , but stuff like water systems, sewge, radon control, and weather sealing are all invisible and unless the homeowner is there, they can be screwed in a fashion that they wont know for about 5 years when stuff rots or the well craps out totally, or the septage system backs up.

Sorry but I sit on a planning commission and Im constantly seeing crap quality and indifference to anything that afflicts a builders "TAKE"

im on fire now ___you hadda start something !!

In Lancaster County and some other counties of Pa last few years some new building materials have shown up. These are the "fake rock" and the "insulating stucco" . The fake rock is almost real looking but its permeability difference with its own sealer , can induce water seepage into the wall backing (which is usually oriented strand board OSB) OSB is a pile of wood chips that is glued and pressed into a sheet like plywood, except its tolerance toward moisture is ****. SO the fake rock sucks in the moisture into the OSB and you have a rotten wall within less than 10 years.The insulating stucco has been BANNED from Pa buiolding because it too, is a moisture wick that sucks in the moisture and traps it at the mesh and OSB layer. This stuff is even more pernicious. Its been seen that , in some cases, in Pa, walls have been turned into crispy dry rotted piles of wreckage within 5 years.The insulating stucco has brand names that I dont think would be wise to spread about unless I get a PM from a2k that its cool
Ive been sitting on the planning commission for about 4 years now and , when I got there, the typical approach for planning board members was, when approached by a "developer" (I HATE THAT WORD SO MUCH_LIKE WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE WAS UNDEVELOPED AND SOMETHING LESS) they wuld be totally obsequious in their manner, mostly because the supervisors were afraid of lawsuits.My approach has been more a "bring it on" attitude so the developers are awrae weve now taken on a more active role by questioning all aspects of siting, building, and post construction "bailing". Im now getting a whole bunch of really interested and knowledgeable citizens that want to serve on the planning commission and the developers are taking the township ordinances waay more seriously.

I thought there would be someone who had some ideas about design... I was hoping to learn something. Good point about the water source. Getting good water should be so obvious but maybe we're as lacksadaisical about that as we are about conserving it.

I'm guessing that most of the early housing naturally picked the best sites for the house. Sounds like the Farmerman house/tavern, being just below the crest of the hill, would naturally be protected from the elements. I imagine that you're on the hillside away from the main weather pattern, too. That is usually the "right spot" according to Feng Shui precepts, as I suppose you know.

Good to hear about those fake rocks, we've been a little tempted to use them. They are becoming popular here and they look pretty good, at least the ones that are molded from real rocks. Who'd have thought they wouldn't have a good moisture seal?

Calling yourself a developer around here is almost as bad as saying you're from California. They don't get much leeway from the planning commissions anymore either. It's the developers who are frequently under the gun for lawsuits now -- bad water supplies mostly and for cutting down too many trees. It's terrible for someone to buy an expensive big house, 4 baths, etc. and then not be able to get enough water pressure to flush. Sort of takes the rosy blush off the place. Development plans may drag on for years, trying to pass various environmental issues -- salmon streams being huge, of course, but any wetland is subject to a lot of discussion & controversy. Then there's the impact to roads & schools & infrastructure. Still, so many unattractive crowded developments crop up. And then somebody comes along, buys a lot and places their house square to the road with no thought for direction, solar exposure or anything. I don't get it.

Wow! These two threads have been quite an education for me.

If I may append my own wee little rant, my beautiful block of 100-yr-old houses is beset by a wave of demolition and new construction and it's making me batty. GIANT monster houses that take up almost the entire lot (and the lots are plenty large), horrible tan colored plastic siding that was a great deal, or something, as two of the houses which are overseen by the same guy both have it (horrible horrible horrible color), and generally changing the tone of this block within a short time from cool old well-kept houses to giant monster SUV houses.

I feel for ya, Sozobe. I'm not a fan of plastic siding or plastic building material of any kind. What's the point of having a big, supposedly fancy house and then covering it in junk? But I don't really like covenants either. I just wish people would have good taste. Is that too much to ask??

Exactly, Piffka.

Hmph.

I thought of this when reading farmerman's comments about the shoddy materials and workmanship. I recently had a friend over who asked how old my house was -- I told her it was built in 1900 with some pride. (It's in very good shape.) She said, sympathetically, "that old, huh? Yeah, I thought so when I saw the sloping floors. Oh well." ????? The floors slope a little bit, to be sure, but it's a fantastic house and I'd infinitely prefer it to some icky cookie cutter thing that will disintegrate in 25 years, while this one is STILL going strong.

(Disclaimer -- I know that not all new construction is that shoddy, and that old houses have their own drawbacks, like asbestos and lead paint.)

Yep, I wanted an old house, too, but there aren't so many to choose from around here as there are in Chicago. I love the nooks & crannies of old houses and imagining what the lives were like of the people who lived there before. I'm as disdainful as you about the cookie-cutter houses that are mostly being built today, even when they're big and expensive. We ended up building our house twenty years ago. People frequently think it's an original farm house because it looks old fashioned and we didn't take out many trees, so it is sort of nestled into them. It's also built to last -- all the lumber came from old growth timber that fell down when Mt. St. Helens blew her top.

I think Piffka and I met on another forum when I was carrying on ranting in a similar fashion and she agreed. Agree with all so far.

Your house sounds wonderful, Piffka.

Osso -- I thought you'd have lots of comments! C'mon. I know you could talk for hours about design.

Sozobe -- We love our house but it has some faults. For one, we were so young & bull-headed that we decided it didn't need a front door. Nobody uses a front door, right? We were trying to save some money and use space efficiently. Well, over the years we've found it is better to design a house with a front door -- for one, it is more welcoming, for another, houses need a focal point. We have a side door that goes through the carport -- great for us, we stay out of the weather, and another on the opposite side that goes onto the porch and then the yard, (and two others that go to another part of the back yard and to the utility yard) but our house is like that airplane without a window in front... the Spirit of St. Louis. Mr.P's uncle was in construction too and over the years has said to us many times "There's always a good reason for standard procedure." 'Tis true.

Hmmm.. It turns out this thread isn't at all what I expected when I saw the title. I was expecting discussion on Haybale houses, earth shelters and the like. lol

Lots of good comments here though. I just wanted to add something on Farmerman's comments about materials - With most of these the problem often isn't the material itself but how it is used. Clay brick will wick moisture in just like the faux-rock does and you'll have the same problem if you brick veneer your house incorrectly. If both are applied correctly the house survives without any of the rot problems.

Unfortunately, there are to many houses built on speculation nowadays and that leads to a lot of bad design ideas. The speculator builds with the popular current features and hopes to attract a buyer. The buyer usually has very little say in what the house ends up looking like in these cases. In earlier generations the house was designed with the homeowner's direct input.

Piffka, you're right, but yesterday was our longest most tiring workday of the month and "Chatty Cathy" is retired for the weekend. Back later though..