So, FH20 Guy has a post for you all after a long absence. I don't know if his camera ran out of film but it's a little light on photos - but hey, who I am and what do I know? (besides the guy who constantly brings these upstate dreams into drama-free reality!!)
So, I will be writing in the Courier font with parenthesis in order to correct a few facts, but other than that, it's FH20's show.
FH20 Guy - Final Post
Writing this final blog piece was a lot harder than I
originally imagined… it took longer, I went back and changed things only to
change them back – and then delete them altogether, and I kinda dragged my feet
finishing it. It wasn’t that I didn’t
want to do it. I think it was because
this part of the journey was coming to a close.
It was a weird feeling because I have really, truly enjoyed this part of
my EcoFarm project and almost didn’t want it to end.
When I finished post 3, we were just wrapping up the land
closing and hammering out a construction schedule. We ended up “mirroring” our original floor
plan and choosing a true South orientation for the barn/garage for a future
solar PV installation. One thing that
surprised me a bit was how much it costs to actually “site” the house for
construction – I guess this includes clearing trees and brush, digging holes, laying
out a driveway rock foundation for construction vehicles, and burying
cables. But it’s totally worth it. I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but
all of Chuck’s houses have buried conduits, very “clean” looking power
transformer pads, and other discrete systems.
You have all the 21st century luxuries but don’t see much of it… it just
works. I love that. My piece of property had neighborhood power/phone
at the road so these guys had to bring all that stuff to the final construction
site which was probably 100 or so yards in.
(We found another really nice potential home site about 250 yards deep
but the additional driveway and power costs were too great to justify.)
Discrete power transformer
and meter (look ma, no wires!)
Anyways, before we knew it, we were motoring. I never got to see the cool, really big
diggers and such in action but it must have been pretty amazing. An acre of trees gone, foundations and
footings in place, basement slabs poured… it was moving at too fast a
pace. If I could do one thing over it
would have been to place one of those time-lapse cameras high up on a tree to
document the whole thing (you know, when a camera takes a photo every minute or
so and stitches months of construction into a five minute video?) I eventually got one of those cameras for
myself – and one for Chuck too – and hope to see a new construction Catskill
Farm video shortly. (good idea in theory, but I really don't want to know what happens on my job sites every minute - I have enough stress in my life. But, seriously, the camera idea is cool and a great gift - we had one running when we did the blog cabin for diy a few years back).
Seeing the cleared land and the initial foundation and
footings going in was completely different than walking around the property
through trees and brush. I couldn’t see
it at the time, but that farmhouse and overall layout was almost “growing out”
of the landscape.
The house “growing out” of
the cleared landscape…
In addition to the amazing speed of construction, another
unusual thing was I basically stopped interacting with Chuck. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s the “front-end”
part of the process, or if he was moving to other things, or if that’s just the
way they operate the firm, but all my actual construction interaction from that
point forward was with a gentleman named James Karpowicz. James is a pretty cool guy… genteel, local,
highly experienced with all the construction aspects, and actually also an
artist! I enjoyed working with him
immensely. We would visit the site about
once every three or four weeks and “walk through” with James, discussing
various design aspects, tweaks, and other selections. He not only made it very easy, but I noticed
that he would constantly spot little things that required correction (sliding door
should go this way, not that way... it’s better if the radiator hose goes here,
not there… high-voltage switch or outlet
needs to be here, and so forth.) There’s
no substitute for a good eye for design and a lot of experience, and I was
immediately comfortable with this transition from Chuck (the search, the dream,
and design) to James (the actual nitty-gritty construction). (Not quite right, I stay fully involved in both construction and design all along the way, I just let James deal with the clients, the design meetings and the construction administration - he is very good at it, and people tend to respond better to him than me - hurtful fact I know, but hey, it is what it is. I'm just in the background kicking the day to day ass to keep it rolling.)
Looking back, it’s amazing how many things we changed over
time:
·
Roof – we went with a metal roof on the
barn/garage instead of traditional asphalt shingles for durability and
care-free maintenance. We had hoped to
install solar PV panels but kinda ran out of money… you don’t want your panels
(30+ year lifespan) outlasting your roof.
·
HVAC – originally we thought about a
ground-source heat pump but I couldn’t really get comfortable with the local
install experience. Sure, contractors
have done a few installs in the area here or there, but we didn’t really find a
company that installed geothermal systems for a living… these things may look
great on paper, but if you have a suboptimal install you end up giving yourself
a bigger headache than it’s worth. We
then moved on to these Japanese mini-splits which are fantastic (I had them when I lived in Tokyo). They’re super-efficient, provide both heating
and cooling, don’t require central ducting, can give you instant zoned,
automated temperature control depending on where you place the head units, and
you can forgo a propane tank and keep everything electric. Alas, the models we needed (which could still
heat in -4°F ambient temperatures) required 3-phase electric power when only
2-phase power was available in our rural area.
Drats. In the end, we went with
the old standby… a propane-fired boiler to heat water for radiators, and
central air for cooling. Yeah, it’s not
the greenest solution but it works, and in a super insulated house (more on
that later), it works fairly well – at least the heating does, which is the
only thing we’ve used so far. We get
forced-air heat for “free” as a secondary system, but so far I prefer the look
and feel of those old-school cast iron radiators.
·
Barn/garage – James was kind enough to suggest
wood shelving in the barn’s greenhouse (modeled after his own greenhouse!),
slop sinks in the garage and basement for general use, and other homeowner
comforts you just don’t know about since you probably spend most of your week
in a cramped NYC apartment. There’s really
no substitute for experience… both in their own lives and houses and the
requests of their many Catskill Farm-building clients. I think that’s one of the main aspects that
made this project so appealing and enjoyable. (Probably one of our leading competitive advantages - both our 100 2nd home experience, and our ability to get on the same page, intuitively, pretty quick, with our diverse clients).
·
Smart Wiring – both Chuck and James made fun of
me for this one, (little does he know that's just the beginning of making fun of him - haha, just joking FH20 guy!)but I wanted to run wiring everywhere
before the drywall went up. When I say
wiring, I’m just talking about low-voltage Cat6 and coax cabling (we chose a
structured wire solution with two Cat6 and one RG6 cable). You may ask why in the world we need such
cabling at our EcoFarm, especially when the wife has already banned television,
and I wouldn’t have a great answer for you.
But I figure in addition to the obvious devices (regular phones,
Ethernet to TVs, computers, or other devices, wireless routers and access
points, network cameras, home automation, etc.) you’re better off having the
wiring in place since it’s such a pain to poke holes in the walls later. From Catskill Farms’ perspective, no problem…
you want it, we can put it in. (The guys
at East Tek Security, who also installed and monitor the security system, did a
great job.) (I'll pass along the kind words).
·
Generator – after our Hurricane Sandy
experience, the wife made the call… let’s put in a propane generator (since we
now have that propane supply) with automatic transfer switching. Again, no problem. (Smart move, will definitely keep the wife happy.)
The POJAB
In the initial design phase when we were bouncing ideas off
of Chuck, I described the type of bathroom I had when I was living in Tokyo.
The Japanese take their bathrooms and bathing
very seriously.
I mean, these are the folks who designed
toilets with heated seats that automatically raise/lower, washlets that clean
your bum, or even air jets that dry you and automatically spritz a perfume when
you’re finished with your business.
(Check out
http://priceonomics.com/toilets/
to get familiar).
But enough about the
toilets…
I was more interested in
replicating the bathroom design.
Traditional
Japanese bathrooms are very different than American or “western” types.
We typically have a bathtub – perhaps
doubling as a shower – along with a sink and toilet as separate, distinct areas
of the bathroom.
You have curtains, for
example, to keep water localized to the bathtub so you don’t flood the rest of
your bathroom.
A traditional Japanese bathroom will have a “wet” and a
“dry” area. The dry area is exactly
that… a place where you change clothes,
use the sink, sit on that amazing electric toilet, or whatever. The wet area typically contains both the
shower head and a soaking tub, since people soap off and clean themselves first
in the shower and later soak in a deeper, hotter tub than our longer, shallower
western-style tubs. (Families often
share and reuse the hot water in the tub for soaking since electricity/heating
is expensive and the water is clean.)
I found this Japanese setup far more relaxing and usable… who
cares if you splash water around in the wet area, and how awesome is it to
easily transition from shower to tub whenever you want?
(A picture of the bathrooms at the Grand
Hyatt Tokyo give you a rough idea… check out
http://tinyurl.com/cl5dmpl)
Anyways, as I’m describing this, Chuck is listening intently
and replies “yep, we can do that. It
sounds like a pimped-out Japanese bathroom.
Yeah, we’ll call it a POJAB.” It
was amazing seeing that POJAB take shape. (Actually, to account for the "A', its Pimped Out Japanese American Bath - pretty clever, I know).
These guys nailed it… that photo shows the “wet” area before
they put in the glass. Notice the cross
handle is deliberately off-center (not directly underneath the shower head) so
you don’t have to get wet turning on the shower. The soaking tub on the right is western style
(longer/shallower) but that’s just fine… there are big windows you can just
stare off into nothing. The whole area
is tiled up and waterproof, and the windows open and there’s a vented ceiling fan
for proper circulation. Now that’s a
proper POJAB.
Wrapping Up
Well, that’s about it and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading
about my adventure. It all started with
a dream, and these guys made the rest pretty easy so far. We’re still furnishing the new home and
bringing in knick-knacks, and I’m sure we’ll discover and learn many new things
over the following months. There are
still a few things James and crew will finish when the snow melts and the
weather finally clears up, so maybe I’ll drop by again in six month with an
update on how great country living is in our Catskill Farm!
