A CRITICAL LOOK AT MY MOTHER'S HOUSE

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

WINDOWS

Though some people might question our investment in top-of-the-line Andersen insulated windows and doors, we believe that the roughly $5,000 we shelled out for the lot of them will prove to have been a bargain as the years pass.

BACK WALL INSULATION

There's been an ongoing debate among staff members about whether the I "-polystyrene insulation that extends from the footings up the back and side walls to six feet below grade (it's 2" thick above that) is really necessary. The thermal merits are certainly open to discussion, but everyone does agree that the insulation eliminated the possibility of condensation on the interior of the walls ... which might otherwise have been caused by a large temperature differential. In any event, the $350 cost of the material doesn't amount to a great expense.

EPDM WATERPROOFING

We haven't been able to find anyone who worked on our house project who isn't wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the Effective Building Products bentonite clay we used to waterproof the back and side walls. People who've checked the books have raised a question or two about the rubber membrane on the sod roof, however. The installed cost of the material (with a day's help from a local roofing company) ran $1,925 ... or $2.14 per square foot. The Bentonize, on the other hand, cost 75¢ per square foot and the labor of four men for a day.

THE SOD ROOF

The final area in which we might have earned some savings as a result of design modifications is the sod roof on the front half of the house. Now it's generally agreed that there's no great thermal advantage to putting 8" of earth on the roof of the building, and—in fact—we insulated the front roof just as heavily as we did the rear one anyway! The main advantages of the earthen covering, then, are aesthetic, so if you're willing to forgo the blending roof line, etc., there are some savings available. Specifically, it cost us about $1.25 more per square foot, or a total of $1,125, to have a sod roof rather than to make the two roofs match.

LOOKING AT THE DESIGN

We recognized early in the project that our building couldn't be laid out as a residence ... since we would be delivering lectures to groups of as many as 100 people at a time inside. The large open area that appears in the center of our floor plan is now occupied by some 50 chairs, and when the downstairs bathroom is completed, it will have to be equipped with a ten-foot-long ramp to accommodate folks in wheelchairs. For those reasons we've included here an alternative floor plan, one that might be more suitable for residential use.

The floor plan we used imposed other limitations on the practicality of our house, too. For example, placing the upstairs floors 54 inches above the slab meant that the space below those floors couldn't be included in the calculated living area. Five hundred square feet of space was thereby lost, and the cost per square foot was driven up by almost a third. Of course, that area beneath the floors is put to use ... for the rock box where we store solar heat and for general storage. But it does decrease usable living space.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print