These were taken at about 2 pm on Dec 18, almost the shortest day of the year. Look at that sun streaming in all the way to the back wall of the house. Just as planned! Next year, cold sunny day, fire in the stove, bread rising on the counter, thinking about a turn on the trails....

December got busy, as usual, and while I was busy, things continued at the house. Walls kept going up, roof kept going on, openings got closed up until windows get here… And then, on December 9 we got hit with a ‘ground hurricane’ -- 90 mph winds, the highest ever recorded here. Left us without power for a couple days and blew down approximately 200 trees, all of which unbelievably missed the house. Next day, after a couple hours of clearing and we could get to the house, Nils calmly asks me if I have insurance. His insurance covers everything until it is attached to the structure and then it is mine. Short answer is that I do now! Don’t even want to think of what a disaster that could have been. Instead, only loss was the port-o-john! And we don’t need to worry about deciding which additional trees to take down – Mother Nature took care of that.

So, walls continue to go up, roof on, openings closed up… can’t wait to see it after being away for 10 days!

I'm still waiting to see the 20' high panels go up on the right end. Second image is from the east. And there's my mountain view off in the distance. Last image is from the woods to the west.

The weather had been unbelievably cooperative. Today was sunny, not too cold, remains of a light dusting of snow last night. Great music playing at the site! It really is starting to look like a house.

My big job of the day was to pick the front door hardware. Very simple, bronze, not shiny. I want it to look like a copper pot that is just cooked in, not polished.

This picture was taken the day before Thanksgiving and I have not been there today, so who knows how many walls I have now! The windows are ordered and I guess they'll arrive in the dead of winter! Or during the "January Thaw". I'm also told the 20' high panels are here. Check tomorrow.

Insulating, backfilling and getting ready for wall panels

View from bonus basement room

Looking back to stair opening

Wall panels

Here is the house taking shape virtually! More from the land of reality later.

The top is on! Of the basement, that is. I've been told that some of the wall panels have been delivered, so this week they should start to go up. And the house will start to take shape. Wow. This IS fun. Yes, I'm loving it.

West end of basement. Opening to left is sliding glass doors; opening to right is a window; opening in middle will be closed. The house is really not that big -- 17' wide in fact.

A 1-1/2 wide.

Lighting scheme: sprinkle a constellation of ceiling fixtures (porcelain sockets) across the ceiling. Adjusted a little to have fixtures where they are needed, such as over the stove, and so they fit between joists. Pretty cool, huh?

Waterproofing and ledgers

It's starting to look like a construction site.

Electric, phone, internet

Oh. That's what the hole is for.

I won't be off the grid.

Footings (or footing?)

Basement view

Basement walls

I go away for a few days and look what happens!

Looking down stair from 2nd floor

Stair from 1st floor hall

One of Demetri's and Jason's great stairs. How about that orange wall?

Real Explosives!

After the blast

Boom!! It really was like in the movies. Except for the burning string part. Placed the dynamite, covered with lots of soil, rolled out the wire, sounded the warning signal and hit the button! Oh -- and moved all the people, dogs and equipment far away. Too far to get a good picture. And even so, a rock fell within about 20' of where we were standing. All this because the slow-acting explosive (isn't that an oxymoron?) was so slow it never happened.

So that's it for the ledge in the way. Next step -- footings and foundation and it looks like the weather is going to cooperate. Pretty warm (relatively speaking) and not too wet. Yeah -- it's really started.

My new room.

The west end of the house was never intended to have a basement. But in moving the house around to avoid and/or accommodate ledgerock, it ended up further west sticking out over the slope high in the air. Options were tons of fill and that 'house on top of a septic mound look' or extend the basement below. Second option yields a great room with full length windows and views. So might as well plan now for future plumbing -- bathroom for guest room #2 and room with shelving and a big ole slop sink.

Never know -- someone could be making cheese. Or painting.

How do they do it? I mean the bloggers. It has been nearly a month since my last post. For awhile nothing much was happening, but then last week... they dug the hole!

Of course there's ledge all over the place, but nobody knows where -- until they did the hole. So time to stop speculating came and of course the rock was in all the wrong places. Like under the stair and where the small basement was going to be. So we started the juggling. Move the house 5' this way, 5' that way, 10' up, rotate it 10 degrees, and use some slow acting explosives for that rock that just can't be avoided. And in the end -- voila! The house has a full basement with a big beautiful walk-out room where there was going to be a slab. Yup. The house got bigger. I think a portion of the future barn is now under the house. But everyone who thought I was crazy not to want a basement is now really happy. And so am I.

This is a great website for those of you who are interested in knowing more about the "passive house".

http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/PassiveHouseInfo.html

My house won't actually be certified, but it will incorporate all the principles and many of the latest technologies. And there will for sure be some $$ tradeoffs. Mostly I am just not willing to wait until next spring to start construction, and that's what being certified would likely mean -- a lot more hoops which all take time. I though maybe if I wrote those words I'd change my mind, but I didn't. My house will be, in the words of one of my favorite yoga teachers, Carrie Parker, "good enough".

So this is the driveway, with Kerry, Oakes and new puppy Gabi. If you follow the drive, you can kind of see the clearing for the house to the left of the photo. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Demetri, Jason and Mary meet with the other Mary, the pro, and hopefully there are some answers or at least some direction. But today there are only questions.

• If the concrete floor does not have radiant heat embedded in it, will it be warm enough? Will the sun shining on it heat it up enough and will the insulation below keep it from losing heat too quickly? Basically, will it be comfortably warm enough of the time?
• The south side of the house will need to be completely open to sun in winter -- no evergreen trees. Should I cut down all the spruces to the south, basically what you see in the picture above? Probably not all the way to the road, but most of the way. After all, it's not a naturally occurring forest -- just the remnants of a spruce plantation planted by CCC. And now that I think of it, it's the site of a future barn/studio building. Probably the answer is "cut them down, yes".
• How do I actually insure that pipes don't freeze if I go away for a week or two in December or January? A coil in the hot water heater that heats air coming into the house via the fresh air system has been mentioned. Or I could get a house-sitter -- doesn't seem like that is a problem in Vermont.
• If I end up putting a heating system in the house, was all this worth it?
• If I don't, but end up spending a lot more money on windows and insulation and land clearing, was it all worth it?
• How do I get this house under construction in the next week or two?
• Am I still loving this project?

Walking down the road

Woods, meadow and mountains

Sylvia starts her own building

Waiting. That's what I'm doing. What others are doing is the analysis of the house to see if it can be a "passive house". Demetri and Jason, along with a colleague, Mary, all admitted novices to this exercise, have loaded tons and tons of data into a program and come up with some initial results that look promising. Looks like with the house as it is, there will be a shortfall of something like 6,000 btu/hr during the coldest 2 months of the year (or maybe it it the sunlessest 2 months of the year!), Dec and Jan. But the back-up heating system, a little Vermont Castings wood stove with a baking oven, puts out 30,000 btu/hr. So, we're still in the running. Wednesday, they meet with a pro who will take a look, do some tweaking no doubt, and I'll have more to report.

In the meantime, some summer pictures of the site and views from the site.

And here is the site from the sky. Bert White Road is in the SW corner. It takes a turn to the south at the edge of my 5-acre field -- the white square. The rest of the site is along the road to the south, adjacent to the field. There is a beautiful field to the west, and the old road to the west goes up into the Green Mountains, part of the Camel's Hump X-country ski area and connecting with the Catamount Trail and beyond.

The site -- the beautiful site. Of course all the design work started with the site. The decision to build in the woods, not the field, and view the Adirondack mountains across the field. Clearing enough of the old spruce plantation out of the woods to get sun and filtered views. Setting the house back from the road for privacy. Situating the house to maximize views to west and south.

I had looked at other pieces of land and nothing spoke to me. Then my daughter mentioned to a neighbor and friend up the road that I was looking and they informed her that they were looking to sell a lot to the "right" buyer.... and the rest is history, as they say. What luck. I'm about 1/4 mile straight uphill from Kerry, Justin, Sylvia & Oakes. How perfect is that!

And this is where we ended up after lots of rethinking of the envelope. Very simple and, once again, I love it. It was still oriented for solar and views, had a concrete floor with radiant heating, and included a sleeping porch on the now to be "green" roof.

But that was before 3 days ago.

A lot of design work had already been done before the decision to go passive. At first the house was literally two pavilions connected with a mud room. I loved it. It would have a concrete floor with radiant heat, highly efficient doors and windows strategically placed to maximize solar gain and minimize heat loss, and also take advantage of views to the northwest and south.

Looked great, but resulted in far too much exterior wall surface for the 1200 square feet of interior space. Too much money to make the highly efficient building envelope we were looking for. And so the decision was made to simplify the form.