posted 1 year ago
Alright, here it is! What questions do you have about it? Anything you think I should add, consider, learn about, etc.?
Intro: When/Where/Why
In about 15 years, when the youngest of my kids has moved out and my wife and I are retired or closer to retired, I would like to buy a few acres of land in a fairly warm mountainous region.
We have both lived in urban city centers and in remote villages, but have spent most of our lives in suburbs, most recently in a town outside Columbus Ohio. Although we live in a beautiful quiet neighborhood that is safe and friendly, our own house is a typical leaky 1970s ranch, and the others in our neighborhood vary in style but are similar in quality. Meanwhile all around us is exurban sprawl, with farmlands being rapidly converted into cookie-cutter mini-mansions scrunched into tiny lots.
Each mini-mansion, while under construction, produces dumpster upon dumpster of wasted OSB, PVC, 2-by offcuts, scrap drywall, and other forms of waste. When completed, these mini-mansions are crammed full of mass-produced furniture and decorations, home electronics, and other crap to the point that many occupants store their fleet of brand-new jumbo-sized vehicles in their driveways. The houses themselves are inefficient, poorly constructed, and designed with an emphasis on flashy looks, without regard to performance or context. Each one is surrounded by a carpet of grass that was initially brought in on the back of a truck and requires constant watering. Poisons are regularly applied to these ridiculous grounds to keep dandelions and other pollinator-attractants at bay.
Growing every day is my desire to escape from this madness, to “opt out” of it, and to live in a way that is less backward and surrounded by beauty instead of consumerism and waste.
My wife and I love the outdoors and the feeling of being an active part of an ecosystem. As much as possible with our three small kids, we hike, garden, and dwell outside watching the bees and rabbits and birds on our 1/2 acre property. (We notice we are often the only family in our neighborhood that appears together out of doors on a regular basis.)
There is much my wife and I like about suburban living, and we have no intention to become farmers, but we seek a substantial change from this manicured setting and lifestyle for the last third of our lives. I have had a lifelong dream of building my own home and for the past several years have absorbed as much information about different methods and aspects of home construction as I could. I am also reasonably handy and I believe I could do some of the building myself, especially with some initial guidance.
This document is a way for me to clarify to myself and others exactly what my wife and I want in a home that we one day hope to spend the rest of our lives in. Each heading is presented in approximate order of importance.
Feasible/practical/flexible
I knew about Earthships for about a decade but I started really studying them more recently, and shared videos about them with my wife, whose eyes lit up. However, I always knew the content I saw about them was rather one-sided and there must be more to the hype. My interest remained at the level of being intrigued by some of the passive design elements and the philosophy, more than drooling over the structures themselves.
Indeed, after investigating further I learned that many people tried and failed to build Earthships (or “Earthship-inspired” homes, as non-sanctioned ones are legally required to be called), or built them but eventually chose not to live in them. I wanted to avoid those traps. The most important aspect of any home I build must be that I can actually build it, and then have something I want to live in for a long time when it’s done.
I want to have options with regard to where I build it as well, partly so I can choose land with the scenic views I desire, in a climate my wife and I find agreeable (and amenable to our lifestyle), near enough to conveniences so I’m not driving an hour to the grocery store (or a hospital—after all I plan to grow old in this house!) and so I can be reasonably close to some kind of community of friends and neighbors (while still having plenty of open natural space around me). For this I cannot be limited to the “Earthship hubs” in one or two counties in northern New Mexico or southwest Colorado.
There are also considerations like zoning and permitting: building a bermed home with a tire wall can be a frustrating legal process, and there can be issues getting financing and insurance as well. The house I build must be able to satisfy bankers and insurers without me having to tear my hair out in frustration, or needing a law degree.
Additionally, I know I will need assistance to build my home, and ultimately I will need to hire professionals as well; I cannot rely on having a large pool of volunteers in any old place I choose to build. Therefore to keep my house affordable I need a construction method that does not require a large crew and a long timeframe.
Lower cost to build than a conventional house
Since about age 30 I have had a good-paying job and have saved reasonably well. My wife is an expert saver also, and we look forward to saving even more in the near future when all our kids are out of daycare. Assuming nothing catastrophic happens to home values in my neighborhood in 15 years, I expect to have a lot of equity in my existing house by the time I am ready to build my new one.
That said, I do not want to blow all my savings and liquid assets on a house. I have seen too many wasteful half-million-dollar mini-mansions sprout up around me (and become occupied by people who are definitely not surgeons) to want to follow that path. I want to build my house economically, for substantially less than a conventional house of the same size. I have always been a person who sniffs out bargains, finds a workaround, and substitutes high price tags with a bit of elbow grease when possible. I should be able to do that when building my home as well.
Perhaps this means using salvaged materials. It will likely mean designing the home in a clever way (for example, creating multi-use spaces, or clustering utilities). And it will certainly mean doing some of the work myself. I am ready to do all those things.
I am also open to the idea of building in stages—perhaps creating a smaller livable “core” at first, which can then be expanded the next year, and again a year later—though I am not married to this idea either, as it could end up being even harder and pricier than building all at once. Especially since I have a reasonably firm idea of what I want already.
Lower cost to maintain than a conventional house
It is painful to watch my money leak out my windows, down my drains, and through my power outlets, especially since the cost-per-throughput is unpredictable and unlikely to stay the same or go down over time. Therefore some of the things I want in a house include high performance in terms of utilities.
I am not an off-grid absolutist, but I welcome the off-grid idea. If my house sips very lightly from the grid that is fine too, so long as it doesn’t impact where I can put my house, but I definitely do not want to depend on the grid for all my heating/cooling, electricity, water, or sewage needs the way I do now.
Many practices from Earthships and passive architecture appeal to me: the use of berming or other forms of thermal mass together with underground air tubes and strategic design elements to regulate indoor temperature; the use of solar panels and wind turbines to generate electricity; gutters, cisterns, and various synthetic and biological filtration systems to capture, purify, and recycle rainwater.
It is worth noting here one of the ways I want to differentiate my house from many Earthships: I want to ensure that any parts I anticipate needing to occasionally replace or repair are conventional off-the-shelf products that will not be difficult to find. This might include things like appliances, flooring, or interior framing materials.
Interiors
When dreaming of building my own home, my starting place was always interior views: I would envision in my mind’s eye a space that I would like to be in, and what it would be like to look around, what I would see out the windows, what I might glimpse through a doorway or down below in a vaulted area. The thrill of building my own home is the chance to bring some of these visions to life. Fortunately I believe they are harmonious with the requirements above.
For example, large equator-facing windows could provide scenic views of mountains and trees, which I long for. Such windows could simultaneously provide solar gain to heat my house in the winter and grow plants in an interior greenhouse, like those found in Earthships. The planters in this greenhouse could receive gray water from sinks and showers; the plants, aside from providing me with year-round scenery, comfort, and snacks, could do the work of purifying gray water for use in toilet tanks (bylaws permitting).
It is important to me that my house feel neither like a refuge from nature, nor like a blended continuation of it, but like a controlled interface with nature: a place from which to enjoy nature in quiet and comfort. At the same time, the house itself would be a living thing, an ecosystem, which by living in it my wife and I would play an active role.
One aspect from my dreams that I want to manifest in my house is open space and vertical separation: interior spaces from which to look down or up into other interior spaces. I think this provides a quiet sort of grandeur, and if my house is built into a hill it can also reflect the notion of cooperation with, rather than struggling against, the surrounding landforms. I have not seen Earthships with multiple levels, but it seems like such an arrangement could have an advantage in terms of harnessing gravity so that water flows naturally downward from cistern to synthetic filter to taps and showers to greenhouse, reducing how powerful a pump might be needed. (And, carving into a hill seems easier than pounding tires.)
A house with stairs also represents some continued need for mobility; climbing stairs is great exercise and ensures a minimum level of activity. Rather than fear what I may not be able to do at age 95, I want to set a requirement for what I must be able to do at that age.
One more thing worth mentioning is my requirement that all bathrooms have a source of natural light.
Square footage and lifestyle
My wife and I have never lusted after mansions, and even now with us and our three kids under one roof, our 2000 sqft home feels perfectly adequate, even roomy. As Olga Ravn says in her book “The Employees”, anything feels big if you have to clean it. But I do not want to live in a Tinyhouse either: my goal is to comfortably accommodate our desired way of living without getting a house that is too big.
To this end, aside from the basics (bedroom/bathroom/kitchen, etc.), we also would like a dedicated space for exercise, a home office/reading room for my wife, and a dual home office/music room for myself. I would like the kitchen and master bathroom to be comfortably sized. And we would like to have a private place for our kids and grandkids to sleep when they come visit. None of these rooms have to be grandiose, and in fact most of them can be quite modest — and some might be combined into one — but they all reflect aspects of our lifestyle we expect to keep into old age.
Conceivably, some of these spaces could instead take the form of accessory outbuildings (such as the garage/workshop I plan to build as a starter project) but I believe it would be simpler and cheaper to just include more rooms in the main house.
Most Earthships seem to top out at a little over 1000 sqft, and many are much smaller; I think 1600-1800 sqft is a more reasonable estimate of the size home I want. With a vertical separation of space however, it need not take up that size footprint.
One more thing I want to mention is about layout. I want to ensure that spaces in my house flow in a way that is practical and convenient given the way we ordinarily live, rather than to satisfy some fantasy of, say, hosting a large gathering, or to conform to some ethereal metaphysical principle. Someone who arrives at the house, parks their car, and enters through the kitchen door should have a place to put down bags, to sit and remove shoes. If dirty or sweaty clothes need to be discarded, it makes sense to locate the washing machine at that spot too. That sort of thing.
Recycled/salvaged materials & low waste
Saving the planet is not my reason to build a home. I could reduce my impact on the environment even more by moving to a large apartment building. What most appeals to me about recycled/salvaged materials is the cost savings and the satisfaction of having found value in something others discarded, which itself is a kind of cost savings since I have made a waste material more valuable by using it. (I do still feel good about reducing waste and helping the environment of course.) So, I am not wedded to recycled or salvaged materials and if it makes more sense to buy something then I will, but since salvaging and recycling building materials is something I’ve been doing for years now, it’s hard to imagine I won’t at least try to keep doing it when I build my house.
I also want to minimize the waste from materials I do use. That might mean adjusting my design to accommodate full units of material without offcuts, or it might mean making sure that offcuts from the building of one feature have a use in a different feature. Unlike the cookie-cutter mini-mansions that sprouted around me the past few years, my home build should not require that a row of dumpsters be parked onsite. I think I heard that modern houses average about 15% wasted materials; if I can get that number on my house down to 1.5% or lower I’d consider that a success.
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