Apogee--My relations with the building inspectors is mostly incognito. I did enough to get the electric in and kinda kept a photo album of what I've done after wards and hope forgiveness equals permission when it comes time to settle up. I over-engineer everything so there's no 'pushing the envelope' building designs or techniques. Its' been great seeing it come together and 'seeing' big parts suddenly become something because I finally visualized just where a wall will be.
The initial building permit had a place for rating the construction as to energy use and thrift. Once I told him I was using hot water for heat that had been going to waste since the glaciers caused a problem for the Mastodons he signed off on whatever windows I wanted. I'll install foam board shutters on the big west windows if there's too much cold air cascading off them. I can rig four of them with a weight closing and a pulley arrangement to open them, if needed. I'm doing the same opening/closing system with the transom windows high on the east end for ventilation.
BruceM-- I appreciate the kind words. This has been a dream for many, many years and I happened to fall into a great deal to get it done, too. Two large pioneer families have owned and run the hotsprings for years, but age and infirmity finally shut it down and responsibilities transferred to a younger generation of super achievers with a sense of family history and responsibility, but they all live 'away'. They're financing the entire project which includes a family area with pools, dressing rooms, rec room, camp kitchen and picnic area that they will use two weeks a year. My house and shop is mine as long as I live, then it goes to the family. It's a great way to use the tools I've gathered and have a place to spend my days doing what I love with only one (nervous) ranch within cannon shot. The 'family property' is 160 acres, but that's surrounded by nearly 4,000 acres of family owned ranches and vast tracts of BLM.
It'll be sided in rough cut 'wane-edge' slabs of beetle killed pine and chinked as if it were a cant-log building. The corner sub-columns will be native stone, but that might take a while. I still have a big hot springs-fed soaking tub to build and all sorts of stuff just to get moved in. Then I have the family area to finish, too.
I have 24x24 footers with a 5 inch slab on top. The slab is insulated with 2 inches of hard foam board with 6x6 re-wire which has the PEX zip tied to it. I used the same blue 'score-board' to insulate the 4" PVC pipeline that runs from the two hot springs to my place inside an insulated box. I have nine feet ten inches of fall in the line and that's plenty to force 1 .5 gpm through each of the four, 300 foot, 3/4" PEX tubing circuits that's fed through a commercial manifold. I put a check and tee in the line in case a pump was needed, but it seems to be plenty, so-far. I'll know much more once I get the cold outside air cut off, but it's maintaining 98F under a slab of insulation laid on the floor.
A neighbor with seven (!!) big sons is a concrete contractor. He poured the 58 yards of concrete and two friends from Colorado came up to help with the rafters and ridge beams once I got too high to reach with the 'hoe. Then I hired two goofy guys to help put up the 8" SIP roof system. ... For two months after the SIPs were up I removed torn up tarpaper and put down new paper in increasingly bad weather. I finally gave up on doing a roof by myself and hired it done (in two days!). Other than that, its' been nobody's baby but mine. From digging the foundation and doing the plumbing to the top most wooden parts, it's been me learning and doing. It's been fun.
Funny you should say 'it'll last two hundred years'. I told the family when I'm done it should look like it's been here a hundred years already and nobody will doubt it'll last that long again.
Notice I cheated and didn't actually do a 'timber frame' building. The main timbers (10x20x 34 feet) are supported and bolted to the six inch (x5/16" wall) box columns, so the big 'support' beams have an easy job of it. Now, the steel beams are covered and the effect is of a massive timber frame house supported on more timber than is contained in an average tract house, but in BIG chunks.
There are no nails in any part of the house but the roof strips put down by the roofer. Everything else is Spax lag bolted or screwed with coated deck screws (45 pounds, so-far). Nails are coming though! I've got blue-stained pine paneling and Aspen paneling yet to go.
Just for grins--- the reason the house sits exactly 'there' is because the 5,280 foot above sea level line runs along the top of my main wall beams.....and there is just enough fall from the hot springs to flow water out of a spout just over head high so I have an eternally hot shower that requires no power. It seemed like a good thing to have at a mile high, for some reason.
All clean waste water goes to the pond, eventually. There's also a concrete septic 'black water' line and two gray water irrigation lines for clothes washer and laundry sink.
This could be the only house in S. Idaho that doesn't have a heater or a hot water heater. For hot water I ran a continuous run of 3/4" PEX *inside* the 4 " hot water pipeline. That PEX and another just like it buried in the cold ground is connected to a standard pressure tank that pumps water from the springs for domestic use up at the old building. After 500 feet of being bathed in 111 degree water, the water from the (cooled off) pressure tank shows up at the house at 111F and the cold water side is 58F from contact with the ground during the same distance. I'll have to boost pressure and heat for the upstairs bathroom, though.
I just ordered the big west windows today. They'll be dual pane, bronze tint, low E, argon filled. Hmmm...I'm just tallying up in my head. Those windows are 30% more than all the others combined. Worth it.
The initial building permit had a place for rating the construction as to energy use and thrift. Once I told him I was using hot water for heat that had been going to waste since the glaciers caused a problem for the Mastodons he signed off on whatever windows I wanted. I'll install foam board shutters on the big west windows if there's too much cold air cascading off them. I can rig four of them with a weight closing and a pulley arrangement to open them, if needed. I'm doing the same opening/closing system with the transom windows high on the east end for ventilation.
BruceM-- I appreciate the kind words. This has been a dream for many, many years and I happened to fall into a great deal to get it done, too. Two large pioneer families have owned and run the hotsprings for years, but age and infirmity finally shut it down and responsibilities transferred to a younger generation of super achievers with a sense of family history and responsibility, but they all live 'away'. They're financing the entire project which includes a family area with pools, dressing rooms, rec room, camp kitchen and picnic area that they will use two weeks a year. My house and shop is mine as long as I live, then it goes to the family. It's a great way to use the tools I've gathered and have a place to spend my days doing what I love with only one (nervous) ranch within cannon shot. The 'family property' is 160 acres, but that's surrounded by nearly 4,000 acres of family owned ranches and vast tracts of BLM.
It'll be sided in rough cut 'wane-edge' slabs of beetle killed pine and chinked as if it were a cant-log building. The corner sub-columns will be native stone, but that might take a while. I still have a big hot springs-fed soaking tub to build and all sorts of stuff just to get moved in. Then I have the family area to finish, too.
I have 24x24 footers with a 5 inch slab on top. The slab is insulated with 2 inches of hard foam board with 6x6 re-wire which has the PEX zip tied to it. I used the same blue 'score-board' to insulate the 4" PVC pipeline that runs from the two hot springs to my place inside an insulated box. I have nine feet ten inches of fall in the line and that's plenty to force 1 .5 gpm through each of the four, 300 foot, 3/4" PEX tubing circuits that's fed through a commercial manifold. I put a check and tee in the line in case a pump was needed, but it seems to be plenty, so-far. I'll know much more once I get the cold outside air cut off, but it's maintaining 98F under a slab of insulation laid on the floor.
A neighbor with seven (!!) big sons is a concrete contractor. He poured the 58 yards of concrete and two friends from Colorado came up to help with the rafters and ridge beams once I got too high to reach with the 'hoe. Then I hired two goofy guys to help put up the 8" SIP roof system. ... For two months after the SIPs were up I removed torn up tarpaper and put down new paper in increasingly bad weather. I finally gave up on doing a roof by myself and hired it done (in two days!). Other than that, its' been nobody's baby but mine. From digging the foundation and doing the plumbing to the top most wooden parts, it's been me learning and doing. It's been fun.
Funny you should say 'it'll last two hundred years'. I told the family when I'm done it should look like it's been here a hundred years already and nobody will doubt it'll last that long again.
Notice I cheated and didn't actually do a 'timber frame' building. The main timbers (10x20x 34 feet) are supported and bolted to the six inch (x5/16" wall) box columns, so the big 'support' beams have an easy job of it. Now, the steel beams are covered and the effect is of a massive timber frame house supported on more timber than is contained in an average tract house, but in BIG chunks.
There are no nails in any part of the house but the roof strips put down by the roofer. Everything else is Spax lag bolted or screwed with coated deck screws (45 pounds, so-far). Nails are coming though! I've got blue-stained pine paneling and Aspen paneling yet to go.
Just for grins--- the reason the house sits exactly 'there' is because the 5,280 foot above sea level line runs along the top of my main wall beams.....and there is just enough fall from the hot springs to flow water out of a spout just over head high so I have an eternally hot shower that requires no power. It seemed like a good thing to have at a mile high, for some reason.
All clean waste water goes to the pond, eventually. There's also a concrete septic 'black water' line and two gray water irrigation lines for clothes washer and laundry sink.
This could be the only house in S. Idaho that doesn't have a heater or a hot water heater. For hot water I ran a continuous run of 3/4" PEX *inside* the 4 " hot water pipeline. That PEX and another just like it buried in the cold ground is connected to a standard pressure tank that pumps water from the springs for domestic use up at the old building. After 500 feet of being bathed in 111 degree water, the water from the (cooled off) pressure tank shows up at the house at 111F and the cold water side is 58F from contact with the ground during the same distance. I'll have to boost pressure and heat for the upstairs bathroom, though.
I just ordered the big west windows today. They'll be dual pane, bronze tint, low E, argon filled. Hmmm...I'm just tallying up in my head. Those windows are 30% more than all the others combined. Worth it.