Magic Jack

[Apogee]

I'm just curious where you're living presently?

Are you still out at Magic Hot Springs?

I'm asking because I've watched that property go on and off the market and am curious what it's current status is?

That place would be my dream!

Glad to see you here.

Regards,

Steve

[Magic Jack]

How nice of someone to ask!!

I moved from MHS two years ago this month to a bigger place with a smaller spring, closer to town and with grid power and I'm currently building my dream house and shop on it.

http://family.webshots.com/photo/2707040160028237237ZfClxa

That is the first of about 200 pics that are so-far un-organized and mostly un-described.  Hopefully there will be room at the end of the project to arrange the album in better fashion.

My machine shop equipment is still in storage but will be coming out next week for final set-up.  (moving lathes is a TOUGH job.

MHS has been occupied by an outfit with a juvenile 'treatment' program that keeps them away from town, anyway.  I understand they've had a terrible time keeping things running and warm over there.   I gave them a good price on Magic Throb II (6-1/5Kw ST) but they decided they didn't want it so I dis-mounted it and brought it with me.  It'll be set up for emergency power as soon as I get a chance.

My new place was designed by ME and has none of the serious blunders caused at MHS by the application of professional engineering.  Hot water began flowing through the floors (by gravity) on Nov. 11 this year. I'm getting 48,000BTU/Hr, from 6 gallons a minute of 111F water.  Today the last of the upstairs windows will be put in (if the wind will die a little), and the interior will start building more heat.
Everything but the roofing and OSB was bought on ebay or craigslist.  It's a cheap house, but hard to tell it.

PS-  The pond catches warm overflow.  Fifty bucks of Walmart tropical fish are doing great in there and eat table scraps.  I'll have to tie pizza crust flies to catch them.

[BruceM]

Sounds like you'll be toasty warm soon, Jack, that's great.  After your thorough study and analysis of the numerous design debacles (!) of the MHS system, I have no doubt you've designed a masterpiece of a low input energy, natural hot springs sourced heating system for yourself. 

Congrats on the big move, and the huge effort to design and build a new place from scratch.  I look forward to seeing some photos and learning more about your design when you have time. 

Best Wishes.
Bruce
Snowflake, AZ

[mike90045]

As long as the move is not "out of the frying pan and into the fire".  But, you have already found out how things can go wrong, and won't repeat them.  What a project.

What size hook do you use for pizza crust?

[Apogee]

Wow Jack, you've been busy!

The new place looks outstanding!!!

Please put my name down for first right of refusal once you decide to move on to bigger and better things...

What an amazing dream spot.  You've outdone yourself!

I just finished looking at all of the pics in the album you posted.  What a cool project!

Thanks for sharing.

Excellent work!

Regards and Happy Holidays,

Steve

PS - I do have two questions:  How did the local building authority feel about reusing the gluelams or do you not need to worry about permits there?  Also did they give any hassles about glazing area since you're heating with a hotspring?

[BruceM]

I just went through the whole construction album- got on the wrong one before, I'm an idiot today.  The footings and foundation work brings back stiff back, legs and arms memory;  it's a bunch of hard work and is of course invisible as things progress.   The post and beam construction via site re-cut beams is amazing, and they look fantastic.  This home will be still be there in a couple hundred years.

The site is gorgeous, with breathtaking views, the structure "fits" it in a very attractive way, and  the stone warm pond looks  like it was always a part of the landscape.  This is architecture and design at it's best, Jack.  A new career could be yours once this place hits the magazines.

Early on I saw what appeared to be a very thick insulated slab... how think is it?  Is the line from the hot spring gravity flow to the structure?  Is there enough head to push it through the Pex too, or is that thermstat and circ pump(s)?   I saw the substantial perimeter insulation and sub-slab insulation- it's going to be nice walking on those floors!

Congratulations on such an amazing new home/shop!  Knowing it is almost all built single handed just adds more awe in your personal accomplishment, but built with any sized crew, it is a masterpiece.

Best Wishes,
Bruce
Snowflake, AZ

[Magic Jack]

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.

[Sodbust]

What a wonderful job. Great area and even distant pictures can see the craftsman ship..

Sodbust,, NW Kansas

[BruceM]

Thanks for the details, Jack.  You have squeezed every advantage out of the site and it's resources, no small feat.  Architects talk the talk, but seem to always fall on the walk.  Your project has LEGS!  The hot water pressure line inside the hot springs feed is ingenious, and to have even the in floor heat gravity fed is simply beautiful.  The power company is going to be very disappointed.  

I did see your use of steel posts, and the marvelous timber "trestle" surrounds.  They look great!

It's great that you've found a special "reverse mortgage with upfront financing"- that must have been quite an undertaking, and it sounds like a great arrangement for everyone involved, thanks to your knowledge and skills.  Now stick around in good health for a long, long time and enjoy the fruits of your labor!

Best Wishes,
Bruce

[Apogee]

Jack,

I also want to say thank you for sharing the details.

You've done an amazing job!

Can't wait to see pics of the finished project!!!! (and hopefully, many more on the way there...)

I'm jealous of the arrangement that you worked out with the families, as I've dreamed of doing something similar - just never thought that I'd find anyone willing to do something like that.  Very exciting that they were open enough to consider it.

Again, amazing job! 

Regards and Happy Holidays,

Steve

PS - Hopefully you outlive them all!