Preliminary Site Planning

My dad (whom I introduced you to in one of my first posts), being retired and all, is fortunate to have a lot of time to think about Futurehome. Because of this he has taken on somewhat of a project manager role. To that end, he stopped by the town hall a while ago to pick up some information on forms and permits that we will eventually have to complete, to help us get a sense of what to expect. From this it became clear that one of our first tasks will be to hire a surveyor to come out, analyze the land, and develop a site plan. Well, we figured we could help this along by doing a little site planning of our own, using what we know about general well and leach field requirements and our initial house design. Then, it should hopefully be a quick and painless process to have the surveyor come out.

Conveniently enough, there is a USGS benchmark on the property:

Whoever does the mowing along the road apparently is unaware of the fine
or imprisonment associated with disturbing benchmarks.

Unfortunately, it is a little mangled. Nonetheless, we used this as a control point with our little handheld GPS. First we measured the two nearest utility poles relative to the BM, as well as the distance to the current driveway.

We were originally estimating that Futurehome should be about 300' north of the BM, so we trudged into the field due north. However, this actually put us into a totally different part of the land than we were expecting, and we were a ways down the hill that we were planning to be on the crest of. It turns out that none of our visual cues from the ground were straight or lined up latitudinal or longitudinally - the road, the tree edge, the hill, nothing. So it was a good thing we were using a GPS for a guide. It was surprising to realize how disorienting the whole area was. Using a compass we headed due east to the crest of the hill for what turned out to be ~150', and marked that point on our GPS and in the ground with a stake as the south west corner of Futurehome.

From there we used a tape measure to go 32' north and mark the NW corner; then 64' east to mark the NE corner; and then 32' south again to mark the SE corner. From the NE corner we paced about 30' east and 20' north for an approximate well location. Now with an idea of where the house will most likely go, we had a chance to look around and get a feel for it all. We took a bunch of pictures all around us and used Photosynth to generate a 360º panorama of the current view. A keen eye will be able to spot my dad hidden in among the gone-to-seed goldenrod, and an even keener eye will be able to spot the car we used to drive in. Obviously the vegetation is quite tall, so we will probably go in with a tractor mower soon to clear away at least the house footprint.

The existing driveway ended up being mostly straight ahead but with a couple trees in the way, which blocks the view of the house from the road (all good things, in our opinion). The house is practically smack-dab in the middle of the field, with the woods and valley not too far behind. And as you can see from the Photsynth, there is not a neighbor in sight.

The current "driveway"...kinda

Using a level set to a measured angle, we were able to estimate where the sun will cross the sky in the winter and summer months, and confirmed that the house is far enough away from the tree line to get full southward facing sun year-round. All things seemed to be coming together quite nicely, so we decided we were very happy with the site we staked out.

The view exiting our property at the planned driveway location. I really hope
construction equipment can fit through here without having to take out trees,
because this is a beautiful sight.

Using our waypoints and measurements, we drew up a nice little preliminary site plan:

(I'm keeping all exact locations private for now,
hence the smudges.)

Hopefully we will be able to use all of this to smoothly get an official site plan drawn up, and then we can really get the ball rolling on things like making a driveway, drilling a well, etc. Either way, this was a very exciting visit to the site of Futurehome.

Some initial design ideas

In a previous post I outlined some of the general plans we are considering with regards to house design. As previously stated, we are looking at a simple rectangular shape. This is advantageous both from a materials standpoint as well as a construction standpoint, as waste should be minimized and construction ease maximized. From a usage standpoint, this approach eliminates any blocked views, and any given window will have a minimum 180º field of view.

Following this shape, the best living spaces would be at the 4 corners, where you can get two perpendicular walls' worth of windows (and therefore ample sunlight, cross breezes, etc.). The middle of the house can then be used for the kinds of spaces that are more utilitarian and/or less dependent on windows and scenery: garage, utility room, kitchen, bathrooms. (We are not "kitchen entertainers" and do not care to make the kitchen part of our living space; though we probably will have space for an eat-in kitchen.)

From these concepts we have been sketching out some rudimentary house plans, just to get some kind of an idea of how this might all come together:

In this example, each square on the grid is 2 feet, and north is straight-up. Here we are considering overall dimensions of 32'x64', giving a total square footage of 2,048.

• Estimating a garage of about 20' wide by 17' deep, this gives a total living area of 1,708 sq ft. 
• Across from the garage, in the middle of the house, are the kitchen and the utility room. These are placed strategically based both on the reasoning above as well as ease with which to get groceries to the kitchen and 50-lb bags of salt buttons to the utility room. Also, the dryer (in the utility room) and the range hood can be on opposite sides of one wall and can share the same exhaust.
• With this placement, the rest of the house is essentially divided up into east and west "wings": east wing for bedrooms (capitalizing on morning sunlight), and the west wing for living spaces. 
• The main hallway is currently planned to be 42" wide. While that seems like wasted space at first, we learned the hard way that skimping on hallway width can make life surprisingly difficult, especially if you find yourself maneuvering something like a wheelchair.
• We plan to have pocket doors or sliding barn doors at either end of the main hallway that can allow for each "wing" to be closed off. This is helpful for purposes of entertaining, heating, or even containing smelly food preparation.
• There is a full bathroom near the bedrooms, and a half bathroom near the main living area. This placement follows our living patterns but also makes plumbing very convenient, as all sinks, tubs, toilets, etc. are concentrated in the center of the house. The shower and all sinks are also therefore in close proximity to the water tank, so hot water will come on practically instantaneously. 

As you can see, we haven't nailed down any ideas of how to break apart the living spaces into rooms. We have sketched and erased some ideas for walls, but this was mostly to be sure that if we were to break up the east "wing" into 3 bedrooms that the total area would be large enough. Overall we are not sure how we will want it to work out. Part of the beauty of only having one level and truss construction for the roof is that we don't have any interior load-bearing walls. So, we might choose to start living in the house without breaking up the "wings" at all initially, and then see how the spaces work for us and go from there. 

I am not a big fan of "open" floorplans, but I can definitely get behind a "flexible" floorplan - especially because I find it very hard to predict how I will want a space to be until I have had a chance to be in it for a while. Also I like to be able to rearrange furniture, so it would be nice to have rooms that allow for multiple configurations. We can also feel free to adapt the rooms according to our place in life: have a kid, wall off a bedroom; empty nesters, take down walls and reclaim unused space. Since we plan on being in the house for the remainder of our years, this is a pretty attractive approach.

Which isn't to say we couldn't use a little suggestion and inspiration from an architect. Plus there are additional considerations like where to position outlets and light switches. We definitely need to get on the ball finding an architect so that we can benefit from some professional experience, advice, and knowledge of building codes.