Designing is not a linear process -Resources (Education)- E

Solar Home Chronicles 6

Friday, 19 October 2007

So says the authors of the Solar Shelter Manual. We have a very unusual building lot. I have already mentioned that it is wet field in one area and somewhat boggy woods in another. I have also mentioned the ditches. These ditches are quite the defining features of the lot.

One long ditch defines the eastern lot line until it veers east, then south and ends up somewhere in the golf course. This is such a magnificent ditch that we had to go to the provincial maps to make sure that it wasn’t a legal waterway of some sort. It isn’t. Running across the lot are a number of other ditches, that all drain into the magnificent one. Our prospective driveway would have to cross these ditches, if we were to have our house situated where we wanted.

We wanted to have our house as far from the road as possible, without making the driveway too long for winter snow clearing. As well, we had to consider the water and sewer lines between the house and the road. The pipes have to slope away from the house at a particular angle, in order to prevent potential blockage problems. Bringing power to the house was a third issue that would help determine where to build the house. It is expensive to put in extra power poles from the road, so we would try to avoid this.

Our unusual lot is at its narrowest on its north side near the road (with only about 70 feet of road frontage), gradually widening to 110 feet over about 300 feet, then expanding eastward by hundreds of feet. The nicest place to build our house was just north of the expansive part, so that the southern vista of our backyard would take advantage of that widened space. With the extra eastern aspect to the lot, we chose the east side as our `front’ entrance. The house would show its back to the road.

One of the small excitements that we have at our home is when the new Lee Valley Catalogue arrives. There are so many interesting tools and gadgets to see. From among these, Eric and I purchased a laser level, to use to get a sense of the elevation of our building plot from the road. We needed to know this for the water and sewer lines.

Maybe it’s our middle-aged eyesite. Maybe it was the sunshine. Or maybe it’s a shortcoming of the gadget. But when we went out one afternoon, to assess elevation, we had the hardest time finding the little laser dot over the few hundred feet we were working with. Eventually, we realized that if I focused the laser dot on Eric’s back, and then he walked away from me toward the road, I could keep track of the dot enough to get a rough elevation measurement. I’m sure we looked kind of funny out there that day.

We went to see the Town Engineer, to find out how deep the water and sewer hook-up was beneath the road. Then, we did the math to find out how far we could build from the road. We were happy to find that there was just enough slope available for us to build our chosen distance from the road. We decided to deal with the power pole issue later.

After hiring a surveyor to clearly mark out the western lot line (our southwestern corner marker was deep in the woods, and so we could not accurately ascertain this on our own), Eric and I took some string and stakes, and laid out the general area where our house would be built. It was quite satisfying to stand at the southern edge of this area, and begin to dream about the view that we would be enjoying through the large, southern heat-collecting windows that would highlight our new solar home.

Next time: Let the digging begin.