Some complications as the walls came up -Resources (Education)- E

Solar Home Chronicles 18

Tuesday, 20 November 2007

Once we started putting walls onto the concrete slab foundation, we began to see the layout of the home. And this is when we realized that some aspects of our plan were not comfortable for us.

First, we were surprised by how narrow the doorways seemed. We had wanted the main floor of our home to be wheelchair-accessible, so that we could cope with this possible eventuality as we got older. When we went to build the doorways into the framing, we found these openings to be somewhat narrow.

We also found our stairway to be narrow. The stairs were designed to turn ninety degrees halfway up, and when I peered up at the opening, I wondered if our queen-sized headboard and bed frame would even make it through. Also, the number of steps that were expected to fit in the space reminded me more of attic stairways than a main stairway of a 2-storey home.

Since our designer, Don Roscoe, was working in Nova Scotia, we turned to a local “architectural technician” friend, Christian Oulton, to do some research for us, to see if our dimensions were consistent with the Building Code.

Christian found that our home was built to Code – but only just. The openings for our doors were indeed wheelchair-accessible – at the narrowest opening possible within the Code. Our stairway was indeed steep and narrow – but this was allowed – just – by the Building Code. Don Roscoe had been so keen to get us the most possible living space, that he had used the smallest limits of the Building Code for hallways, doorways and stairs.

At this point, we realized that, for our own comfort, we would have to modify our house plans. We re-measured and adjusted, to find room for main floor doorways with a bit more room. And, with Christian’s help, we re-designed the stairway, to make the stair treads 9.5 inches deep and each step 7.5 inches high (they had been 9.25 inches deep and 8 inches high). We also widened the stairway by 6 inches. This, obviously, required room, and we had to push a wall back 32 inches into the garage. We would not have as much storage space for our freezer as we had planned.
We also changed the height where the ceiling met the south wall on the upper level. Extending upwards 14 feet to a vaulted ceiling, the original design called for a seven-foot south wall. However, but when Eric actually stood there, he felt it to be too low. So, we raised the height to 7.5 feet. This changed the rise and run of the roof, and eventually demanded more complex calculations to determine the rafter angles.

As the structure took shape, our experienced builders wondered about the integrity of the building. Between the wall studs, there would only be insulation and outside siding _ no other sheathing. To our builders, this seemed flimsy, so we decided to add a layer of sheathing. Most builders would use oriented strand board for this purpose, however, as I said in an earlier article, there are many good reasons to avoid this product. We decided to use three-quarter inch tongue-and-groove spruce sheathing – a natural wood product with little wastage.

As this exterior sheathing went up, the house took shape. We joked that this sheathing detracted from the solar characteristics of the home – walls really do inhibit the sun from pouring in!

I liked the sheathing so much that I decided to use this wood to sheath the chicken coop. It was a wonderful product to work with, and sounded so fancy that my chicken-expert-friends soon labelled our chicken coop as a `Cadillac’. For a while, our two buildings – the big solar home and the tiny coop – looked a bit alike… but not for long.

Next time: more details to slow things down