House design
Dec. 23rd, 2008 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrI wrote this up as an email to a friend because the weather hasn't let her drop by to talk about the ideas.
This is the result of *years* of on and off thinking about the sort of house I'd like. Not that I could ever afford it....
Be warned, this rambles.
since you aren't likely to be over any time soon. :-(
Ok, we start with a *big* meadow (I'd like a section of land, ie one mile square, and the meadow would be a big chunk of it. Some trees, and bushes around the edges.
If possible, I think I'd like to have a blackberry tangle planted all around the property line. You get thru that, you find a clear strip (wide enough to drive a small tractor and cart or the like on) then a barbed wire fence.
On the far side of the fence is another clear strip and more blackberry tangle.
Anybody willing to go thru *that* to trespass has to be determined.
:-)
The road in leads around a small hill (well a big mound of dirt with grass and stuff on it) which when you get to the far side has a several car garage set into the side.
The meadows is native grasses and wildflowers.
As you walk from the garage into the meadow you see a rise in the ground near the center (or the far edge if the property is small). The ground rises 6-10 feet above the meadow i a circle around 100 feet across.
The grass is cut shorter for a ways around the rise. And when you climb it you find that the rise is a circular berm. The top is maybe 5 feet wide and slopes back down to an inner area that's about the same level as the meadow.
The inner slope and "floor" are grass, but thids is more of a lawn. And nicely green even if it's summer.
In the center of the "floor" is a large circular opening (50 feet?). There's a railing and a gate.
There's also what looks like a natural rock outcropping with a spring and water flowing over the rock into the hole.
At the gat, there's a stairway leading down into the hole. The water falls into a large pool. Not natural, but not entirely articial looking.
It's about 20 feet to the bottom of the hole. It's rather like someone's patio around a pool.
There are some windows, doors and several sliding glass doors in the walls.
Yes, the house is underground and built around the "patio" and pool.
The living room, dining room, kitchen and a couple of bedrooms open onto the deck. Maybe a rec room as well. There's a corridor around them, with more rooms on the outer side of it.
And there's an underground passaage to the garage.
Oh yes, the house (and the meadow if sufficiently screened from neighbors) is clothing optional.
If not sufficiently screened, then clothes will be worn if you can be seen from outside the ring mound.
A geodesic dome that attaches to mounting points around the top of the mound can be erected to deal with winter weather.
The waterfall is (of course) artifical. Water is recycled and probably treated with ozone rather than chlorine (a bit harder to set up, but purifies just as well without the burning eyes and chlorine smell). Might even be possible to keep some fish in pools above the swimming pool.
I figure the interior layout of the house is more hexagonal than circular. Octagonal is possible, but not sure if it really buys us anything.
I figure that the dining room and master bedroom have the big sliding doors to the deck. Other rooms will have windows and or regular doors. Or maybe dutch doors.
We'll lose part of the arc to the waterfall.
I figure that the rooms will mostly be rectangular (so regular furniture will fit ok) except for the living room/dining room. And maybe the kitchen.
The wedges of space between can be used for storage and other stuff.
Going to have to have a corridor around the "outside" of the hiuse for fire safety. Spo that'd mean we'd have the central atrium, a "ring" of rooms, a corridor around them, another ring of rooms, and then a corridor around that.
Storage rooms can be on the outside "edge" of the house, but not bedrooms or other rooms people spend a lot of time in.
Also need another exit passage to someplace other than the garage, preferably on the opposite side.
The idea here being to try to avoid the possibility of a fire trapping someone with no exit. So all non-storage rooms would have two doors.
This is the result of *years* of on and off thinking about the sort of house I'd like. Not that I could ever afford it....
Be warned, this rambles.
since you aren't likely to be over any time soon. :-(
Ok, we start with a *big* meadow (I'd like a section of land, ie one mile square, and the meadow would be a big chunk of it. Some trees, and bushes around the edges.
If possible, I think I'd like to have a blackberry tangle planted all around the property line. You get thru that, you find a clear strip (wide enough to drive a small tractor and cart or the like on) then a barbed wire fence.
On the far side of the fence is another clear strip and more blackberry tangle.
Anybody willing to go thru *that* to trespass has to be determined.
:-)
The road in leads around a small hill (well a big mound of dirt with grass and stuff on it) which when you get to the far side has a several car garage set into the side.
The meadows is native grasses and wildflowers.
As you walk from the garage into the meadow you see a rise in the ground near the center (or the far edge if the property is small). The ground rises 6-10 feet above the meadow i a circle around 100 feet across.
The grass is cut shorter for a ways around the rise. And when you climb it you find that the rise is a circular berm. The top is maybe 5 feet wide and slopes back down to an inner area that's about the same level as the meadow.
The inner slope and "floor" are grass, but thids is more of a lawn. And nicely green even if it's summer.
In the center of the "floor" is a large circular opening (50 feet?). There's a railing and a gate.
There's also what looks like a natural rock outcropping with a spring and water flowing over the rock into the hole.
At the gat, there's a stairway leading down into the hole. The water falls into a large pool. Not natural, but not entirely articial looking.
It's about 20 feet to the bottom of the hole. It's rather like someone's patio around a pool.
There are some windows, doors and several sliding glass doors in the walls.
Yes, the house is underground and built around the "patio" and pool.
The living room, dining room, kitchen and a couple of bedrooms open onto the deck. Maybe a rec room as well. There's a corridor around them, with more rooms on the outer side of it.
And there's an underground passaage to the garage.
Oh yes, the house (and the meadow if sufficiently screened from neighbors) is clothing optional.
If not sufficiently screened, then clothes will be worn if you can be seen from outside the ring mound.
A geodesic dome that attaches to mounting points around the top of the mound can be erected to deal with winter weather.
The waterfall is (of course) artifical. Water is recycled and probably treated with ozone rather than chlorine (a bit harder to set up, but purifies just as well without the burning eyes and chlorine smell). Might even be possible to keep some fish in pools above the swimming pool.
I figure the interior layout of the house is more hexagonal than circular. Octagonal is possible, but not sure if it really buys us anything.
I figure that the dining room and master bedroom have the big sliding doors to the deck. Other rooms will have windows and or regular doors. Or maybe dutch doors.
We'll lose part of the arc to the waterfall.
I figure that the rooms will mostly be rectangular (so regular furniture will fit ok) except for the living room/dining room. And maybe the kitchen.
The wedges of space between can be used for storage and other stuff.
Going to have to have a corridor around the "outside" of the hiuse for fire safety. Spo that'd mean we'd have the central atrium, a "ring" of rooms, a corridor around them, another ring of rooms, and then a corridor around that.
Storage rooms can be on the outside "edge" of the house, but not bedrooms or other rooms people spend a lot of time in.
Also need another exit passage to someplace other than the garage, preferably on the opposite side.
The idea here being to try to avoid the possibility of a fire trapping someone with no exit. So all non-storage rooms would have two doors.
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Heinlein's home designs may supply some supportive details:>
Date: 2008-12-24 06:03 am (UTC)A few thoughts:
Date: 2008-12-24 06:37 am (UTC)Your alternate exit might lead to a tool shed, for some value of shed. ("This is a barn, not a shed!"
"If I say it's a tool shed, it's a tool shed.")
This gives you access to items which are useful, but not needed all the time, like a gasoline-powered generator and snow shovels. (The exact selection will vary by region.)
Load-bearing parts of the house are going to have to be good, to support twenty to thirty feet of dirt.
I'm not sure what the walls, floors, and ceiling should be made out of, but the matrial must be able to block burrowing creatures, and handle changes in the water table.
Re: A few thoughts:
Date: 2008-12-24 08:37 am (UTC)Likewise, It needs to be *well* above any likely water table changes. Don't want flooding, do want someplace to "sump" things to.
As for the walls, they (or at least the load-bearing ones and the outer shell) pretty much have to be reinforced concrete or the like.
Interior walls can be more flexible. Also, even the concrete ones need built in cabling channels with cobers so you can replace or upgrading power, network even plumbing without a jackhammer :-)
I need to get some pics of some country between here and the coast. One of the popular routes to the coast that *doesn't* go along the Columbia goes thru this area with the most amazing basaltic dikes.
These walls of rock a hundred or more feet tall and maybe 50 feet thick at the base. They'd be kinda fun to work with too. You'd need a totally different design (and insane amounts of money because basalt is incredibly tough to dig thru) but you could create some "interesting" structures built into and on one of those.