Finally Bought Some Land

[j44ke]

I noticed a neighbor spring cleaning his garage (he has two nice VW GTI's in the driveway so seems like a neighbor to meet) and there was one of these snowblowers with tractor treads I suspect for getting up the driveway slope. Looks bigger in real life than the photo.



He also had one of this style of brush mower, though not this one necessarily. His was red. There are a ton of resident raspberries (believe they are the blackcap type as that's what leftover berries we found in the fall) and they will need to be tamed eventually. Several people have told me mowing doesn't eliminate briars it just discourages them.



Just calculating my garage needs.

[Badonkadonk]

Just calculating my garage needs.

take the over
one of these days i hope i can end up with the outbuilding of my dreams

[xjoex]

I'll share my experience with that snow blower. After two years, it is pretty great. The tracks are really helpful in deep snow where a wheeled blower would just dig in. I had a pricey Cub Cadet that did OK, it would bog down and the belts would slip a lot. This on the other hand has started on the first pull every time for 2 years. It has an electric start which I never used. It is heavy though! I'd call using it a workout, steering is not as easy as a wheeled, but it can work it's way through 2 feet of snow, and throw it pretty far. The Honda costs 4-5x what a regular home depot costs. I'd say it is worth it based on reliability and long term ownership, but just. After 2 years the cub cadet had a bent frame somehow and started on the 20th pull. The Honda on the other hand still looks and acts brand new.

At the beginning of the season buy 2 dozen sheer pins (which are actually bolts on this one) along with a 10mm ratcheting wrench and a punch to clear snow out of the holes. I also put "Armor Skids" Snowblower Skids For Sidewalks and Gravel Drives on to keep it from digging in to recycled asphalt, which it still does, only less.
blower (1).jpg

I don't have a mower, I do the whole thing with a weed wacker, which is probably not the best way. I think about getting a self propelled string trimmer some times. The yard is too rocky and bumpy for a mower.

-Joe

[j44ke]

Thanks Joe. I have forewarned my wife that there will be some machines required. We will likely test drive a winter first, though I think up there, no one winter is representative of any other winter. Infinite variety these days.

I am getting a grip on landscaping. I am realizing now that a lot of the area around the house will be reshaped - intentionally or unintentionally - by the house construction and the septic construction. So a lot of the areas around the site will be completely different by late next year. I still think bringing in a forestry person (not an arborist, but someone whose job is forest management and assessment) and a landscape designer before construction will be a good idea. I really don't want to create anything that I have to mow or water. I'd rather have a Zen dry garden over the septic than a grassy area, but I probably won't have a lot of say there. Maybe I can plant a big patch of reseeding flowers or something.

But you know, first we need a house design!

Speaking of which, here are a couple more houses we've dug up that we (both) like. This one is by a Kiwi architect named Vaughn Mcquarrie and is called the Oneroa House.



And this one is called the Case Inlet Retreat and is in Washington state, designed by MW Works. Some larger pics in a slide show here.

[guido]

Jorn, the one common thread to most of the house pix you have posted is the lack of provision for defense against biting insects. You really gotta get some time around dawn or dusk (i.e. dinner time on that nice porch) in peak mosquito or black fly season to understand how unrealistic that is in that neighborhood...

[happycampyer]

The land you bought is in the Empire State, no?

[j44ke]

No, we understand that. We've spent enough time in the area to know that biting insects are a fact of life and will need to be considered. We've already discussed screened in areas with the architects, and they've showed us how they've addressed that on some of their previous projects. They've used both standard fixed-in-place screening and different moveable designs that allow opening an area when insects aren't a problem and closing it when they are. One they've used with great success can be installed with no-see-um screening and works sort of like a horizontal roller blind except that the top and bottom are in a track (one in the floor and on in the ceiling) and the screen closes with a magnetic seal. Surprisingly durable, so I am sure it is expensive. But whatever the case, screened in areas (for as you say, dinner outside) and open areas will be part of the design.

These designs we've collected are more for sense of place, balance of design, shapes, light, surface, that sort of thing, rather than templates we would like replicated. A lot of my favorite designs we've eliminated because they are largely warm climate designs that satisfy my leftover aesthetics from time spent in Arizona. Even the New Zealand house above doesn't appear to be designed in anticipation of a big snow storm, but the room arrangement seemed pleasant and different enough from some of the other designs we've seen to clip it as a sample.

I was talking to the architects the other day that after all of our fairly esoteric discussions, what we'd end up with as a design would be a large black glass cube with a medieval gargoyle perched on the corner. But they've been solid on the real world pragmatics. Like insects. So it would be a large black glass cube with a medieval gargoyle perched on the corner with a screened in porch.

[j44ke]

The land you bought is in the Empire State, no?

Yep. Hillsdale NY.

[zetroc]

That's one of my favorite Magrittes. I saw one of them at the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice and it's really, really something to see in person.

[j44ke]

I appear to have holes in my art history education. I didn't even realize that was a painting and not a photograph. Oy.

[j44ke]

So my wife contacted Tom Wessels and is now working out the details of a consulting visit to our land. The architects are kind of psyched, so they are coming too. I am just an innocent bystander. Took me about two weeks to read his book. My wife read it in one sitting - maybe half a day. Of course, she wades through huge briefs on a regular basis, and I spend a day reading and rereading a poem, often just a single page. Which qualifies me for reading the ingredients labels on cans basically. Good thing she's got mad skills in the reading dept. and could successfully cold call Kim Jong Un if needed.

[davids]

So this may be more relevant to those of us with smaller spreads, but I found this immensely helpful: Understanding What Makes Plants Happy

I've been struggling to wrap my head around what I'd like to see in our front yard, replacing the sad grass rectangles the former owners left for us. And Thomas Rainer seems to be the guy I needed to hear from.

[j44ke]

So this may be more relevant to those of us with smaller spreads, but I found this immensely helpful: Understanding What Makes Plants Happy

I've been struggling to wrap my head around what I'd like to see in our front yard, replacing the sad grass rectangles the former owners left for us. And Thomas Rainer seems to be the guy I needed to hear from.

He's really interesting.

While almost all of our land is forest, we are hoping to find a way to use some of the products from Ernst Conservation Seeds to create a bit of a meadow on the property. Our land was originally (and still is) subdivided into two properties with a house site cleared on each one as per development envelopes specified by the town. So we have an extra house site that is reasonably well cleared and just shy of an acre or thereabouts. And to add in a bit of botanical diversity, we thought we'd try to figure out a way to develop a meadow of mixed grass and wildflower. That may be a ways off though.

[davids]

He's really interesting.

While almost all of our land is forest, we are hoping to find a way to use some of the products from Ernst Conservation Seeds to create a bit of a meadow on the property. Our land was originally (and still is) subdivided into two properties with a house site cleared on each one as per development envelopes specified by the town. So we have an extra house site that is reasonably well cleared and just shy of an acre or thereabouts. And to add in a bit of botanical diversity, we thought we'd try to figure out a way to develop a meadow of mixed grass and wildflower. That may be a ways off though.

What's on it now? Maybe just leave it alone? Or toss a couple pounds of seed on the ground?

[j44ke]

A sh$t ton of young raspberry canes. The previous owners cleared and scraped the site, leaving a few hardwoods (maple & aspen) and covered it with the wood chips from the pines they cut down. So the land needs some rejuvenation. The chips won't rot quickly enough, and what nutrient layer there was before has been turned under. Eventually we may put something there, like an outdoor eating gazebo or even a small guest house, but in the meantime it would be cool to put in something that would help the soil and attract birds and animals.

[davids]

Yeah, a meadow sounds nice.

[chrisn]

Really enjoying this thread Jorn, I could spend all day planning my dream home, vicariously or otherwise.

Something about the apparent simplicity of this design really resonates... Simple design equals more share of the funds for quality materials (if indeed it is as simple as it appears?)

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[vertical_doug]

Qiyunshan Tree House | Outside Online

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[jesseth]

Really enjoying this thread Jorn, I could spend all day planning my dream home, vicariously or otherwise.

Something about the apparent simplicity of this design really resonates... Simple design equals more share of the funds for quality materials (if indeed it is as simple as it appears?)

[/QUOTE]

Nothing simple about that design. There is probably more steel holding that roof up than in an entire commercial building.

There's a great quote about the cost of minimalism, "less isn't more, it's a lot, lot more".

[j44ke]

We've gone through the first round of the design process. There are some details that need to be resolved - like the dining area is too far from the kitchen - but this is to be expected. What's great is that we can tell from the design that the architects have been listening to EVERYTHING we've said. Kind of spooky but also immensely gratifying. However, they have not designed the house to be exactly what we said, but instead they've taken our comments as questions to be answered with some original solutions, so that's also great. In other words, so far so good, but on to the next round of design discussion in June.

We also discussed more practical issues like heating and cooling, engineering (and engineer), exterior materials, roof materials, seasonal performance, etc. They also made a ton of diagrams showing sun movement throughout the year, wind patterns throughout the year, angle of view from the windows, etc. and their design reacts to those things to mitigate (or harness) those factors.

I'll see if I can extract an image from the PDF they gave us and post it here.