Winter Waiting and Perfecting Plans
As snow and freezing temperatures descended on the woods surrounding NottaLottaWatta, projects ceased and moved indoors to notebooks and sketch books. Before the ground froze, we laid up a fair amount of seasoned pine, covered the large white pine logs and hammered home the stakes that would mark the periphery of the studio.
The work now would center around obtaining a building permit. It doesn't sound like such a big deal, but it would entail more than two years of effort and learning to get that official-looking piece of plasticky paper in the mail. There were a few things we could have changed in the plans to make the process easier, but instead chose to include. Here's a few of them:
Four-by-fours surround the rooftop, holding in the manure and soil mixture.
A living roof- Part of the appeal to building this way was the aesthetic of a living roof. We practiced on the oven shed, and are looking forward to seeing what grows, how dry it gets, and what, if any changes we need to make. The downside, however, is the weight this kind of roofing adds to the whole structure. The building inspector was understandably skeptical of an elementary school teacher's ability to engineer a suitable support for all this weight.
We took the plans to a local architecture firm with engineers on staff who could help us out, Lien and Peterson. They worked with the materials we already had on hand, and used the plans that I had drawn myself. In the end they provided a comprehensive set of calculations of each timber in the studio, as well as many helpful ideas to bring the structure up to code, streamline the construction process, and save us time and money. As nervous as I was to walk in and lay our hopes and dreams in their hands, they were fantastic.
Drawing up a different roofing option, such as a metal roof, would have been far easier to plan and support, saving us a couple thousand dollars and a year of time.
A septic system- Our plans call for hand-pumping our water and moving it inside the studio by bucket or by hose. Originally, we had hoped to drain our gray water to an appropriate location away from the studio. However, once drains and even simple plumbing are introduced into the plans, a septic system is required. For quite some time we hemmed and hawed over the possibility of eliminating drains and simply carrying out our gray water by hand. We could have planned to catch waste water in a cistern and use a barrel pump to push it out through a hose, but as we considered our options, it seemed that a septic system would accomplish what we wanted in the end. The additional benefit would be flexibility in the future if occupants desired some kind of running water.
The twist occurred after our septic permit had arrived. We next learned that the presence of a septic system required a flushing toilet. This was definitely not part of our plans! To get around this, we eventually applied for a privy permit and plan to build an outhouse just west of the studio and septic field. The outhouse will serve the studio, but will also serve a future guest house we plan to build out of sight of the studio, further to the west.
Planning around all these requirements to eliminate the need for a septic system would have saved us another twelve to fourteen thousand dollars.
Through all of this, the folks at the zoning office have been kind and patient, explaining things I most likely should have researched on my own, and asking others when the boundaries of our project pushed norms. One unexpected opportunity arose in that our building inspector asked if he could invite other inspectors to check out this unusual building technique. It brings a little more pressure to do it right, but helps spread the word about cordwood and other alternative building techniques.
The white pine log which will be the central pillar in the lower level continues to dry. When our tree service stopped by to take down a precarious tree near the kiln, we asked him to use his longer bar to true up the end of the log.
Hopefully, these are the big compromises. Our overarching goal is to build a comfortable home off the grid, one we can be proud to call our own. It won't be the simplest, the cheapest, or include every environmentally benign practice available. It will be a step in the right direction for us, leading us to a more sustainable future.