Run Whole House on Wimpy Generator?

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I live in an HOA in the city

Just like some folks were suing HOAs for trying to prevent them to park their private trucks in their own driveways, when will someone sue a HOA in order to be able to go off-the-grid?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Just like some folks were suing HOAs for trying to prevent them to park their private trucks in their own driveways, when will someone sue a HOA in order to be able to go off-the-grid?

Can't sue if you agree to the pain.

I knew what I was getting into because I read the fine print. HOA here has been chill, allowing me to vote on things despite not being on the board... still, would prefer to be across the street with septic, burn privileges, and no HOA constraints or dues.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Just like some folks were suing HOAs for trying to prevent them to park their private trucks in their own driveways, when will someone sue a HOA in order to be able to go off-the-grid?

As Redpoint said - HOAs are a legally binding set of rules that homeowners in a housing development voluntarily agree to follow. There are no grounds to sue unless the HOA rules are a violation of City, State, or Federal law. The only solution is to move or to convince the HOA to adopt new rules. HOAs are a democracy and follow the will of the majority.

I was in a similar situation as Redpoint. The house we rented 2 blocks north of our current house is in a HOA. They had rules on everything from the type and height of grass to the square footage of yard that had to be grass vs landscaping or bushes. Exterior paint color had to be from an approved color palette and even then approved by the board to make sure there weren't too many houses with similar color in a cluster. There was no way I would buy a house with that kind of HOA micromanaging. ..... so I bought a house 2 block South just across the HOA boundary line. I can do anything here that meets city code.

[Piotrsko]

Not sure about there being grounds to sue. Have observed numerous adjacent HOA's being sucessfully sued for all sorts of things, frivolous or not. Bear Valley Springs HOA next valley over in Cali was getting successfully sued all the time by for all sorts of percieved issues and slights.

I suspect it is related to how rich and lawyered up the 2 parties are.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by freebeard

.

edit: redpoint5's pushback is typical.

Geodesic domes are straight lines. Flat ceiling are psychologically constraining, something hard to convey in a picture. Here's an article: www.obsev.com: This Fatal Flaw Led to the Decline in the Popularity of Dome Homes

The surprising conclusion: Domes have become tainted by an association with the artist formerly known as Kanye West.

Wow you took a completely different conclusion than me. It seemed pretty clear to me that domes failed because:

These dome dwellers learned that privacy wasn’t easy inside a dome, especially when people started having children. Eventually, people started losing interest in domes altogether. Khan himself was over the idea of living in a dome. "After four years of living in domes, the excitement of moonlight through overhead windows has worn off"

That was prior to 1972 so it had nothing to do with West. The hippies grew up and migrated into the real world.

Domes are a great shape for a small simple one room structure. When you try to subdivide one into rooms to make a real house it all falls apart.

[redpoint5]

I imagine the #1 cause of lawsuit is mismanagement of funds.

I've listened in on board meetings here, and the members are extremely concerned with getting the most use out of the dues as possible, and leaving enough reserve money for unexpected events. They've reduced the HOA dues 3 of the 4 years I've been here, only collecting the full amount to replenish the reserve after it was spent cleaning up the ice storm.

Still would prefer no HOA, but this has been about the best experience I could have hoped for.

[freebeard]

Wow you took a completely different conclusion than me.

Well, I cherry-picked that conclusion. I feel badly for the way Kanye West was treated.

I should have started a new paragraph. My larger point was the psychological benefit. There were years I sat in a flat-ceiling kitchen all Winter looking at a 60W incandescent light bulb hanging on a cord. I think it drove me a little mad. It's easy for some people to not percieve or ignore.

They were used in churches for a reason.

Domes are a great shape for a small simple one room structure. When you try to subdivide one into rooms to make a real house it all falls apart

The legendary Red Rockers were the edge case.



Oregon Dome failed IMHO because they put a conventional zoned floorplan with hallways under their dome shells. All partitions should be radial.

Additions to or added domes are one solution. I shall start a thread [eventually] in Saving@Home to show five domes around a central artium and a square porch around an edge vertex icosa hemisphere. Maybe....

One thing I notice is young folk promoting Solarpunk. It's a thin coating of diversity, equity and inclusion over a ball of total ignorance of their predecessors; Fuller, Solari, etc.

edit:
I can't find this excerpted; but here is a pull quote from Black Elk Speaks : wearethemutants.com/2019/12/12/spacy-spheres-and-funky-shacks-the-otherworlds-of-1971s-domebook-2/domebook-2-1971-black-elk/

It describes the difference between the circle of life (the Sign of the Donut) and a box.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Still would prefer no HOA, but this has been about the best experience I could have hoped for.

The only thing similar to a HOA in my country are condominiums and other gated communities. Having lived in military housing complexes until I was 12, and since then living only in apartments, whenever I get the chance to move to a house again I would prefer one which is not in a condominium, so I could most likely do anything without having any neighbor causing me trouble for something totally pointless.

[hayden55]

My friend bought a house in a new neighborhood with an hoa. After a year of having the HOA the company emailed the neighborhood and said they were discontinuing the HOA since nobody cared lol. So i guess its possible!
Maybe look into rules on voting and see about getting rid of it, but depending on your neighborhood if its fancy and old it probably ain't going anywhere.
I agree with the dome being a fantastic way to direct air. Architecture, almost a form of engineering even though it isn't technically, focuses a lot on wall/window facings and putting windows up high and low which can open to direct airflow all with convection currents. This was really popular before solar and air source heat pumps became dirt cheap in the last 5 years (almost dirt cheap, but so cheap it makes the other methods make no sense now)
Which can be nice. The only problem i really see now is homes are so efficient now we really don't want any uncontrolled airflow into a house now. The new way is to seal the house up like a yeti cooler and treat the air before it comes in.
I'm willing to bet the issue with the dome is the awkward rectangular lots people are given, and non square or rectangular rooms waste a lot of space! The hard part with the efficient two story plan a lot of the time is figuring out how to incorporate the minimum roof pitch correctly so there's no wasted space in the rooms up stairs or weird 4 foot outer walls lol. So that could be a factor as well.
Its all about balance though. The engineer in me would be building an ugly minimum pitch rectangular house with no windows if it got its way, but then i draft it up and go my god thats ugly lol
I also have the single story ranch house with the 45* roof, the decorative front with the large ass windows, and 8', 8.75', 9', and 12' ceilings right now which is basically an energy nightmare on paper. But its purty.
At the end of the day i just always remember an energy nightmare and a energy efficiency based design in a similar building practice is really only a small difference in utilitys every month compared to the salary, but you know. The principle of spending money on utilities irks us all on here.

[redpoint5]

The HOA has a community park, which is why we pay $300/year in dues. There's no chance of disbanding the HOA.