Run Whole House on Wimpy Generator?

[freebeard]

I agree with the dome being a fantastic way to direct air. Architecture, almost a form of engineering even though it isn't technically...

Architecture is the middle ground of art, engineering, philosophy and politics.

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.

Heat exchangers and enthalpy wheels. Fuller's 1947 Dymaxion house had a heat exchange that was the entire floor.

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.

Rectangular lots are only awkward when they are too small.

And nobody tries. Did you know that the icosahedron, held edge vertex, has an hexagonal equator? Or a golden ratio rectangle?


www.archimedes-lab.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/icosahedron.jpg

And bilateral symmetry.

A partial spherical shell can substitute for engineered roofing trusses over an arbitrary plan. And probably be more economical.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by hayden55

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.

Not sure how much more efficient would be an American house, as they're often built differently than what I am more used to see in Brazil, where either brick-and-mortar or normal wood (no plywood, and without all those synthetic foils) are more usual.

[Piotrsko]

They are built the same here as in Brazil, except we cut every corner we can to shave pennies off every piece. We dont use stone or brick because the proper preparation work and materials, labor to install is double the regular rate per square foot. You will see it on "custom" homes where finished price isn't as much a consideration.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

They are built the same here as in Brazil, except we cut every corner we can to shave pennies off every piece.

Well, sort of... I don't see much usage of synthetic foils for added insulation in Brazilian wooden houses, which are mostly single-walled, yet thickness of the planks may vary considerably. And nowadays, most new wooden houses are assembled from prefabricated kits, a method which had also been more common with prefabricated houses made out of moulded concrete which are an alternative to brick-and-mortar.

We dont use stone or brick because the proper preparation work and materials, labor to install is double the regular rate per square foot.

The construction site always becomes a mess, and it's much more of a PITA when it's a space constrained site.

[freebeard]

I'd want a brick-laying pick-and-place robot running right of the back of the truck, with dry-laid interlocking blocks.

[hayden55]

Yup. Spec homes are about the bottom dollar. Customers will flock to the $150/sqft home neighborhood, but if you build another neighborhood with a better built home for $151/sqft people won't flock to it lol. Its funny how cheap people can be.
The methods above we talk about a lot of the time are definitely only for private or custom builds. Spec home customers would never pay for the labor it cost to build a nicely built home. So a lot of the times you can do this yourself if you build a home for your time and not a lot of money (the things we talk about)

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by hayden55

Yup. Spec homes are about the bottom dollar. Customers will flock to the $150/sqft home neighborhood, but if you build another neighborhood with a better built home for $151/sqft people won't flock to it lol. Its funny how cheap people can be.
The methods above we talk about a lot of the time are definitely only for private or custom builds. Spec home customers would never pay for the labor it cost to build a nicely built home. So a lot of the times you can do this yourself if you build a home for your time and not a lot of money (the things we talk about)

Custom built house is my dream. No cutting corners. No saving $40 and then having to spend $2,000 somewhere down the line.

If I had to guess, I'm 20 years away from building my home, but then at that age I've got maybe 20 years to really enjoy it. I'd never realize the benefit of using quality materials because the 20 year mark is about when it starts to become apparent. At least I'd have left the world with a quality home.

[Piotrsko]

Dang 150 @ square is cheap here. $250 is kinda the norm, but I get your point.

Using standard construction techniques, but with actual precision does build an excellent house. Bygone houses had the use of straight dry knot free materials

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Dang 150 @ square is cheap here. $250 is kinda the norm, but I get your point.

Using standard construction techniques, but with actual precision does build an excellent house. Bygone houses had the use of straight dry knot free materials

Excellent house, maybe, but plenty of corners are cut with appliances and fixtures. They'll put in a single speed air handler because it saved a few bucks, even though you could save hundreds over the years having a dual or multi-speed blower. You'll get the lowest efficiency AC and furnace. You'll get 15 amp circuits instead of 20. Hot water will take an eternity to reach certain faucets because they used the least amount of pipe possible to string around to all the faucet locations. They'll use laminate flooring, which is absolute garbage. You'd be better off with a nicely colored and finished concrete, which I still don't like. You'll get wooden decks and fences which require maintenance a minimum of every 2 years, and will still fail in 15 years. You'll get overmount sinks everywhere because it's easier to install than a much more functional undermount. You'll get noisy and inefficient bathroom fans because they were $5 cheaper than something better.

Are houses still being built with RJ-11 jacks? How about coax jacks? At minimum, new builds should have a cat6 jack that runs from where the cable/internet enters a junction box, to the center of the house at the middle/lowest floor, because WiFi isn't going anywhere.

If I were building a house, I'd have conduit running to all the rooms so I could add anything I wanted in the future easily. PVC costs next to nothing and is super easy to install. Crawling around in the attic when it's 130 degrees up there, trying to drill a hole down and hoping you found the small gap where the wall studs are is insane.

[freebeard]

overmount/undermount sinks

I learned something. OTOH I am refinishing a metal cabinet to replace the wood original in my kitchen [area]. It has a 24x54" white porcelain enamel top thate is one continuous piece with drain areas on both sides of a single sink. Last week I got two white porcelain cruciform taps.

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Using standard construction techniques, but with actual precision does build an excellent house.

I forget the per-sq-ft cost, but when I worked for Oregon Dome we built conventional construction for the price of a mobile home. The shell of the house was built to 1/32nd of an inch (thanks to me), the kitchen cabinets probably 1/16th.

Hydronic heat in the floor slab and a ceiling fan, no ducts or air conditionning. Here's an example:



Today, I think I'd go with metal 2x4 in the shell. Instead of ripping the dihedral angle, it could just be braked. I just realized that now. Y'all have a good day.