Don't Rush. Don't Be Excessively Cheap

Cutting corners may seem like a good way to save money at first glance.  Certainly there are plenty of ways to cut corners effectively.  Go to yard sales and thrift shops to buy linens and buy linen dish towels to make curtains etc..  Pre cut so no sewing, spring loaded rods...very easy and cheap.
Old linens that have no special appeal because of antique value can just be worn out cloth...this means you will buy over and over again.
Just an example that came to mind.
When you build, do not build with the first and cheapest materials that come to mind.  If you find a lot of boards free on craigslist for instance, they may look like your wall sheathing...a real gift...but in time those boards will not give you the diagonal stability you need.  You will never be able to use sheet rock if you do not have that stability.  You can, of course, run sheet metal diagonals in your walls under the boards, but there is another expense and time.  Just bite the bullet, and use plywood or some other sheet product and do the job right the first time.
Deke Diedrickson has a lot of great shelters built with salvaged materials and corrugated translucent panels, but you simply cannot have quite that mindset with a permanent building.  Buy windows that are not  all worn out, or be choosy when recycled materials are offered.....why be in the position of having to redo your work.  If you come across a nice stained glass panel....that is a different story.
This sometimes means that construction will not be as fast as you would like.  Saving up for materials takes some time.  Finding just the right salvage will take more time.
You need to be patient and critical of bargains.  Think long and hard about purchases and construction methods.  It does not always help to be too quick and too cheap.  

Borderland State Park in Massachusetts

These are photos of the stone cottage located on the grounds of Borderland State Park in Easton Massachusetts.  The stones are rather large for normal construction, but I would be willing to bet that the construction went fast.  All of the stone is local granite.

The walls average at least 14 inches thick.  The right hand chimney and the large fireplace on the left are a little too much.  This would work well with a large central chimney and fireplace, but the two are very wasteful of materials given the efficiency of modern stoves.  The main building is approximately 24 by 32 feet.  The thickness of the walls and the size of the central chimney still make this a pretty small house.  The square footage would be helped with a loft area.

 

Notice the pseudo arch above the door.  The wedges of stone keep the weight of the roof and stone from pressing down on the door frame.

A Move is Planned

I am soon to move from Massachusetts to far northern Maine.  I have become used to a certain planting zone where I have been able to grow all of the things that were in my grandmother's garden in Medford, Massachusetts. 
I actually plan to move to Italy for a part of the year and to Maine for the rest. 
The trouble with both of these options is that Maine is very cold.. Zone 3-4 where I plan to move... and Italy...for the most part is in zone 8-9 with a wicked hot and dry spell in the summer.  I will likely end up in the mountains, as the low lands are just too expensive for me.  The mountains have the distinction of having nearly as hot a dry spell in the summer, but then they have cold and snow in the winter.  I just can't seem to win.
Italy has a history of large plants in containers.  It is not unusual to see olive trees, pomegranate, lemon, orange and other trees in large containers in the gardens and on terraces.  They have the luxury of watering this micro ball of soil in the summer, and if the winter is cold, they can wheel the whole tree into an Orangerie.  Orangeries were pretty common in France as well and are becoming more common in England. 
I began a post about screen porches elsewhere in the blog, which I will complete when a blip in image uploads is solved.  Now, I will have to post about glassed in or convertible porches to bring plants inside.  I think that in these days of high fuel costs, and the sheer work of wood fired heating, that a greenhouse could be impractical in the far north.  If you have unlimited funds or a real desire to cut wood from your land, dry it, split it and burn it, day and night through the winter...then please disregard that statement. Therefore, I propose a roofed and glassed in porch, either at ground level on a slab or gravel base, or on a raised floor porch with a full foundation like any other room in a house.


An orangerie, for the common man, is simply a room with lots of windows, with a place to stand the trees in their pots.  A greenhouse would qualify, but they were often large rooms with a good sized entrance door and plenty of large windows, often high and arched.
Orangeries or conservatories were a common sight in the 18th and 19th centuries, in even fairly humble houses.  Palaces and large country houses almost always had one.  A family could have citrus fruit all year long in England and northern France if they had one of these...of course a staff of fifty gardeners helped as well.
There are a number of things what will help with the success of a room like this.  Masonry floors or gravel floors, especially very dark colored ones, help to absorb heat from even weak sunshine. 
Large containers like water barrels...painted black especially, absorb heat and radiate it out again.




Please stay tuned as I explore these options.

Innovative Wall Coverings

Any fabric or paper can be used for wall covering.  You should have a smooth surface to begin with.  Start with partitions of plywood of any grade that does not have voids in it, or fill the voids with putty or plastic wood.
 
Simply glue paper from shopping bags with neat logos on it, old grain or flour bags, labels from cans or packaging with nostalgic graphics on them, dressmaker or upholstery fabric, ripped rags with frayed edges in layers etc.. Seal the entire surface with Linseed oil(It will alter the color and eventually yellow) or varnish or shellac(shellac alters with moisture).

Tear odd shapes of paper shopping bags,(about hand size) leaving all the edges very uneven and ragged.  Layer the pieces over each other, gluing each piece generously and individually...layer, layer, layer, till a rich and textured surface is achieved.  Antique with oil based or acrylic paints or stains(acrylic dries FAST!) till a nice texture appears...Paint on and wipe off...use earth tones.  Varnish or oil in a low luster for a leather look.


Single widths or ripped and layered pieces of natural linen can be applied and sealed.  Ragged edges will be beautiful and provide texture.


Layer torn pieces of colored tissue paper, gluing generously layer upon layer.  Include pressed and dried leaves and twigs in between the layers of paper.  Seal with oil or varnish...we used Mod Podge for this in the 70s, but who knows what is available now.


Cut the tops and bottoms off olive oil or graphic covered tomato cans.  Open and flatten them and tack to the walls.  Use the round tops of cans to make fish-scale shingles.


Soak off the labels of wine bottles or graphic shipping crates from wine companies.  Glue them in overlapping or carefully laid out patterns. 


Photocopy old prints and glue the photo copies on the walls.


Buy beautiful Japanese or other hand made paper and glue to the wall.


Cover plywood seams with varnished or painted half-round or Astagal molding.  Or cover and glue on nice fabric or paper before attaching them.


Be creative.  

A Screen house to Expand Liveable Space in the Warm Months.

My next door neighbors had a great screen house on the side of their house in Houlton Maine.  I loved that house and the screen house allowed them to live outside from the beginning of May, right through September, with just light jackets at the beginning and the end.
Later on when I lived in the Bath-Brunswick area of Maine, my ex-wife and I became good friends of an older woman (probably about my age now) in a town near Popham beach.  She used her screen house most of the year, as the screens were basically light weight storm windows with both glass and screens on two sides.
Strangely, she did the room on the north-west (inside) corner of the house, but she was still able to use it some days in the winter.
I will go over....in not too much detail, how both screened rooms were done.


The first hurdle to get over in a true screen house is that if you are bringing the walls of the screen house right down to the floor, be it concrete or wood, you are going to trap water along the inside perimeter of the screens.  Rain will fall at an angle or be blown into the space through the screen and in trying to escape, or puddling up inside, moisture will collect against the joint between the walls and the floor, and cause rot.  Unless you are doing something like aluminum frames for the screen and concrete or some other impervious material for the floor, there will be deterioration.
The one solution that I have seen in the past is to lift the screen off the floor somehow.  Putting blocks under the frame for the screens will mean that only the blocks will need regular maintenance, instead of the entire screen frame.  However, this also means that there will be a gap in your bug protection.  You will need to cover that gap with screen.  Perhaps only a narrow strip, stapled or glued to the bottom rail of the screen , and grazing the floor will do the trick.
Likewise, if a floor is made of dimensional lumber of some kind, there will be gaps between the boards, and screen will have to be used here, under the floor. 
If you have framed your porch like a normal wall, and installed screened windows, there will inevitably wind blown water entering the room and puddling against the baseboards.  Again. some provision needs to be made to keep water from settling there and rotting.  Perhaps a panel or the baseboards can be removable inside and out, to be sealed up in the winter when the windows are closed.  Presumably, this is not a heated space, so loss of R value will not be an issue from lack of insulation in that space.  It would be a big chore to stuff insulation in a space like that in the fall and remove it in the spring.    
I will do this over the next few days.

Benefits of a Low Knee Wall and/or a Saltbox/Shed Roof

 

Ok here is a simple profile of a house, gable end.

 

  Here, just adding a couple of feet of knee wall on top of the top plate of the first floor, one not only adds headroom for a true living space, but by extending the roofline one can add floor space while still keeping the ceiling at the normal height on the first floor.  Also, just by changing the angle of the roofline slightly, one can extend the first floor even farther.  Of course, this extension of the roofline, means that the roof joists need to be supported by the back knee wall, and the angle of the roof should not be leveled off too much, or snow loads would be far more likely to accumulate.  This is especially to be avoided in the north or in heavy snow areas of the country.  

Septic System

Tank should be about 8x12 feet.

 Note that the inlet for black water and gray water should be higher than the "T" pipes in the other two overflows.  The "T: should have several inches of pipe top and bottom to raise the top above the water level and to keep floating scum out of the outlet tubes.

Septic systems can be heavily regulated in much of the country.  You may end up doing a system of your own and later being required to remove or replace it with a different system.  One way of avoiding this is to make it according to proscribed designs for your area and soils test. 

This particular one could equally easily be done with two huge plastic containers.  There are similar self contained plastic systems that are easy to install yourself. 

Septic systems are no great mystery.  There is nothing stopping you from building or installing your own.  In a regulated area, you just need to meet the basic requirements set out in the codes in your town or state.  Pay someone to come to your house to do a design for you.  Then do it yourself.

There will be plenty of digging, but most people can handle that either by hand or by using rented equipment.  Most of the parts are available in home centers, and the only problem is transportation.

Always do more than is required.  The point of doing these things for yourself is not to Beat "THE MAN", but to save money and be self reliant. 

With self reliance, comes responsibility.  Codes are usually in place for a reason...So...meet them, or exceed them, even if you use a different approach.

Protect your land, your community, the greater environment and your health. 

 

There are commercially available systems available that look for all the world like the Yellow Submarine in the Beatles' film.  Just carry it in and bury it.  There are usually big plastic Dry Wells to distribute the treated water into the soil.      

Alternatives are:

 1. French Drains.:

Long trenches are dug.  Filled in partially with rocks and coarse gravel.  Perforated PVC pipes are laid into the top of the gravel.  An impermeable sheet of some sort is laid over the pipe so that soil and other particles do not sift into the perforated pipe and block them.  Then they are attached to your final overflow pipe and buried.



2. Huge Dry wells:

 are buried after attaching to the final overflow from the tanks.  When they are buried, they are often filled with rocks.



3. Reed beds:

These can be wonderful, and are installed all over the world, but they come with risks.  As the water is released onto the surface of the soil into beds of water loving plants, maintaining the beds puts you in direct contact with the plants and the water.  Infections of all sorts are possible.  How do your keep small children away from them, or pets for that matter.



The system above:

Build this yourself in areas where it would be impossible to carry in huge tanks etc.  This could even be put directly under an outhouse that has water and a true toilet.  Just put the outhouse right on top of the first tank, install a concrete floor with a hole and mounting hardware in it, and install a toilet over the hole just like in a house. Either pipe water into the house for summer, or in warm weather areas of the country, or carry a pitcher of flushing water to the toilet in the winter.  A small amount of bio safe  antifreeze would be needed  in the water that is sitting there when unused.  Also, heat from the decomposition may keep it warm enough.  Trial and error will have to lead you.  Flush twice, once to get rid of the antifreeze(environmentally safe only, for trailers), and the second to get rid of the waste.  There are also units made commercially that only have a well with a trap door to drop the waste out the bottom or simple open bottom toilets like you see in government parks etc..  You still need water for the septic system to work, so dump in a pitcher of water, washing the inside of the chute as you do.

Gray water is usually introduced into the second chamber.  Remember to use only environmentally safe shampoo, soap, detergents etc. for all your washing and cleaning.  Whatever you use, is being dumped into your land!
 Whatever you use for a system. try planting nitrogen and other fertilizer craving plants all around the area where you are draining your water.  Fruit trees(as long as there is no direct contact with the water on the surface) Peonies, ground covers...etc...just be certain that they do not have invasive roots.  You just need Heavy Feeders.  No root crops please!  Plants with big, dark green leaves love nitrogen!  Roses also come to mind.  Phosphorus may be absorbed by the soil.


Note that French drains or leach fields are typically laid out in a trident pattern.  The pipe from the septic usually enters a distribution box.  This is usually a concrete cube with four holes in the four sides.  One, higher than the rest, receives the fluid.  The other three holes lead to the right, left and forward.  Pipes from the right and left usually turn at right angles after a few feet, to run parallel with the middle one.  The ends of the perforated pipes are capped, and the water filters into the drain trenches.  If the soil is clay, it may not drain properly.  Always test the soil.  Dig a few test pits all over the area to be used.  Pour in several gallons of water and observe the drainage of the water.  Doesn't drain?...not a good place for a drain field.

Heavy metals are always a concern in any septic system.  Recycle anything that may contain these, and watch out for foods that may contain them.  Never flush anything that contains heavy metals, and recycle batteries etc., instead of discarding them on your land.  Tuna and other ocean fish comes to mind.  It is possible that these heavy metals may be taken up by food crops.  Be especially careful with children in the area as they are affected more than adults by such things as mercury.

Above all, be mindful of local wells, not just yours.  Putting systems like this down hill from wells, especially dug wells, is a good plan, and keep them as far away as possible.  Consult local experts about well contamination and the flow of water into local wells.  Very deep wells may be using water that is centuries old in layers of deep rock, but they may also be fed directly by surface water through cracks in the bedrock.

Remember that animals have been crapping on your land for eons.  The land is still OK.  The big difference is that we are concentrating our waste in one area as we do not move around, and we use chemicals in our waste water.  Take reasonable precautions, and you may do no more harm to the land than those animals.

Composting waste is a good alternative if you have no other choice, but this does not remove chemicals....

Pump out septic tanks regularly, and keep them well supplied with bacterial cultures that will digest the solids.  There is usually a greasy scum layer on the top of the water in the septic tank.  This is good to be pumped away from your land regularly.