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Since the Sudbury River house will be within 100′ of wetlands, the Concord Natural Resource Commission has the power to approve or decline the plan to build our new house (which means we would be forced to adjust the plans). On the negative side, we are increasing the footprint of the house to be approximately double that of the existing house. We are also taking down 4 trees within the 100′ zone (plus 3 or 4 more outside of the 100′ zone). On the plus side, we will be volunteering to relocate the septic system. The existing septic system is closer than 50′ to the wetlands, and the proposed replacement (which will not be any larger) will be completely outside of the 100′ zone. We will also be removing the old house, a corner of which currently intrudes into the 50′ feet no-build zone, but is grandfathered in place.

The other thing we will add to our proposal, on the plus side of the equation, is our plan to remove invasive species and add (plant) a lot of native trees and plants. When we meet with the Natural Resources Commission, we have to include the plans for this, at least the portions of which fall within the 100′ zone. Today, we reviewed the first pass of a plan from our landscape architect.

This is the plan. The big circles that are empty except for a single dot and the letters “EX” are existing trees. None of those will be removed or impacted. Everything else that is round is new. (Although the three LP tanks on the side of the garage are not technically native plants). You can also see the proposed granite tiled walkway that will lead from the driveway to the front door and to the deck.

(The current plan is to actually block the entrance to the deck from the walkway with a moveable planter. The reason is encourage package deliveries and guests to use the front door. During an outdoor party, we can move the planter and have our friends just go directly onto the deck.)

The river side of the house will have a small lawn, which is not marked, but already exists. This will be mostly in front of the living room, at center of the house, within the 50′ zone (it is grandfathered in place). The area between the front of the house and the road (bottom of the diagram) is still under discussion. It will be above the septic system so planting things with large roots is not possible. We are thinking of a small lawn for sitting outside or a small meadow area. But, since it is outside of the 100′ zone, we do not have to make a decision at this time.

There is currently a line of thick vegetation at the edge of the road hiding the house from the road. We will be forced to cut some of this down during the build process to provide a path for the heavy equipment, but we plan on replacing that vegetation boundary once the house is built. It provides some nice noise isolation from the road (although the road is not a busy street).

For reference, here is the current list of proposed trees and plants. If you have any opinions, you are free to add a comment.

Our next step is to review this proposal so the entire documentation packet can be put together for the Natural Resources Commission by November 20th (the deadline to make the December 11th meeting).

By the way, in case you were wondering, the Natural Resource Commission will monitor the plantings that we put in place for five years and require us to replace anything that dies. I think they do this with a yearly site visit, but I am not completely sure of the details. We will need to be diligent about watering to get it properly established.

We have selected four builders / general contractors from which to solicit initial bids on our project and four packets went out today. I have included a copy of the cover letter below so you can get an idea of the process.

The preliminary drawings and specifications include a lot of details, all the way down to fixtures, trim and downspouts. All four builders were previously contacted and expressed interest so this is not a surprise to them (other than being a week later than promised).

I am not going to post all the details from the packet, but I will share this updated picture showing the house seen from the river side. It has siding, windows, deck railings and under-deck lattice. (And downspouts.)

Next for us is a review of the initial proposal for the landscaping that we plan on submitting to the natural resources commission as part of the approval process. They also get all the specifications we have prepared (and although the NRC does not care about fixtures, they do care about downspouts, foundations, septic systems, everything external to the house and counting the rooms.

Its been 10 days since my last update. Things have been busy, although mostly for our architect.

We have two big activities coming up. Activity one is getting approval for the design from the Concord Natural Resource Commission (NRC). They have to approve the plans, because the house will be within 100′ of wetlands (although we are more than 200′ from the river, which helps). The NRC wants to know all the exterior details, so we need the complete design, plans for putting in a new septic system, locations of things like the external heating/cooling systems, back up power generator, and which trees need to be removed, as well as our plans for remediation (replacement plantings).

We have not engaged a mechanical engineer yet so the heating/cooling details are not fully worked out, but we have a preliminary plan for what will be placed outside the house and are hoping that it is mostly accurate. Meanwhile, next week we meet with a landscape architect with whom we have engaged, to do a site visit. She will be proposing the replacement trees and plantings that will be part of the plan presented to the NRC. A representative from our site engineering firm will be doing the presentation (he has experience with the NRC) and he expects it will take two different monthly meetings to get approval (hopefully the December and January meetings). We have discarded our plans to seek a special zoning exemption for a taller roof, so we will not need any unusual zoning approvals.

I have attached a copy of the sewage disposal plan to give you some sense of what the engineering firm has been doing. I do not expect you to read the details. But the thicker black rectangles in the plot plan will be the new leeching field and septic tank. The existing one is behind the garage and is too close to the wetlands; and, although it is grandfathered in, relocating it will make the NRC happy.

Activity two is preparing a packet to present to builders for pricing. The architect has selected four builders to initially engage, all of whom she has experience with and who have expressed an interest in the project and can start in the spring. The architect gives the builders a complete package with as many details as possible, and the builders come back with estimated costs and schedule. Then we pick one.

We are still working to select specialists to design the mechanical system (heat pumps, duct work), electrical system and plumbing. We are putting extra care into the design of the electrical system to reduced internal EMF and magnetic fields as much as possible.

Speaking of which, our EMF consultant has said that boxy rooms with square walls make for a lot of reflection of electrical fields but also acoustic waves (i.e. the room will be noisy). We can not really do much for the main living room, but we are toying with the idea of slanted walls and ceilings in both the master bedroom and the gaming room.

You can see the proposed two slanted walls in this diagram. What you can not see is are the proposed cathedral ceilings. Because the space ends up being so unusual, it helps to see a 3D model of the space, so I have attached two images of the expected gaming room space. The door on the left side of the first image leads out to the porch. There are shelves (for games, of course) along both the North and West walls; and a Murphy bed taking up part of the wall (behind our lovely model in blue).

As part of the planning for the septic system, we were forced to raise the floor of the main level by about a foot, which puts further pressure on the second floor. I have posted some more details at the bottom of this page, including a 3D model of the family room space to give you an idea of the impact of lowering the roof into that space.

Finally, I have updated the pictures and floor plans that I previously added to the main Sudbury River House page. You can go there for the latest design diagrams.

When we started this process of building a house, a friend at work who had gone through the process warned me that there would be an endless stream of little decisions. Well, today we spent four hours with the architect making lots of little (preliminary) decisions. But before going into any details, let me update you on where we stand.

We are currently working on two broad activities. The first activity is preparing to get approval from the Concord Natural Resources Commission. This entails nailing down the exterior footprint, decisions about the septic system, details about which trees need to be removed, and proposed mitigation plans for removing those trees and increasing the footprint of the house. We are unlikely to make the end of October date to submit our proposal, so we are working towards the November 20th submission date, which would mean that our first hearing would happen on December 11th. A second hearing will also be required.

In addition to the Natural Resource Commission, as of today, we decided to seek a zoning exemption. Specifically, we want permission to raise the peak of the house 2 feet past the 35′ limit (measured from the lowest corner of the basement). This will allow us to avoid steeply sloping sides on the second floor (although there will still be some slope). Since we are going through the special permit process, we might as well also ask to install the breezeway now instead of waiting 5 years. I do not know the dates for this process, but we will figure it out. Since the zoning exemptions do not really impact what the Natural Resource Commission cares about, we should not need to go back and forth between the two committees if one asks for changes.

The second broad activity we are working on is preparing a packet to give to contractors to get pricing and availability information. The architect has assembled a list of five builders whom we will initially approach. The goal is to get them a plan for the proposed house with as much detail as possible, so they can come up with reasonably accurate pricing proposals. It is this need to work out as much of the proposal as possible that led to today’s discussions.

Our architect had prepared a detailed list of questions and discussion points, and the three of us sat down at the dining room table and worked through the list. This included details like roofing, siding, windows, doors, flooring, interior and exterior trim, fixtures (kitchen, bathroom, shower), counter tops, initial lighting plans, deck material, water filters, etc.

With any luck, we will avoid having to custom order things like non-standard window sizes or Italian counter tops. Meanwhile, I am working out proposed locations for Ethernet and phone connections (we will not have any WiFi in the main house). We still need to meet with an MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) person to work out such details as the heating system. We have someone in mind, but have not hooked up with him yet. We also need to figure out placement for the exterior infrastructure – condenser units and the back-up generator and its propane tank.

A quick status update. This month (October) is focused on preparing for getting approval from the Concord Natural Resources Commission. Approval is required because the house is within 100′ of the wetlands. In advance of the meeting, we are looking into moving the septic system (test holes all look good) and mitigating the removal of trees that will be impact by the build, by proposing new plantings.

At the same time we are getting a design ready to discuss with possible builders. Hopefully, we will have those discussions within a month and have a builder selected before the end of the year.

In the meantime, look, windows! This is a rendering of the river-facing side of the house with possible window locations. I have posted a series of architectural summary drawings here: Sudbury River House.

It has been a little while since my last house post, but things have not been idle. Most of the work right now is being done by the site engineering firm.

First, the engineering firm took the proposed house placement and measured the elevation. This impacts how tall the house can be, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, we are forced to reduce the height of the roof by a few feet to meet town building heights limits. This has forced us to change the second floor a little to have some sloping walls. You can see the details at the end of this story page.

Mostly, however, we are waiting for the engineering firm to propose a new location for the septic system. This involves drilling a few test holes and doing a perc test to check for suitability. There is an existing septic system, and we can use that, but it is actually in the wetlands zone (grandfathered location) and we believe that moving it out of the wetlands will make the Natural Resources Commission more likely to approve the rest of our plans.

One of the problems with the new house is the need to remove some trees. Four large trees (yellow) definitely have to come down since they otherwise would be inside the new house. Three more trees may need to be removed since their roots will be disturbed. When removing trees, the Natural Resources Commission is likely to demand offsetting plantings. Because of this, we are also starting to discuss what additional planting we will be proposing (nothing that blocks the view, however).

We were just out to visit the property again and noticed that Dig Safe has come by and marked where the town water line runs. I also believe I saw some flagging near the road marking the property line. So progress is being made, slowly.

Here is a picture of Daphne scouting out a route to reach the river. We really want to be able to launch a boat from our own property, but there is a lot of vegetation between the house and the river, and a lot of muddy ground as well. The river level also changes a lot during the year. But we are legally allowed to have an unimproved dirt path through the wetlands, so we have been starting to plan for this.

Finally, I have added some more more photographs to my On the Sudbury River gallery.

In Concord, MA the house can be no taller than 35′ from the ground (without getting a special permit), where the ground is measured as the average of the ground level of two lowest points of the basement/foundation.

The engineering firm has measured the elevation of the ground level to be 124′. The previous massing was based on a ground level of 127′, three feet higher, and the previous massing used all of the available height. This means that the proposed roof peak is now 3′ too tall. Sigh.

The architect and Daphne are discussing how to deal with this. We can reduce the slope of the roof, which would lower the peak, but that causes some problems with the design of the whole roof, and may also lead to a propensity of ice dams forming (although Daphne says ice dams is not the issue). We can just push the attic down such that rooms in the second floor would have sloped sides near the walls. This is probably not a problem if we only drop down a foot or two, but once the height of the side wall gets lower than 6′ we start to have problems with doorways, furniture, etc. Discussions are ongoing. Watch this space.