This picture is the Sudbury River in Concord, just downstream of our new property (which is around the bend in the distance).
I have also been taking my camera around town (Arlington, Lexington and Cambridge) to capture more fall pictures. You can see some selected images in my Nature Around Town gallery.
Here are some other pictures, which may encourage you to check out the gallery.
And here is one more, although not of fall colors. This snapping turtle was on the observation platform in the Alewife Brook Reservation area. He is not going to fit in the gap under the railing so he has a long walk back to get to the water. (I decided not to help him.)
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.
As we get into fall, the sun is rising later and later and the leaves have started to turn. This gives me more chances to take some interesting photographs on my morning walk before boarding the shuttle bus to work.
This morning I caught the sunrise colors in the clouds which were then reflected in Spy Pond (Arlington, MA). I also got a good picture of a swan on Alewife Brook (Cambridge, MA) in the early morning light.
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.
I do not have a topic for Chapter 6 yet, but the design process is moving forward, so I am sure I will have more material soon. In the meantime, the engineering firm is about to drill some test holes to see if there is a reasonable place to relocate the existing septic system, so watch where you step.
The architect has added in a roof overhang on all sides of the house. Among other things, this keeps rain from going into the windows (assuming the rain is not falling sideways). But when we add in the roof overhang, we get into trouble with setbacks, and that pesky non-conforming garage.
There are two places where a problem has crept in. The first is the roof overhang over the front door. The town says that the roof overhang can not be closer than the 40′ setback from the road without a special permit. So we will redesign the front of the house a little from the last set of drawings to have a flat facade with only a small front porch. This removes 4 feet from one of the upstairs bedrooms, but that is not really an issue for us.
The second problem is that the required 10′ of separation between the proposed shed attached to the garage and the house is measured from the edge of the roof overhangs (not the wall of the house). To ensure enough spacing, we had to shift the whole house by 4″ (thankfully easier to do now than after the house is built). This small repositioning actually allowed us to slightly increase the size of the deck, which is a good thing.
In late 2016 I created an account at Audible so I could buy a couple of books by John Scalzi, starting with The Dispatcher and then The Collapsing Empire, which is the first book in The Interdependency series, still one of John Scalzi’s best works (in my opinion). In 2019, I subscribed to Audible, which meant that I got one credit for a new book every month, and access to many free books as well.
Up to that point, I had been listening to podcasts, but once I got books that held my interest, I started listening in earnest. My rule is that I only listen to audio books while walking, hiking, biking or otherwise exercising (not including swimming). If I am at home or camping and want a book, I use my Kindle instead.
I have been keeping track of audiobooks that I have loved and would recommend to others with similar tastes. My nominal listening rate is a little over a book a month. I get one credit from Audible once a month, and them supplement that with books on sale from Chirp Books.
Well, a few months ago I was in the market for another book and Audible had been harassing me for months to try a book called He Who Fights With Monsters, probably because I had listened to a few other LitRPG series before, and this was a popular book in that genre. Well, that may have been a mistake. In the last 41 days, I have gone through the first four books in that series. That’s 98 hours of audio, which averages out at over 2 hours every single day. Keep in mind that I only listen when exercising, mostly walking in this case. This is a serious addition, and not one that I would recommend.
