Category: RIVER HOUSE (Page 2 of 3)

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.

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.

Along with the design of the massing of the house, shown in the previous post, we also have a first cut at the layout of the second floor. The second floor is smaller than the first floor, because the living space does not extend over the master bedroom or the gaming room.

This is the first real design, based on earlier discussions. There may be some further iterations. A key feature are the big windows in the family room which will have a better view of the river than anywhere else in the house. We will likely have some comfy chairs near the window, where you can sit and read or watch the boats go by.

As currently designed, the first floor is approximately 2500 sq ft and the second floor is approximately 1600 sq ft. There are three bedrooms, two and a half baths and eight rooms in total (which is important because that’s the room count limit based on the existing septic system).

Our architect has an initial design for the massing of the house, which she presented to us today in a Zoom call. Right now it is very white and has no windows. I assume those features will be downloadable content we can buy later.

Anyway, here is the rough proposed design for the house. The first rendering shows the front of the house, looking down from a drone hovering over the driveway.

The second rendering shows the back side of the house. The stairs are leading down from the deck. The upper-left part of the house is the porch off of the gaming room. That little section of the roof that sticks up is the second floor bathroom.

Our architect has been great and has moved the house design forward quite quickly, but this week we were reminded that we are not our architect’s only clients. So after a burst of activity (see Designing a House from the Inside Out), things have slowed down a little.

Right now the bottleneck is working on the “massing”. This was a new term for me, so I looked it up: Massing is a term in architecture which refers to the perception of the general shape and form as well as size of a building. And our architect is struggling a little with the massing, especially as it pertains to the roof over the master bedroom suite. Daphne should find out more on Friday, when she has a Zoom call with the architect.

Part of the problem is that we have imposed a lot of requirements, especially for that part of the house. High ceilings, no living space over the master bedroom suite, and a roof design that will not tend towards problems with ice dams. Nothing is ever easy, and we have not even gotten to the hard parts yet.