Homes · Concept A · a concept design
Homestead
A timber-frame homestead designed as one system: a hub that heats and serves every building, the workshop that builds the rest, a farmhouse and a sunken greenhouse. Every building is drawn to scale from its numbers, and every frame is modelled timber by timber.
The drawings
- Sheets U1–U8built first
The hub
Three shipping containers under one timber roof: the wood and propane boilers and the tank, the water and the power, a bathroom and a small kitchen, and a covered works between them. Every system drawn and sized; everything after it draws its heat, water and power from here.
48 × 48 · three 40-ft containersThe hub - Sheets B1–B3before the workshop
The bunkers
The tunnel from the house to the workshop, a root cellar, a refuge and a store under the yard, and a separate link to the greenhouse. Shipping containers inside engineered concrete shells.
- Sheets G1–G4after the bunkers
The workshop
Three garage bays, a heated workshop long enough to cut the house's longest timbers indoors, a hoist track from the framing yard down its middle, and a loft. The house is cut in it.
60 × 48 · framing yard 24 × 60The workshop - Sheets A1–A10, I1–I2house
The house
Three blocks under three roofs, the way farmhouses grew: a two-story main block, a 1½-story wing with a masonry heater at its heart, and a saltbox lean-to across the back. The site plan, three floor plans, four elevations, and every interior wall.
5,600 sq ft · full basementThe house - Sheets W1–W2the link
The walkway
The enclosed walkway from the great room to the greenhouse's dining gallery, over the tunnel, and behind the outdoor kitchen a court: the cook's raised beds, the house's woodshed and the back path.
~23 × 8½ · ~4 cords stackedThe walkway - Sheets H1–H2polycarbonate
The greenhouse
A sunken orchard under polycarbonate: dwarf fruit, figs and citrus in the ground, a dining gallery looking down into the canopy, a bath house and a hot tub. Joined to the house above ground and below.
30 × 60 · floor 8 ft downThe greenhouse - Sheets L1–L2garden · orchard · bees
The grounds
The septic's field is the open meadow at the middle of a garden, a walk and a pergola round it and flowering trees at their distances. Beyond it, a fenced fruit yard of apples and berries, three hives, and a native screen round the bath house.
12 apples · 3 hivesThe grounds - Sheets R1–R5black standing seam
The roofs
One roof on every building: black standing-seam steel on a board deck, each panel one piece from eave to ridge, snow fence where the snow would fall on a door or a path, and the solar array clamped to the seams so no bolt goes through the steel.
21,600 sq ft · 751 panelsThe roofs - Sheets S1, A7, A8heat · air · light
Systems
One storage tank in the hub, fed by wood first, then propane, electricity and the greenhouse's afternoon sun. Every room sensed and zoned. The wall and the roof, layer by layer. The first heat numbers.
~281 million Btu a yearSystems - Assembliescut lists · mill orders
The frames
Each frame pulled apart in raising order, every joint named, with its cut list and the mill order for the sawmill: 1,550 timbers in the house, 1,511 in the workshop, 1,241 in the greenhouse, 351 in the hub and 59 in the outdoor kitchen, all green oak and pine or cedar, held with dry oak pegs.
How it gets built, in stages
A multi-year build by a small crew doing its own excavation on rented equipment, with the timber sawn to order by local mills and every frame cut by hand under a roof. Each stage ends with something usable and weather-tight, so the work can stop between stages for a season or a year and nothing is left open to the weather.
- Paper and power: the permits, an engineer for the frames and for everything below grade, power to the site, and the first timber sawn to order.
- The hub: the well, the septic and the power first; then three shipping containers under one timber roof, with the boilers, the tank, the water, a bathroom and a small kitchen. From here on the crew has heat, water and a covered works on the site.
- The bunkers and the workshop: shipping containers outfitted in the hub's works, set in a deep dig and cast inside engineered concrete shells (the tunnel, the root cellar, the refuge and a store), a storm shelter from then on. Then the covered framing yard, the simplest frame; the workshop, its slab poured round the bunkers' stair shaft, raised, closed in and outfitted, and heated from the hub.
- The kiln and the house's timber: an insulated shipping container with a dehumidifier, heated from the hub, dries the boards: the ceiling boards first, then the siding, the floors, the trim and the cabinet stock. Never the frame. Over a winter the main house's frame is cut green in the workshop, every bent test-fitted on the floor.
- The main house: the main block and the lean-to, on their basement, raised bent by bent while the timber is green, roofed and wrapped, and served from the hub through the tunnel. The first heating season dries the frame before the finishes go on.
- The addition: the wing, with the kitchen, the great room and the masonry heater, raised against the main house.
- The greenhouse: its pit and tunnel, its frame, its glazing, and the walkway from the wing.
- The bath house: the sauna and the hot tub on its deck.
The grounds are planted from the first stage on, because trees take a decade: the fruit yard, the flowering trees round the septic's field, and the screen round the bath house's place.
What it holds to
Natural where people live
Lime plaster, wool, wood fibre and wood floors, and walls open to vapour so they dry outward. Foam and fiberglass only where they are sealed away and never touched again.
One tank, many fires
Wood first, then propane, electricity and the greenhouse's surplus, all into one storage tank. The masonry heater and the fireplace stand apart on their own footings.
It works with the server off
Every room keeps a switch that works on its own and the boilers keep their own safety controls. The server schedules and records; it is never the only way to do anything.
Filament and flame
Incandescent lamps by the legal routes left, and kerosene mantle lamps in the living rooms. The LEDs go where nobody lives.
A frame that comes apart
Pegged joints in standard sections of local species: bur oak sills, oak posts, eastern white pine above. Nothing glued, nothing hidden.
Below grade in steel and concrete
Shipping containers outfitted and sealed, then cast inside engineered concrete shells, before anything else is built: a tunnel to the workshop, a root cellar, a refuge and a store.