Tag Archives: children
Lily testing our foam insulation
Waiting for the pour
Rollercoaster
Plans are spinning, bumping and lurching forward. I am reminded of the Columbia County Fair, with fun but scary rides that make me sick and dizzy. I am on the rollercoaster. Prices go up: add a flout system to the septic. Prices go down: the wall panels can be two inches thinner. The weather goes colder, warmer, colder and we worry if we can dig before winter. Surprises leap out, like an unexpected fee. In our house of mirrors, we head down the XPS path only to turn around and try the EPS path. Now it’s our turn to stand in line at the ticket booth, impatiently waiting for our building permit so the real fun can begin.
Reflections from the tipi
AUGUST 2011, posted by Susan
I sit in a tipi as children chant my daughter’s nature camp name, “Sugar Maple, Sugar Maple”. She stands to receive a blue marble that looks like the Earth, a token of her week at Flying Deer Nature Center. I have just come from a meeting on the cost of building our new house and, for a moment, I wish for a simple plan of poles and canvas. I ask my son, who is spinning a stick against wood in hope of igniting fire, if he would like to live in a tipi. “Maybe not in winter,” he replies.
The kind of house we want to build will cut heating costs by 90 percent. It’s a Passive House, and winter in upstate New York makes this way of building both cozy and cost-effective. It will have thick walls, a very thick roof, triple-pane window and some technology to capture heat and keep the air clean. If we are going to build new, we might as well make the most of the investment.
Saying goodbye to the campers, we drive back to the “For Rent” house, as Sugar Maple calls it, where we will rent while we build. “We found someone to build our new house,” my husband tells the children. “It’s the kind that doesn’t use much energy,” I add. Fresh from the lessons of nature camp, our 8-year-old son says, “That should make the Earth smile.”