BitChin home build

[Stick895]

Very nice. Where's your tractor go?

 

[soilsailor]

Very impressive.

We are in the planning process (as you may recall) for our home build. I've had several conversations with Chris at Clydesdale.

We are looking at something similar in design - really a one story with a small knee wall for the loft area over the kitchen and front entry areas of the house.

Two specific questions at the moment.

1) What pitch do you have for the roof over the living/loft areas? We have been using 8:12 in the floor plan software, but I have a slight headroom problem when exiting onto the loft. I can fix that by either increasing the pitch, increasing the loft kneewall height, or changing the orientation of the last span of stair run by 90 degrees.

2) Regarding your 3T GSHP. Do you distribute the heat for the basement and first floor with in-floor tubing (i.e. hydronic heating), straight to forced air, or some combination?

Thanks.

Rick

 

[weldingisfun]

Wow, BitChin. Very nice. Congrats.

 

[EddieWalker]

Congratulations, that's a very nice home!!!!

Eddie

 

[BitChin1]

Very nice. Where's your tractor go?

Right now it is in my garage - 4th bay supposed to be a workshop but tractor with rear blade takes up space
Wife has ok'd a detached garage and we are in early stages of getting permits/approvals and design details

 

[BitChin1]

Very impressive.

We are in the planning process (as you may recall) for our home build. I've had several conversations with Chris at Clydesdale.

We are looking at something similar in design - really a one story with a small knee wall for the loft area over the kitchen and front entry areas of the house.

Two specific questions at the moment.

1) What pitch do you have for the roof over the living/loft areas? We have been using 8:12 in the floor plan software, but I have a slight headroom problem when exiting onto the loft. I can fix that by either increasing the pitch, increasing the loft kneewall height, or changing the orientation of the last span of stair run by 90 degrees.

2) Regarding your 3T GSHP. Do you distribute the heat for the basement and first floor with in-floor tubing (i.e. hydronic heating), straight to forced air, or some combination?

Thanks.

Rick

Yep talked with Chris the other day - he is great to work with

Main pitch is 8:12 in our 3 bent great room
other areas are 4:12 for shed style roof over MBr, porch and pantry

we initially started with a 4' knee wall but to gain access into the bonus room we raised it to 8' knee wall (was minimal extra cost - SIP and siding primarily) really opens up the area in the loft as well as volume over great room (although it would have been there at 4' also)
If you go with taller pitch and use SIPs think about total span - I think they could go 24' and in my case I wanted as few joints as possible

For the basement and 1st floor we have 2 zone forced air - it was very easy to run this duct work.
We had spent a fair amount of time working on radiant or duct and in the end it was cost decision and realization that my heating load is relatively small for most of the year (even with current temps and little sun the unit runs about 30% of time overnight then rarely during the day as my south windows provide plenty of heat)
The duct work was free (needed it for summer cooling) and radiant was ~$8k for distribution tubing, and $2k more on unit for water heating

We were trying to hit a budget and by the time this decision had to be finalized we were already aware we were going to go over

On budget as you work with Chris - I found that cost is control is primarily related to number of joints in your frame - reduce as possible. This led to the 3 bent design with 16' and 20' spans then the shed roof over MBr
Similar to what jk96 did you can also remove TF in areas that are less "exposed" and in general remove rooms you don't need

 

[BitChin1]

Thanks Eddie and Weldinisfun - we are enjoying it and I really liked building it (most of the time:dance1

We lived in town for for 25yrs and living out here we were a little concerned about how long or how many trips to town we would make - we quickly learned to combine trips, I stop by store on way out from work etc - also 12 miles is not very far)

The other day my wife was sitting in the loft looking out the windows as two young hawks were hunting - she came over to me and with a big hug she said "thank you for convincing me to move out here, I love it here" :thumbsup:

We already find that we don't go to town during busy times - too much traffic (as if Wichita actually has traffic)

 

[deerseeker001]

looks great

 

[murphy1244]

Really like the look of open Beam type house. Nice Job!

 

[s219]

That looks awesome -- I didn't see a thing I wouldn't choose for myself (and saw a few things I did choose for our home, including that carved-blade ceiling fan). I am a big fan of SIPS, and we considered it for our home. There is a huge energy advantage of not having lots of studs bridging the thermal gap, and it makes for a really stiff and quiet structure. Did you go with 6" panels?

Now that you've done the whole timber-frame & SIPS build process, how do you feel about cost and procedures compared to normal stick building? Anything you'd do differently?