CountryByNet.com Forums :: Water powered pumps

Ray, I have a browser problem. The "Instant Faces" don't work for me and I often forget to manually insert things like semi colon right parentheses like this

which translates to a wink. When you get a post from me and there is something that makes more sense as a tongue in cheek remark or some vague attempt at humor, even if some sarcastic, it probably is just that and not a salvo of mortar fire.

Designing the house was the first time I ever used any architectural support software. I needed it as I never had mechanical drawing or drafting or such and it was easier to learn to use some of the features than to struggle without the software at all. I had 2-3 different ones. One was a "gift" but the one I used the most was a "Cheapo" Broderbund product that did more than I needed. I didn't use Turbo Cad.

I liked the ability to set height of eye and take a virtual tour inside or make a helicopter flyby outside to see the external 3D view from any distance, height, or direction. The "Design Studio" within the application package had prototype samples of furnishings, features, and appliances. You could use theirs, modify them, or build your own in 3D using their integrated tools and then install them in the house. The objects you build or borrow are scalable.

An inset window showed the stud walls, rafters, and such being installed one at a time in fast motion, like a Disney stop motion photography session showing flowers growing up and blooming.

There is landscaping support with an extensive library of plants, trees, etc. You can plant a bush and then advance its growth to 5, 10, or whatever years ahead to see how it might look later next to your house. This helps prevent your planting something that looks good now but is just all wrong a few years later when it grows/matures.

I think the interior walk throughs, guided by mouse movement and the outside helicopter flybys are a terrific "now what do you think, dear?" tool. It is cool to be able to walk around through the house and turn around and look through a room into another room or to the outside.

It is funny to see the folks not experienced with computer aided drawing and design support software expect the tool to do the work for them. As you know it just ain't so. For trivial projects it is probably more effort to use the tool (especially if you have to learn it for the small project) than to just do rough sketches. When the project gets a bit more complicated and you are trying out various options then the tool starts to save time (sometimes a LOT OF TIME) and allow you to do things you just would never do by paper and pencil.

I kept a few competing designs as separate projects and evolved each with incremental improvements until I started to get a clear and distinct impression as to which were headed toward being a candidate winner. These got reduced in number rapidly as even with the computer assistance I would not do all the work to keep the proliferation of variations all "alive" and up to date.

The tool let me rip off the roof and turn the direction of the gable ridge by 90 degrees and examine the ramifications and play other "what if" games. For a period of time I was thinking elevator (with basement we are three story) and you have to reserve a elevator space on all three floors where any change on any floor could impact other floors, like moving the elevator "shaft." Elevators really do complicate a residential design by quite a bit. After I shopped various elevator lift designs like lead screws, hydraulics, cable, and such and looked at the failsafe aspects (wanna spend a week in an elevator during an ice storm induced power outage?) and then priced the lift chair on a track up the stairway option.

There are significant advantages to the lift chair option some of which are: 1. They take up very little space and only require you to have straight staircases with adequate width and no intermediate landings. 2. They take up very little space and have very little impact on your design except as noted in #1 above. 3. You don't need to install them until or unless you ever need them. (You can leave your elevator shaft empty or use as storage until or unless you need to install the elevator too but it is NOT AS NICE as the lift chair option.) 4. Elevators to service 2 floors are expensive, elevators to service 3 floors are extremely expensive, way out of proportion to just doubling the 2 floor cost model. 5. Lift chairs are way way cheaper, easy to retrofit, and do not impact normal use of the stairs much. You make the stairs wide enough for a person to walk up the stairs while someone is passing by in the lift chair. This is about 4 ft (less is OK.)

There is a model building option that lets you print out your roof in whatever shingle or other roofing material design/color you want as well as all the walls in brick, vinyl, or whatever. These scaled "parts" are then glued to Kraft board or recycled cardboard box pieces or whatever and assembled into "YOUR HOUSE." Pretty neat, especially if you need to show someone who needs a physical model to visualize the candidate design or compare and contrast candidate models side by side not one at a time on the computer screen.

Luckily after taking early retirement I eventually had the time to invest in learning the computer tools and had the time to do the design myself. We could have hired an architect but changes are $ and lots of changes are lots of $. Not every professional architect is in favor of working in direct partnership with the customer. They typically prefer you to give them ideas and let them go do a design to use as a straw man and elicit design changes from you. This iterative process can be extensive and expensive if you want it YOUR way and are not ready to accept HIS design just because it is nice when it isn't YOUR design.

I had several areas of concern such as daylighting, energy efficiency, fresh air management, and a bundle of little things all of which required interfacing with the multiple other considerations. Many of the considerations are strongly coupled and can not be optimized independently from other considerations. (Think giant array of dominoes all intertwined so that any domino anywhere will effect lots of others.) Decoupling systems and areas of design concern is a good thing to allow you to decompose the problem into constituent parts and work on the individual pieces and where possible I did but still to a degree most things interact with some of the others which ensures that to try to optimize one thing you are upsetting something else at least a bit.

I still have unfinished parts of the house and plug away at it still. I still have unsolved problems that I anticipated when I froze the main part of the design. I strongly expected there would be acoustic problems given the shape/size of the great room. Well, I was right. There is too much reverberation. It is too live and given the time delay due to its size it makes conversation from a distance really tough. You talk louder to be understood and you hear louder reverberation. We got an improvement when we furnished the room and another improvement when the loft floor was carpeted but we still need some tapestries and who knows what else to get it under control. I may have to run a wire across the loft something like 15 ft above the loft floor and hang medieval banners as acoustic absorbers or alternatively learn Amslan (the American version of French sign language.)

Pat

"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

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