In September 2010 the house I’d grown up in, and the house that my father, a then semi-retired general contractor, had built, was burnt during a wildfire. After everything cooled down we quickly decided that we wanted to rebuild.
Our goal was to build something that my father could live in that would be affordable as he moves into full retirement. We had to do it with the money the insurance company was going to give us for loss of contents, as the insurance money received to cover the loss of the original structures went straight to the mortgage companies. Due to the nature of the insurance process it was difficult to know how much money we would ultimately have. Our budget was roughly 200,000, including all the tools we would need to re-buy.
A further challenge was the location of the building site. Located on the western-slope of the rocky mountains and at the end of a very long, steep, and remote driveway, the road is regularly closed during the winter months. Waiting until the summer wasn’t an option since the insurance would only cover the rental of a temporary place for one year.
To save money, we would design and draw the plans for the structure ourselves. Myself, and several of my good friends who were each looking to learn some new practical skills, would build the house ourselves, with the help of only a very few key subs along the way. The only phases of the construction process that we weren’t either fully responsible for, or at least directly involved with, included forming and pouring the foundation, the flat work and staining of the slab, and the closed cell foam insulation.
During the winter, with all the framing materials delivered before the road closed we stayed in a 400 square foot prefab garage that we build first. Any additional materials we needed, we had to carry a half mile in along with the groceries and supplies we would need for the week.
Despite the recent fire, the local building codes classified our area as an `extreme fire zone’. For us this meant that the roof and siding had be fire resistant, we choose metal since we also wanted something that would be low maintenance since house maintenance for my dad would become more difficult in coming years.
Also in line with this goal of low maintenance we wanted the house to be easy to run. Although my dad had lived with a wood-stove as the primary heat source for over 30years, we felt that the effort of splitting wood and starting a fire when you get home in the evening was completely unacceptable now. Although we did install a wood-stove as a backup heat source, the primary heating is hydronic radiant heating in a slab on grade. Further, to limit the cost of living in the home in the long run we made sure to leave enough in the budget for a 6.4kw pv array and two passive solar cells that would help heat the hot water. This would help ensure that the monthly cost of living in the home would be kept to a minimum.