jef_keighley

Wow! What a spectacular and serene creation of light, space and time. Kudos to all concerned. Your entry is unquestionably heads above every other one to date!

Pannasonic's Eco-village sounds like an amazing undertaking, not just in concept, but in scale as well. There will critical lessons learned both in what works well and what doesn't, that we can all apply to projects of lesser size and complexity. I'm looking forward to hearing progress reports of this innovative project.

RYagid:

I ran through several of the slide shows and all in all they look quite good. I'd be interested both in floor plans and comparable construction costs, which hopefully the article will get into.

FHB:

I'm looking forward to seeing the upcoming article on Doing It Right in New Orleans, both from the social and architectural design aspects. For those who question whether publishing the article represents 'pressing a cause' or 'beating a drum', I would simply remind folks of the old adage 'If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything!'

Kudos to FHB for the upcoming article.

Friends:

I couldn't agree more with the tone and sentiment of the article. I am a small builder-renovator on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast. My experience with our respective building departments is that more often than not, by advance discussion on how they would like to see certain aspects of the finished project done, their suggestions have saved both me and the client, time and money as well as ensuring the inspection pass first time, every time. And that's good for building your reputation and your business.

Friends:

I think the idea of container houses is a very good one. However, I'm surprised at the reported costs of $150 per square foot. I recently completed our new house, which is 4,000 square feet on two floors, with a covered 12' x 32' deck off the upper floor, and an equal sized patio below, off the lower floor. I have 10' ceilings up and 8.5' ceilings down. The kitchen is large with cherry cabinets, granite counters and tile floors which continue into the hall, laundry and powder rooms. The living and dining room floors are engineered jatoba. Elsewhere is wool blend carpet. Stair railings are solid jatoba with powder coated spindles. There is plenty of trim and huge windows overlooking the water view. Overall the finishes would rate from above average to high end for which I get numerous compliments on both the design and finishing. My cost...around $150 per square foot.

Mind you, I worked with a good, local cost plus builder and joined his crew for the bulk of the construction, doing virtually all of the finished trim on my own after the builder's crew departed, likely saving somewhere in the area of $50,000 in the end, or around $12.50 per square foot. That would likely take the overall cost into the $175 range had it been completed without any of my design and labour.

So...unless I could anticipate getting the construction costs of a container home down to well under $150 per square foot, I doubt the design limitations of building with set sized cubes would balance out against the flexibility of more traditional methods.

Having said that, there is still an interesting cache to using a building material that would otherwise simply become scrap metal and creating a long lasting tribute to inventiveness and environmental sustainability.

Jef Keighley
Halfmoon Bay, B.C., Canada

Friends:

I'm in the process of re-organizing my workshop and have planned everything out around the placement of my new dust collection system, but that is not my newest tool. No, my 'newest' tool, bought a couple of weeks ago, to fill out my shop layout design is an old 37-220 Rockwell 6" jointer, probably late 50s or early 60s vintage.

The machine sat in a local artisans shop used for years after it threw a too loose blade, chipping the edge of the infeed table, mushrooming the edge of the blade slot and snapping the blade guard in two. I paid $75 for the machine, took it home and re-worked the cast iron surfaces with emery, steel wool and WD40 to remove all the rust, then Top Coated it. I filed smooth the infeed chip, which doesn't affect the machine in any way. I swaged the mushroomed blade slot back into position and trued it with a file. I pop-riveted the blade guard whole, reinforced with by two 1/8" x 1" galvanized steel straps, at an approximate right angle, to straddle the fracture in the cast aluminum guard. I built a beefier base out of 1" plywood to replace the old inadequate one. I inserted a new set of knives, properly tighted, trued it up, turned it on, and viola...a damn fine little jointer for $75!

So, my 'newest' tool, a very happy find, was likely manufactured when I was still delivering Vancouver Sun newspapers on my bike.

Jef Keighley
Halfmoon Bay, B.C., Canada

PS. I was able to order a replica manual for the Rockwell jointer on line and found it to be a very useful reference.

Lennox has come up with a great idea with the stepped slot hole saw. With the standard vertical slot you often have initial difficulty getting under the plug and then with the single leverage point being the bottom end of the slot, the plug often tips and binds, slowing the ejection process. The added depth of the new Lennox hole saw allows you to get under the plug to start with and the stepped leverage points will produce much quicker plug ejection. Good idea Lennox!

Toward a Zero Energy Home is a timely contribution for those who care about the planet and who want to build now with the future in mind. The writing style is straight forward and engaging. The authors clearly know their stuff and how to communicate it to others. Congratulations!

I look forward to reading Toward a Zero Energy Home in its entirety.

Jef Keighley,
CANSTRUX Design Construction
Halfmoon Bay, BC

Matt:

Alas! The vagaries of renovation work! You never know what you're going to find until you open up Pandora's Box, and once open, well...I think you know!

Sounds like your going to need to look at ventilation for the crawl space so as to inhibit fungi growth in the future. You might have to look at first sistering the bad joists with new material, them remove the infected ones so as prevent the fungi from attacking the replacement joists. Chances are the sub-floor may need some attention, so it might be easiest and cheapest to remove as much of the subfloor as you need to gain working access to replace the joists.

Good luck with your 'structural wiring'.

Jef Keighley
Halfmoon Bay, BC