February 1, 2010 by Jeff.

Today, annoyed at how the space I live in disfunctions, I began to re-envision my apartment. The problem with the layout (pictured below) is that the bedrooms are scattered and the public areas do not relate to each other. At parties, the long hallway gets clogged, and, in the morning, I wake up to people rustling in the pantry. My roommates complain that the TV is too loud.

My solution is to convert the kitchen to a large bedroom, move the bath to a space underutilized by two hall closets, and use the freed space as a public area at the front of the apartment. A door in the hall already divides the two spaces.

After a little more thought, I realized the simplest execution would be to leave the original bathroom in place and simply switch the kitchen and front bedroom (BED 4). The old closet door will lead directly into the original bathroom, providing public access.

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January 14, 2010 by Jeff.

Jerome Wincek has been quietly producing some of the most interesting rock-influenced folk music for a decade out of his living room in Oil City, Pennsylvania. As luck would have it, we don’t need to live close by to be part of his creative process. Jerome routinely uploads new material to his myspace page. Then, after it has had time to ferment on the interwebs, he distills the best into collections, which are generally available to download or pick up at his local shows. The EP ‘The Revelator Part1′, which released earlier this week, stands apart from material that he has issued in the past. It tells the story of those that God has abandoned and how they live without him in the aftermath. It is now available as a free download at jeromewincek.bandcamp.com.

If you’ve never heard Jerome’s music before, the industrial clang of synths backing some of the folk melodies might be jarring at first. The soundscape is epic and the lyrics are at time apocalyptic and near, like Jerome is not only talking about some distant future but the present troubles in my own mind. This is not campfire music but somehow, as I listen to the final track, I close my eyes and am transported to a shack out in the woods, where a lone mandolin player serenades, holding off the impending evil as it tries to crash in.

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January 6, 2010 by Jeff.

There is an undeniable truth that few want to address: increasing solar and wind production cannot halt global climate change. The technologies that harness the power of the sun are effective only at increasing supply during peak power usage. They, however, are not a replacement for coal, and that is what we need. The entire domestic coal industry needs to be replaced with an alternative that has a dramatically reduced impact on our planet. This feat can only be accomplished if we increase our use of nuclear power.

There is a slight problem associated with increasing the number of facilities that produce nuclear. By doing so, we will exasperate the issues associated with the storage of nuclear waste. [Currently much of the waste generated sets on site because sufficient permanent storage sites do not exist.] This brings me to my second point. We will never have a Yucca Mountain. There is no hole in which we will be able to store the waste that we currently generate, is stored temporarily, or we hope to generate in the future. This is why our attention must be focused on developing the political will for a breeder reactor program in the United States. These breeders basically do a better job of extracting usable fuel from spent rods. Read more here.

Breeder reactors must be built so that we can move beyond the NIMBY arguments regarding the transportation of nuclear waste transportation and storage. Contact the Department of Energy and lend your support. Tell your representatives in congress and the senate that you support a cleaner, coal-free future.

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December 9, 2009 by Jeff.

I fell in love with Japanese architecture a few years ago while building stone and thatch homes of the English countryside vernacular. Less rustic than their English counterparts, these intricately detailed homes feature simple, clean lines.

Following the lead of architects such as Le Corbusier Japanese architects combined these traditional design aesthetics with elements of the international style for dramatic results.

and this one from Artechnic:

Today many Japanese architects must design homes with small footprints due to a lack of available land. For most the solution is to go up, up, up. A Ryuichi Ashizawa-designed home featured in this article accomplished this in a rather interesting and organic fashion. The twisted steel support columns resemble rods of bamboo, and the successive pods/platforms remind me of the tree house from the movie Swiss Family Robinson.

To me, this open-air design seems impractical for the city (with all the air and noise pollution), but I would certainly love to build something like this on my property up in Maine.

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November 3, 2009 by Jeff.

NOV 2: Started sketching out a house on the back of a paper bag as I drank my second cup of coffee.

NOV3: Interested to see what it would look like in three dimensions, I spent a couple of hours this afternoon rendering the frame in Google Sketchup. Over the next couple of days I plan to begin adding doors, windows, and, of course walls.

NOV 4: Changed the heavy framing plan and added a foundation plan to the sketch (below).

NOV 5: Added walls and openings for doors and windows.

NOV 6: Today I planted the gardens, added some floors, and installed other landscaping. This may help establish some needed perspective.

and, then I decided to add a roof.

NOV 7: Today I sketched out a section of the basement to illustrate the relationships between the 2 bedrooms, the open courtyard, the bath, and the utility room. I got this idea from Stuttio Workshop who finished second place in the COEH Design Competition.

NOV 8: How to best integrate modern energy efficiency with timber frame structures has been debated since the U.S. timber-frame resurgence in the 1970s. For much of the past 40 years, exterior wall systems have been utilized, which add significant expense and unnecessary structure. My study of historic infill systems has led me to the conclusion that an infill system, using modern materials, would be a more effective and sustainable approach. A diagram of a wall section is includes below. The exterior sheathing (red) and the interior finish board (blue) create a large - 7 inch - cavity that can be filled with any type of blown insulation (yellow). The 2X3 wall studs (grey) provide the necessary support. Notice that a wire chase is created by separating the exterior sheathing from the heavy timber; this gap also creates a thermal layer outside the frame, reducing energy loss.

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