House Design

Coming up with the final choice for a house design has been quite a journey. We began by looking at a huge number of stock plans from a number of sources -- design books published by a lot of different folks and a lot of online resources. We decided that none of the designs we had found really worked for us. They all had compromises. It seemed like there would be a canned design which included items like Master on the main, a large utility/mudroom near the Master, spacious kitchen, no superflous spaces like home theaters, parlours, etc; and in addition have good views to the front AND back -- and finally fit into a 125-foot wide lot with about 30 feet on either side for good access. Nothing out there seemed to work.

So we tried a custom house design and still didn't get what we wanted. The designer had a vision of what we wanted, but in the end it was incorrect. More delays, and some wasted money spent.

Revisiting one of our more favorite house design sites (Alan Mascord), we found a few designs that were less of a compromise. Or perhaps we finally began to understand that some compromises are inevitable. Either way, we found a design that we thought we could work with. Here is the starting point. From there, we worked with one of their designers to modify it according to our vision. I want to post some of the drawings for what we finally got, but I'm concerned about copyright issues. I'm inquiring with Mascord on what we can and cannot post so hopefully some bits and pieces of the design can be posted here. That's all for now.

Ring Drive

Look here for my ring drive design items. There could be changes to this, since I actually haven't made anything yet.

Hey, the link worked! This is easier than I thought it would be.

Mechanics

No, this is not a post about guys who work on cars. But it is about things that move and do stuff. In particular, I'm going to talk about an interesting mechanism that converts rotary motion into linear motion. In its simplest form, that's usually called a "screw". And screws are almost ubiquitous -- they're used everywhere to precisely move things, from lathe carriages to 3D prototyping tools (see reprap.org for a nice example of a DIY 3D prototyping system).

The problem with simple screw systems is that they're not very efficient -- the screw and nut have a lot of mutual friction. So-called ball screws use a precisely-machined nut in combination with ball bearings and a system to recirculate the balls, to get something that has low friction like a ball bearing, but moves back & forth along the screw.

But ball screws are very expensive, and definitely out of the picture as far as making your own. However, I recently discovered a much simpler approach, called a Ring Drive. This uses a simple ball bearing that is inserted into the screw (usually an Acme screw, which has coarser threads than the standard machine screws). Then the bearing is tilted until the top and bottom of the inside ballrace engage the screw threads. If the screw is rotated, the inner race rotates along with it, and the bearing moves back & forth. Voila, a low-friction, easy to make Ring Drive. I've been working on some drawings and a spreadsheet to help clarify/design these things, will post links to them in a bit.

Here's a photo of the jungle surrounding our little house. It's not obvious from the front, but the back roof is mostly covered by a blue tarp--it doesn't make much sense to spend a lot of money on a roof, when the house is slated to disappear.

In addition to removing the house, we will need to move the shrubberies--at least, the ones that are most likely to survive. There are a number of rhododendrons that need to be moved, plus some interesting things--like the Dracunulus Vulgaris shown on the left. It looks like a black calla lilly, but the flowers can be enormous--some of our plants have flowers that are at least 2 feet high. But they have another, less genteel trait: they use carrion-eating insects for pollenators, so their "perfume" smells like rotting meat!

We didn't buy these. They just appeared. My wife thought the plants looked interesting so we let them grow. The plants didn't start flowering right away so we had no idea what we were in for. Fortunately, the flower doesn't last very long -- in warm weather, just a couple of days. But during that time, it can get pretty odiferous around here. We even had the local police looking through the jungle looking for dead bodies (a true story).

The plant's form and coloration is pretty attractive, with broad tropical looking leaves and brown chevron markings on the leaves and stalk, so we have decided to put up with the temporary smell of plant sex.

Intro

Everything has a beginning. Including new houses.

The initial impetus for this blog is to help document our progress on building a new home for ourselves. So far it's been a slow process -- including a false start with an architect and endless searches through house-design web sites and design books.

Some Background

We currently live on 1.4 acres in an unincorporated area of Clackamas County, Oregon. The old house was built in 1949 and was originally an 800 square foot 1-bedroom house. My wife calls it a stunted Cape Cod. Photos of the property will be posted in a bit.