Passive Solar - Off Grid L

This 2009 square foot home is fully capable of going off grid with ease. Every room has direct access to passive solar heat and there are plenty of southern facing roofs to put solar panels on to provide the electricity for this home. A bank of batteries could be housed in the large root cellar. Add a well and a roof rain water collection system and you are in business!

Remember! If you want to see the floor plan better, just press ctrl and + at the same time! 

The main entrance opens into a spacious great room with a cozy conversation area. The dining area has enough room for a table, a desk and includes a breakfast bar with a pantry that is close to the kitchen. It opens directly into the sunroom with large double doors for easy access to year round fun in the sun and the root cellar/high tunnel type greenhouse. 

And the kitchen! It is a cooks dream! The15 x 15 space features wall ovens, a professional gas range, a huge sink, lots of counter space and ample room for a professional size refrigerator and freezer. Processing produce and getting ready for farmer's markets, bake sales, or entertaining would be quick work in this kitchen. 

Oh there's just too many places for homesteader to go in this place! 

Back to the sun room! I don't know about you, but if I could, I'd grow tomatoes, peas, lettuce, chard, bush cucumbers and peppers all winter long for my salads. The sunroom is heated by the rocket fired stove with a hot tub for thermal mass. The raised bed on east side provides plenty of room for the warmer weather crops and grow lights can be put above it to supplement lighting if desired. There is also a utility room that houses the water heater and heat pump. Both coil pipes under the hot tub to provide hot water during the winter. The heat pump then returns heat from the house to the hot tub during the summer, still warming the water before it enters the water heater. 

The high-tunnel style greenhouse on top of the root cellar provides heat for the bedroom wing of the house and gives plenty of room to start your garden early and if by chance the temperatures take a nose dive after you've started those precious tomatoes, the windows and the sunroom can be opened to help provide the extra bit of heat those pretty little things will need to get through. 

The root cellar underneath can be accessed by a small door on the kitchen side for hauling canned goods down there, but also can be accessed by wide doors on the east side for storing garden  produce you need to load on your truck to take to market. 

There's a shower in the sunroom so you can rinse off before and after using the hot tub or after playing with dirt in the garden. I envision a bank of sky lights too and thermal window coverings that can be rolled out at night or on cold cloudy days. 

Just off the mudroom entrance  to the sunroom, there is a half bath. Hopefully, the kids can be trained to use it instead of running through the living room in wet swimsuits! There is also a large walk-in shower for Grampa Tom or your big guy! Grampa Tom is always wishing he could just walk in the door, put his dirty clothes right in the washer and step into a huge shower! Don't tell your guy, but there might be a filthy teenager or  momma who might just take advantage of this too ;)

The family room is right next to the kitchen. One of the things I hate about my current house is that the kitchen is so far away from the man cave where Grampa Tom spends most of his time.  I put in double pocket doors so that I wouldn't have to feel exiled when ever I cook. The doors can also be closed on hot days so the family room can be kept cooler. I would equip each room with separate thermostats of course! 

This house is made with two 16 foot wide sections so it could easily be built by a modular builder. It has double doors into the sunroom and into the main living area to make moving furniture in and out easier. Our family has always been involved with caring for older folks and since we aren't spring chickens ourselves, wide doors and hallways are features I try to incorporate into every home I design. 

If you have kids, a basement could be put under all or part of the house for extra bedrooms, or an east wing could be added.

There's probably things I haven't told you about this home, but if you're not excited by now, more words won't help :)

Tell me what you think! What do you like and what would you change?

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Wrap Around Sun Fun

This weeks 2025 square foot home wraps around a huge 4 season sun room for maximum light and winter passive solar heat.

This house is much more the size that I think Grampa Tom and I need. It's about 75% bigger than the trailer we live in now and it has at least a partial basement under the kitchen living room area that houses a root cellar and a large storage room.

The guest entry is a small enclosed porch on the north side. It comes into the light filled great room that consists of a large kitchen and a cozy living room area. We used to live in a huge farm house that had a gigantic kitchen. I really miss that kitchen! This kitchen has tons of counter space, room for both a refrigerator and a full size upright freezer, a professional range, an island, a large bank of floor to ceiling pantry cabinets and room for a kitchen table as well. I really like the corner bench style like the one below. It would  look great in this kitchen, but my program doesn't have any images of it :( The kitchen has wide doors opening into both the family room and the sun room so that I don't have to feel exiled when I'm cooking.

The sun room  not only opens into the kitchen, but into the master bedroom, the mud room and the family room. A large bank of windows opens it up to the living room as well. It has a hot tub and the rocket fire stove  that I talked about in my last post and an out door shower to rinse off before and after your soaking massage. 

The utility room for the hot water heater and the supplemental heat pump is located next to the hot tub so heat from the thermal mass can help heat the home's hot water and heat pump. During the summer, heat pumped out of the house will help keep the hot tub warm. The walls of this room only go up about 6 foot so the green house ceiling covers the entire area between the wings. 

I envision some sort of thermal awning that can be rolled out  under the greenhouse style roof of the sun room to keep the heat in at night and the sun off in the summer. The south wall windows would open during the summer, converting it into a screened in porch with vines climbing out of the garden bed just inside.

And then there's the basement steps. I placed them just outside the kitchen door so I could take all of my home canned goodies down there!

The mud room has a large walk-in closet, a locker style shower and a half bath. It is connected to the family room so I have half a chance at keeping the dirt contained in the west wing of the house :) 

In the east wing there is a private master bedroom, a guest bedroom and two full baths. There is a closet between the bed and the master bath so those middle of the night flushes aren't quite so loud. I thought about putting the closet in the second bedroom on the east side so the door could be closer to the bathroom and I could put another closet at the end of the hall, but natural light in the hall and east-west airflow through the house during the warmer months.

What would you change?

Got any suggestions for a good name for this house?

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Small Passive Solar/Rocket Stove Mass Heated Home

 It is so amazing how many hits this blog gets every day! I started it about 2 1/2 years ago and then wound up working 7 days a week. To be truthful, I forgot about it! Then about 6 months ago, I checked the stats and couldn't believe it was still getting hits. One of my three jobs ended a couple of months ago so I've decided I just need to get back in there and see what I can do with this! I'm planning to post a new floor plan about once a week. If you enjoy my musings, check back every week or so and if I'm sloughing off hollar at me!

So ... on to one of my newest floor plans!

Grampa Tom has been looking at  itty-bitty homes like the ones on The Tiny house Blog . He thinks he could live in one. They are cute, but he is dreaming. He complains all the time about not being able to turn around in hotel showers and soooo couldn't live with me without a man-cave, so with this plan, I have endeavored to keep it as small as possible without sacrificing the things important to us.

This home could be constructed as a 36 x 44 pole building or as a 3 section modular home.

The main entry has double doors to accommodate moving large furniture like beds and sofa's. It opens into a comfortable living area with a large kitchen and a breakfast bar.

The kitchen has 14 foot of counter top and room for both a large refrigerator and an upright freezer. In most of my homes I like to have a pantry, but with this one, I've made do with plenty of cabinets and a door to the basement just outside the kitchen. If a large freezer in the kitchen isn't important to you, you could replace it with wall ovens or a full height pantry cabinet.

The master bedroom shares a small bathroom with the living area, but it is insulated from the sounds of the living areas by closets and doors on the hall.

The small bathroom is compensated by a 4 x 5 ft locker style shower in the laundry/ mud room and a hot-tub in the sun room.

I've always dreamed of a green house attached to the house so I could start my plants and heat the house with the passive solar gain. Recently I ran across a really neat wood stove that uses very little wood and emits almost no smoke at http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp . This seems like the perfect way to take this area from a three season area to a four season greenhouse. I'd just build a little rocket stove next to the hot tub and use the hot tub for my thermal mass!

What would you change? And what would you name this house?