Grama's House | Passive Solar

 

We are actually in the process of building this one! It started out as a barn to house our RV and has gone through so many revisions! For a while there I was tweaking it 2 or 3 times a week. Had the friends who are helping us build this heads spinning!

This is a passive solar pole barn home. The deck across the front is actually a greenhouse. The whole house has a concrete floor with in-floor hot water heat. 

The kitchen is huge! We plan to have bench seating along the L shaped island with storage underneath. There will be plenty of room to store homeschooling supplies and teach a bunch of grandkids. :)

There is also a loft above the hall/closet/bath and laundry room area that will be accessible by a steep ladder/staircase. It is 4ft. high at the center and goes down to 2ft. on the north side. It sticks out over the garage a bit. Lots of room for the grandkids to hang and sleep!

There is a tiny second bedroom on the northwest corner. At first, it will probably be used as a bedroom for my grandkid who wets the bed so Grama doesn't have to navigate those loft stairs with wet sheets every day, but later on, we will probably use it for storage. 

The smaller bath is a shower room with a toilet in it which will double as a storm shelter. 

If I wasn't so adamant about my hubby having a mancave to retreat to, I'd build another bedroom or two in the garage area and leave the entire south side as one big room, but he really needs a place to escape from the grandkids! He recently decided to put in a glass patio door instead of a garage door just because it will be warmer, but we went ahead and put in a frame for a garage door in case we ever decide we want one there. The patio door will be big enough to get the tractor into on really cold snowy nights and that is really all we need right now. He is putting in a hoist, a floor drain, a stainless steel sink, and a stainless steel table so he can butcher there. He also wants to use it as a summer kitchen for canning with the doors open when it is hot.

All doors are 36 inches wide so the main floor will be fully handicap accessible. We also have double doors between the great room and the mancave so we can open it up to have more space to entertain. 

The greenhouse will have a black block wall along the house side with insulation between the blocks and the house proper and a 2-foot deep gravel/sand/patio block floor for heat sinks. 

Under the roof, we put a layer of reflective foil insulation, then 1 1/2 inch foam board insulation and we are still going to add 16-inch thick roll insulation. That will give us a 48.5 R-value in the ceiling. The walls will be the same, except without the reflective foil. 

We plan to have a mini-split system for air conditioning. But we are also putting in a whole house fan. We think if we open the windows at night and use the fan to pull the cool night air in and close the windows during the day, we shouldn't have to use the air very much.  

Here's a picture of the house today. Stop back by! I will be updating this as we go along.

Here's the east wall with the patio doors to Grampa Tom's workshop.

1/23/21

OH MY! It looks like I haven't updated this in quite a while! We have been living in our house since September 1st. We didn't get the boiler installed and working until just a few days ago so we have been heating water on the stove and running space heaters. Today, we are redoing the roof insulation. A few days ago, we discovered that the pink board above the bat insulation was wet with condensation. In researching how to fix it, we found that we absolutely had to have spray foam insulation on it. So we are pulling down all the batt insulation and foaming it. We will put the batt insulation back up after it is dried. By the time we get all this done, our roof will have an R50 insulation value! 

Here are some pictures from the week before we moved in.  Apparently, my old film-oriented mind shut down on taking pictures once we moved in. When I can get back in there, I will try to remember to do a walkthrough for you!

Gambrel Barn Home 24 x32

Last week, as I was finishing up my post, I started thinking about how to shrink my barn home even more. Here's what I've come up with!  

Remember, if you want to see a bigger version of the plan, all you have to do is hold down your Ctrl button and push the + button!

This home has a laundry room with a large closet and a walk-in locker style shower. Just across the hall is a bedroom with a walk-in closet and a beautiful window seat. The full bath has a large tub for soaking in and is reasonably close to the bedroom :) A large pantry is right next to the galley style kitchen in the great room. And the great room is open to the loft above the back rooms. The loft is accessed by the grain bin stair well. (My program doesn't do round so you will have to use your imagination a bit here.) If you didn't want to do the grain bin and were willing to sacrifice the pantry and the walk-in closet, you could put a staircase to the loft there.

There is also a large front porch and a patio. The porch could easily swing all the way around to the grain bin, but I've been a tax assessor to long. Patios will cost less than porches in taxes, especially if you don't use mortar. I really had to reach to put as large of a porch on it as I did. Most people who want a home this small are looking to save money.

I left the loft open here, but it could easily accommodate a small bedroom or two or a master suite.  You could also open part of it to make a second story porch like I did in one of  the second story options in my last post.  Which, by the way, would cost less in tax $ than having a fully enclosed second floor. This picture of it isn't the same scale as the picture of the first floor, but it's the best I can do. I'm including the picture so you can get an idea of what it might look like.

This plan is set up so that it could be built by a modular home builder and be brought in in two 12 x 32 foot sections. The grain bin would probably be something you'd have to come up with yourself. Fortunately, they aren't to hard to come by. 

So, what do you think? 

Anything you would change?

I'm not sure I'm up to a tiny house. 

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Smaller Gambrel Barn Home With Silo

One of the first plans that I posted was a gambrel roofed styled barn with a silo. Recently, I received a message about it, saying they loved it, but would like to see something smaller. I've been working on it. I've now got several floor plans of varying sizes. Hopefully, I'll post all of them soon.

This is the second smallest plan with 1596 square feet of living space on the first floor. Please excuse my square silo. My rinky-dink floor plan program doesn't do round walls. I'm really not sure if the 8 ft. diameter is big enough. I'd need the pro-version to figure that one out. It's just a guess. 

Remember, if you want to see a bigger version of the plan, all you have to do is hold down your Ctrl button and push the + button!

The main entry of this plan opens into a spacious great room consisting of a living room space, a nice size kitchen and an over-sized pantry. This pantry could easily double as a storm room if it were reinforced. There is also an office that could be used as a bedroom if needed and a full bath on the opposite side of the hall. 

The mud room has a huge closet, lots of cabinet space, a double laundry sink and even access to the master bathroom walk-in locker style shower. That's Grampa Tom's idea. It's in a lot of my plans. He want's to come into the house, put his dirty clothes right into the washer and step into the shower. Then he can just go into the bedroom and put something clean on.

In addition to a walk-in locker style shower, the master bath has a Jacuzzi style tub and sinks on different walls that can be at different heights for him and her. It also has a large master bedroom with a huge closet that can be organized to eliminate the need for dressers.

I have several ideas for the second floor. Decided to limit it to 4 different versions for this post. There's at least 3 or 4 more I could come up with, but you might get bored!

The first is a simple loft over part of the first floor. With this option, the gambrel style roof would end at the master bedroom. A loafing shed style roof would cover the rest of the first floor. The first floor is open over the kitchen and living room with a blank of windows on the second floor level to flood the place with light. If situated with the main entry facing south, this could serve as a solarium providing passive solar heat during the cold months. 

This second floor option is also only over part of the first floor. It has 2 bedrooms, a full bath a large storage room and a loft area that is open to the kitchen and living room.

The third has a gambrel style roof over the entire second floor with a private porch area at the back of the house. 

The fourth option has 3 large bedrooms, a full bath in which the sink area is walled off from the toilet-bath area so lots of people can use it at the same time and a loft area on the second floor. If you have a really large family, you could go ahead and put a floor over the portion of the second floor that is open to the first floor and add  at least 2 or 3 more bedrooms. 

Like I said, lots of possibilities with this one :)

What do you like about this plan?

What would you change?

While I was posting this, I started thinking about an idea to create a barn style house that's even smaller. Maybe I'll even try to come up with a tiny house!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue