As I so often seem to do, I’m leading off with a pun. I want to write about the principles that are guiding the Little Rental House project, and the principles that I’m hoping to apply in writing about it. At the same time, I’m in the process of getting quotations for the foundation, so I intend to update you on that as well.
Principles
Transparency
My wife Raederle has observed that as we have become more open about sexuality, money has remained one of our greatest taboos. In writing about this house construction project, I’d like to work on breaking down that barrier and start talking about some of the relevant financial issues, including:
- How inflation may make construction budgeting a challenge
- How return on capital leads to wealth inequality
- How I feel about becoming a “rentier”
To this end, I intend to post my a priori budget, along with an explanation of what it is based on, so that we can look at a before-and-after comparison and talk about where the estimates were out of line, and why.
I will also be posting about the economics of rental homes and how this is part of a transitional strategy toward retirement.
Passive-Level Energy Use
The community that I live in refers to itself as an “eco-village,” and accordingly all of the homes here have been built to extremely high standards in terms of both lifetime energy efficiency and the use of local materials and non-toxic materials to the greatest extent practical.
I want to go a step beyond this and build a house that as closely approaches a passive level of energy use as possible – a “passive house“. This means among other things that sufficient heat is captured and retained from normal daily activities (body heat, plus cooking, electronics, etc.) that active heating is never required, even during the coldest part of the year. I will talk in detail about the choices that support this and why I think it matters.
Grid Flexibility
Related to, but separate from the passive house considerations is the idea of a house that can operate flexibly either on or off the grid. Every existing home in our community has at least some “grid” requirement, either in the form of electric (grid-tied solar) or natural gas, or both. Furthermore, the existing homes all rely on a community water supply that comes from a local aquifer before treatment.
With this house, I will be building in grid flexibility. Essentially all day-to-day activities will be possible using only the solar panels provided on the house. While some activities (such as drawing a 50 gallon bath of pure hot water) may be limited when off grid, in most cases normal practical activities (such as a 10 minute shower) will be possible. I’ll talk about what activities are supported and curtailed, and how the passive house choices play into this.
Progress
This week, I’m scheduled to have the surveyors out. Although they charge quite a bit to “mobilize” (mainly for travelling here and getting all their equipment set up, I think), I’m coordinating this effort with several other interested parties so that we can get more measurements (a total of about 20 survey stakes) for an estimated $850. This doesn’t actually have a line item, so I have to decide whether to count it as “site prep” or just take it out of the contingency budget. It seems logical that putting the stakes in at the corners of the site and the house is a form of site prep, so we’ll go with that.
Separately, I’ve received price quotes on excavation and foundation. The first excavation quote came in at $21,000 which puts it 162% over budget! Part of this is the lack of a budget for utilities (my fault) but they attributed part of it to a junior employee making the estimate and not recognizing potential places to economize (such as, putting both water lines and basement drains into a shared trench). I’m working with them to get a more definitive estimate, but I’m also looking to get a second quote – if I want to keep things on budget, I need to not just go with the first price I get, even if the contractor in question has been very affordable in the past.
My first foundation quote was based on the use of insulated concrete forms (ICFs). However, as I was considering things, I realized that given that the basement is going to be purely mechanicals, there isn’t any good reason to insulate it. So I also requested a quote based on formed and poured walls – slightly thicker (8″) walls to compensate for the lack of other structural elements. (It turns out this saves money in another area, because the ICFs are required by code to be covered with a fire-resistant surface – drywall – even though it’s not living space.) The quotes broke out the slab from the footers and walls, so the total is $14,200 for footers+ICFs or $10,300 for footers+formed and poured walls, another $3,000 for the slab, and then on the order of $700 for waterproofing. Add in another $1,000 if a pump truck is needed for any of the three operations. (I should be able to avoid this by making sure that a regular truck can back directly up to the site.)
I am strongly leaning toward the formed and poured solution for pure cost reasons; this would give a total of about $14,000 which is still 35% over my budget. Part of this can be explained by the addition of a “bump out” to install basement stairs. Although I could use pre-fabricated concrete stairs (quoted at $1,800 delivered and installed) I could not use the prefab solution and still have the stairs be the width I wanted (48″, to handle large water storage tanks) or come out the distance that I need (72″) to keep the house within the appropriate envelope of the lot. So some of that cost overage is compensated by the fact that I’ll be putting in wooden stairs instead. (None of the comparable designs I used for budgeting had exterior basement-access stairs, so this was an oversight.)