Author Topic: A Victoria's Cottage in Western Maine (Read 185889 times)

325ABN · « **Reply #25 on:** April 17, 2010, 07:00:24 PM »

What sources did you use to design your radiant heat system? What are you going to use as a heat source?

Jeff922 · « **Reply #26 on:** April 18, 2010, 02:24:41 AM »

I used the Radiant Floor Co. in Vermont. They have a 40pg design and installation guide. It covers the different installation types - open, closed, etc. Also different heating options. You can print it off their web page or call for a copy. These people are great. They specialize in do-it-yourself installations.

http://www.radiantcompany.com/

Radiant Floor sells Pex that is 7/8" with the same wall thickness as 1/2" so it's easy to bend and maneuver (relatively speaking).

I will probably use a whole house water/space heater like the Polaris mentioned in the design guide, but I honestly have not looked into it all that much. I'm going to heat with my centrally located wood-stove for a while.

Here's another good link:

http://www.radiantdesigninstitute.com/

Jeff922 · « **Reply #27 on:** April 19, 2010, 05:45:39 AM »

Here are a few drawings I did of this project:

Good ol' AutoCad

An earlier drawing. Also AutoCad. This is the one that was submitted for permit approval.

A lot of different software was used to draw this. First contour lines were drawn and elevations assigned in AutoCad. Second, it was exported to Revit where topography was generated. Third, a 3 dimensional model of the house was created using Revit. Forth, the house was exported to 3D Max where materials were applied and landscape elements added. Fifth, renderings were created in different views. Finally, the images were touched-up in Photoshop CS-4.

eddiescabin · « **Reply #28 on:** April 19, 2010, 09:18:05 PM »

Jeff, Damn, you're good! As far as a skiing note, I'm leaving my Kirkwood haunts for the spring skiing in Squaw Valley this weekend...I think we will be skiing in June this year. Squaw (not sure if you've been) is epic, awesome facilities (like a mall,starbucks, multiple restaurants located all over the resort), many & fastest trams/lifts leading to serious steeps...lots of room, unlike some of the the kook riddled places like Heavenly (gaper-central)...Tahoe has many, many resorts all in easy driving distance, they vary greatly from Homewood-a little classic uncrowded spot at the Lake's edge (with amazing views) to Heavenly- for those who want to be "seen" and their tram leaving from right outside the casinos. There are many in between. Some passes are good at 6 different places...if you go to Squaw, bring your wallet, it's $83/day this season!

Jeff922 · « **Reply #29 on:** April 20, 2010, 02:04:48 AM »

Thanks Eddie! This project is 4 miles from Sugarloaf Maine. I love all types of skiing. I cross-country, telemark, and ski the back-country. I've been addicted to this sport for over 25 years. I'm a die-hard, old school, east-coast bump skier most of the time. The east coast season had some very high and low points this year. We had the typical rain and thawing, but we also got a storm that put 64" on the mountain in about 4 days. Probably about two more weeks of lift-served, but there is always the hike in opportunities like Tucks. I hope to one day ski the Tahoe area. Have a great time at Squaw!

secordpd · « **Reply #30 on:** April 21, 2010, 07:42:12 PM »

Hi Jeff, I just want to say you have done a great job. Thanx for detailed pics! I'm also thinking of doing a frost protected shallow foundation. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me?

1)What type of gravel did you use under your slab?

2) How wide is the space between the gravel and the forms, and is it tapered or straight sided?

3) What did you lay on top of the gravel, under radiant tubing, (it looks like a membrane of sorts).

Thanx in advance for info.

Jeff922 · « **Reply #31 on:** April 23, 2010, 05:07:19 AM »

Glad to hear you are considering a FPSF. Here are some links that were mentioned in another thread:

http://www.toolbase.org/Design-Construction-Guides/Foundations/Design-Guide-Frost-Protected-Shallow-Foundation

http://www.countryplans.com/Downloads/shallowfound.pdf

The NHBA design guide is a must read. To answer your questions:

1) The gravel is from a pit a mile away from my project. It's just sifted riverbed gravel I think 1" and smaller, not crushed
stone. It did have some moisture in it so I was a little concerned, but I didn't have any problems.

2) My footing trenches are about a foot wide. Without getting all technical about the type of structure you're building and the soil composition and stuff, a foot wide is pretty typical. I filled my forms in with 2 6" "lifts" of the above mentioned gravel. By "lift" I mean about six inches was put inside the form and then compacted, then repeated to give me a total of about 12". The compacted gravel allowed me to cut the footing trenches pretty straight with a pick-ax and flat spade. Note: this was a lot of work.

3) The vapor barrior is 6 mil poly sheeting, edges lapped 12". It prevents any moisture below the slab from migrating up into your house.

My 2 cents on FPSFs is that they are a good choice ONLY if the site is appropriate. By this I mean low-moisture content soil with good drainage. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Oh, here's a cool link:

http://smartflix.com/

I rented a DVD on how to do a slab foundation from them and I thought it was helpful.

Jeff922 · « **Reply #32 on:** April 23, 2010, 05:15:43 AM »

I got a little painting done this week.

Three coats of polyurethane on all the beams and one final coat on the ceiling.

It was a lot of work to paint this, but I really like the look of the exposed rafters.

325ABN · « **Reply #33 on:** April 23, 2010, 05:38:43 AM »

Great work and great info, Thanks!!!

I look forward to starting my build thread once I break ground.

John Raabe · « **Reply #34 on:** April 23, 2010, 05:56:11 AM »

Very nice work! An inspiration to all.

secordpd · « **Reply #35 on:** April 25, 2010, 06:40:10 AM »

Thanx Jeff, yes I know water management is one of the most important components of FTSF.

Has anyone else having a problem with the photos on the particular forum? In place of the photo, it says "Bandwidth Exceeded, upgrade to Photobucket Pro."

When I was viewing it a few days ago, I saw the photos fine... I thought maybe it was because I downgraded my cable broadband plan a few weeks ago, but all the other photos on Country plans are fine?

Just wondering if it is me or something else? Really hagging me out - I want to view Jeffs photos again!!!

OkieJohn2 · « **Reply #36 on:** April 25, 2010, 07:51:42 AM »

Yep secordpd, I have been getting the same thing on this thread for a couple of days, but no problem with other threads using photobucket. I have no answer.

MountainDon · « **Reply #37 on:** April 25, 2010, 09:42:34 AM »

Photobucket places a monthly limit to bandwidth used on all of its free hosting accounts. When the limit of 10 GB is reached they no longer serve up the images. Look at your account settings to see the turn over date and a graph illustrating usage. Bandwidth used is bidirectional. They count the uploads as well as the downloads. It pays to save the images with greater compression when the images are only going to be used for viewing online.

On the Adobe Photoshop jpeg quality scale of 1 to 12 (12 is best quality) I find number 3 or 4 gives enough quality for a web view and saves a lot of disk and bandwidth space. It pays to resize and reduce large camera images before uploading.

John Raabe · « **Reply #38 on:** April 25, 2010, 12:05:50 PM »

Most all of my Photobucket usage is for the CountryPlans forum and I have bandwidth and storage room left and hundreds of jpg images stored with them over the last 4 years.

MountainDon · « **Reply #39 on:** April 25, 2010, 12:12:30 PM »

my bandwidth counter resets on the 13th of every month. Last month I came within 1 GB of being turned off.

OkieJohn2 · « **Reply #40 on:** April 25, 2010, 01:44:56 PM »

John and Don, thanks for the answer to that puzzler

, you guys always have the goods.

secordpd · « **Reply #41 on:** April 25, 2010, 05:38:06 PM »

Thanx for your reply's Don & John, but I hardly use photobucket, so my usage is minimal.

So figure it is something else. I Use Piknik photo editing and if I right click I can save the photo's to Piknik, so that works for me.

Just curious as to why this happened, but no big deal...

Jeff922 · « **Reply #42 on:** April 26, 2010, 01:22:44 AM »

Aw darn it all...that's my fault you guys. I put up too many photos in too short a time span on photobucket. My apologies. That's what I get for not paying attention.

I'll do what I can to get these photos back up, but I'm kinda confused as to how to fix it.

John or Mtn.Don, how can I edit my earlier posts where I no longer have the "modify" option? I may have to go back and place smaller, poorer resolution images in place of the current ones. Not sure how to do this. I can start again from scratch, but would hate to loose the good dialog with members. Ideas?

John Raabe · « **Reply #43 on:** April 26, 2010, 05:13:29 AM »

Jeff:

Give us a link to the posting or thread where you are not able to get the modify button. Maybe something can be done from the Admin side.

All the postings and images on this thread (there are a lot of images!) all have the modify potential from my side. The previous few posts just have a single emoticon each and can be edited.

John

Jeff922 · « **Reply #44 on:** April 26, 2010, 06:14:52 AM »

The pics should be visible; let me know if they're not. John, I was able to modify my previous posts using the "quote" button so the "modify" button wasn't needed. Although I got stuck with a few single-emoticon posts; not sure how to delete them. I gave up changing everything so I just bit-the-bullet and paid $3 for the month; I'm pretty sure I'll just be able to cancel the Pro edition next month and have no problems. No biggie...

Fred_47460 · « **Reply #45 on:** April 26, 2010, 08:18:06 AM »

I would think you just modify the size of the photo (on photobucket) while making sure you don't change the name of the file. This way, the link on the forum which points to the image on photobucket will just point to the smaller image.

Jeff922 · « **Reply #46 on:** April 26, 2010, 09:26:47 AM »

Thanks Fred, I didn't know it could be done on Photobucket. I did everything on Photoshop. I'll try that next time.

Fred_47460 · « **Reply #47 on:** April 27, 2010, 01:09:54 PM »

Quote from: Jeff922 on April 26, 2010, 09:26:47 AM

Thanks Fred, I didn't know it could be done on Photobucket. I did everything on Photoshop. I'll try that next time.

I'm sorry ...I might have been a bit unclear.

You would still use a package like photoshop to resize the image to a smaller image. And then re-save the image onto photobucket.

1: Get file off of photobucket to be resized.
2: Use photoshop (or whatever software you like) to resize the image to a smaller size.
3: Save the image back to Photobucket with the identical name of the original image file.

Now, when the forum points to the file on Photobucket it will be the same image.....only the smaller one.

MountainDon · « **Reply #48 on:** April 27, 2010, 01:33:13 PM »

Quote from: Fred_47460 on April 27, 2010, 01:09:54 PM

You would still use a package like photoshop to resize the image to a smaller image.

The photobucket "edit" feature allows one to adjust the size, crop or rotate images, adjust color balance and contrast, etc. etc. So if one was simply wanting to make some size changes it is not necessary to use your own photo editing program. Photobucket will let you save over the original file or save a copy. Saving over the original name does not break any links. HOWEVER, there are still cases when using your own program has advantages over using the edit features built in to photobucket.

Photobucket will not allow you to select the amount of compression to use when saving an image. If one of the goals of resizing an image is to make the file size smaller it is best to use your own image editing program and upload the images after resizing. If you delete the old image from the photobucket folder, resize it and then upload it again to the same folder, using the exact same file name any links to that file will remain unbroken.

To illustrate, as an experiment I selected one of my images on photobucket. It was a 900 x 685 with a file size of 85.5 KB. I used the photobucket edit feature to downsize the image slightly to 786 x 598. Once saved with a new name it ended up with a file size of 216 KB.

An image can be compressed quite a lot if it's use is just for viewing in the internet. Not only will that save disk space on the photo host, but it cuts down on the bandwidth use ans for those on slower connections serves the images up in a much shorter time. There still are dial up users around.

Jeff922 · « **Reply #49 on:** April 29, 2010, 02:48:10 AM »

Thanks MtnDon. That clears up a lot of the questions I had. I'm still learning my way around computers. When I started working on my CADD degree in the fall of 2007, I was a real newbie to all this stuff; still much learning to do.