Some very weird choices. No internal ducting for AC? Crazy, its a LOT cheaper to include that when building. Now in some heat-death future you end up with ACs hanging out the windows. Wood heating? Wow, thats incredibly polluting. Indeed, they may find it outlawed eventually, its already illegal in many places. Heating with wood also means making the room with the stove an inferno just to make the rest of the house acceptable. No closets? If that's what you're into...but its going to be hard to sell.
Average home ownership duration is ten years. So yeah, you kinda have to make some considerations for the next person. No AC and wood heating are going to be a hard sell.
> No AC and wood heating are going to be a hard sell.
(I am the author) Sorry I don't make it super clear in Part 1: I have a 500 gallon propane tank and a propane furnace as backup heat. I leave downstairs at 58F so it can't go below that at night. (I have no idea why I decided on that number). It rarely does unless I let the fire die around 7-8pm.
From October to Feb I averaged 1.8 gallons/day of propane use, which I suspect was 90% hot water and propane cooking (we bake bread 2x a week and cook for 1-2 hours almost every single day because we're somewhat obsessed with food. This is also why the downstairs is very kicthen oriented)
> No closets? If that's what you're into...but its going to be hard to sell.
Why? People can easily frame in closets on any of the bedrooms if they wanted to. They all have 2 walls they could do it against. Or if they want bigger bedrooms, they can keep them big.
The counterfactual in "hard to sell" is that there are 900000 houses out there unlike this one, and they all compete against each other. This competes with historic houses. The historic houses here (without AC, with terrible insulation, damp crawlspace basements, etc) command a huge premium. I don't think a traditional-looking house with none of the accumulated problems of real historic houses would be difficult to sell at all.
Anyone from Europe will be happy to but a house without closets. They are super uncommon there. If you aren't gonna use a room as a bedroom, it's nice not to lose the space to the closet.
That is exactly what they are trying to avoid. It is _their_ family home. They built the house for themselves–for their life. That is why the total square footage isn't as important–each of their rooms is built around their life style for better space efficiency. People focusing so strongly the selling a house they haven't even purchased yet.
The financial calculus behind this is unbeatable though. When you're spending a significant portion of your house's value on a reno, alarm bells start going off. If I'm spending $75k on a $500k house, you better believe I start asking myself if I'd be better off buying a $575k house instead. And trust me, you get to $75k very quickly in cities with expensive housing.
When it comes to design choices that affect resale value a decade in the future, the examples are probably more like $10/$13 vs. $10/$12.
Real estate agents and HGTV shows have distorted people's view on the importance of small details on resale value. I promise you that the choices the author made in designing their house will find an equally enthusiastic buyer if they do decide to sell.
Of course there will be some potential buyers who have "no closets" as a deal breaker. But there will be others who fall in love with a unique house that exists literally nowhere else in the market.
If you're going to limit your design choices to appease a potential buyer decades in the future, you might as well buy an existing house in the first place rather than striking out on your own build. The whole point of a custom home is to customize it to your liking.
> Real estate agents and HGTV shows have distorted people's view on the importance of small details on resale value.
Yup. I have heard way too many times on those shows, "You spent $50K on renovations so that increased your value $100K", without any form of critical thought. Yes, improvements can have an intrinsic value, but these shows make it seem automatic and huge, without fail.
IMO this is just basic consumerism couched in a simluation of industrious investing. If you're remodeling for higher resale value, then you're a flipper and should build accordingly - ie everything this post is lamenting. Otherwise, just be honest with yourself that you're spending money for your own personal enjoyment.
Try selling a custom bicycle and you'll see how lovingly-picked components add up into a resale value, at a much lower price.
Most of the time, the HGTV spends are horrible investments even if the touted "new value" is correct. The margin after increase in closing costs--agent fees, title transfer tax, to say nothing of opportunity cost of the cash outlay--is often zero or negative.
Yup. I think it's Flip or Flop, where you start to realize that many of their flips only really break even or are marginally profitable. They'll tout "We made $30K for 6 weeks work". But $15K of it has to go to our investor who fronts the cash (he would occasionally show up on episodes), and there's two of them...
And then you remember that most of their income comes from the show itself.
I remember drama around 16 And Pregnant, and glamorizing teenage pregnancy. Says MTV, "Oh no, we only cover costs, we don't pay them for this". Fell apart when one of the girls, living in her trailer, working minimum wage at McDonalds, started appearing on the show in a brand new Saleen Mustang.
I grew up in a 200 year old school house in northern New Hampshire. Let me tell you from bitter experience that burning wood in a stove for primary heating is a nightmare on multiple levels.
First you have to chop and stack cords of wood in the fall (a thankless, back-breaking task), then go out into the snow to bring in loads of wood every other day all winter to heat the house. You can't store enough wood indoors to last months, so it's always piled up outside. Dealing with the wood is a never ending shitty job that nobody likes or wants to do. It's not a "chore", it's full on work - with cuts, splinters, bruises or worse injuries. Slipping on the ice with an armload of cordwood is a great way to break a bone or get a concussion, let me assure you. I cannot tell you how much I hated it, and how many family arguments were caused as a result.
Since all wood stoves leak, no matter what, you end up smelling like a campfire all winter. And I still wonder if the secondhand smoke effects will rear it's ugly head in the future. I've never smoked, but won't be at all surprised if someday I have lung cancer from years of breathing all that crappy air filled with soot particles.
Oof. So many horrible memories. Thank heaven I live in California now.
My wife's parents built a house out in the country when she was ~10. They put in a functional wood fireplace and used it as their primary heat source for a couple years. Her main memory of it was that the living room where the fireplace was would be really nice. Her parents bedroom up in a loft above the living room would be too hot. And her bedroom would be super cold because the furnace never kicked on and the heat from the fireplace never quite made it over to her room.
But then again, it probably wouldn't win any "new old home" or other design awards.
Once they stopped homeschooling, the desire to heat the house with wood dried up pretty quickly. These days I think they have a fire maybe a couple times a month on Winter evenings.
One great thing her family introduced me to though: The in home sauna. They are Finnish by way of Northern Minnesota. I dream of one day having a sauna in my own home.
This was part of my childhood in South Australia, too. The winters aren't as brutal as those in North America, but sub-zero temperatures in an under-insulated house needs heating wherever you are.
Firewood is certainly a PITA and I can't stand the smell of woodsmoke, but I still feel that fireplaces produce much more pleasant heat than any modern system.
Plus there's much to be said for the ambience of a flickering fire.
Yup, 7 year old me... carrying wood from the back forty and stacking it for the winter. Looking back I can't imagine my parents thought it anything but "busywork" for a kid with to much energy.
OTOH, a lot of the old coal boilers were converted to heating oil, and more recently I think people have been converting some of them to NG.
My idea of a new "old" home is to take the best of both. Cupolas? Great. Also ducts, a nice south-facing roof for solar, a garage with multiple 240V circuits so I can charge my EVs. Gigabit ethernet. Insulation.
Out of curiosity why ducts and not floor pipes for heating? Especially in a climate where you can live without AC if: 1) you make your walls thicker and as you mentioned well insulated---which helps in the winter too! 2) you have "real" blinds on the outside of your windows.
Not sure what you mean, but just open street view on a random housing unit in Italy or Spain, and compare that with a random housing unit in Belgium or Denmark.
Blinds on the outside keep heat away from the glass and avoid turning your house into a greenhouse.
You meantioned ""real" blinds on the outside". I've lived with these in Germany years ago (modern construction, totally integrated into the window design). I recently started thinking about this in the context of an east facing window wall in NM, which could use some solar blocking for 3 months of the year. Wondered if you were thinking of any particular kind of ""real" blinds on the outside" ...
Places that have big storms have these things called storm shutters, but I haven't seen a home that has it for thermal reasons. My experience is limited to the Midwest United States though.
I'm pretty sure that either German-style roller shutters or louver shutters would accomplish the goal. As long as the sun gets prevented from hitting the window.
There won't be a climate where you can live without AC in the next 20 years.
Anything south of upstate NY is already pretty unbearable in the summer. Another added benefit of AC is the dehumidification of your interior, which means less mold.
I live in a log cabin in the woods. They didn't have ductwork or AC in the 1830s when it was built (and they don't have the trees to make 14-inch squared timber walls today). I heat exclusively with wood and it's surprising how a place designed for passive convection heating can be cozy without being sweltering in one room and freezing in the others.
Mind you, being in the backwoods of Canada means it's not going to be all that hard to sell when the time comes to settle my estate. Most of my neighbours are in similar situations. At least, the few that I can see from the road when I head into town.
Air conditioning is not as common in New England (where the author is located) as it is in the rest of the country. I would say about a third of projects I worked on in the Northeast did not have air conditioning, and I was working on pretty expensive houses.
Insulation/air-sealing can get you pretty comfortable in New Hampshire.
Yes, first time I visited somebody who constructed a well-insulated, air-sealed house with high quality windows, I noticed the owner routinely slid the window open partially in the winter to allow excess heat to escape temporarily. I think this is common in well-constructed New England homes.
There's a once-a-summer, or really more of a once-every-few-summers level heat wave rolling through the northeast right now...not something I'd necessarily take into account when buying a house. I grew up in very old unairconditioned house in inland New England, where I don't believe I knew anybody in the 90s/early 2000s who had central a/c, even in a fairly affluent area. From what I've read the models don't expect the region to face major summer heat effects from climate change.
When it's in the high 50s/low 60s evey night, and you have some thoughtful design so the house can be ventilated well with just the windows, the cool night air sticks around well into the next day, a cold shower or a little portable a/c unit can get you through the handful of hot nights each summer.
I live in NYC now, where a/c is necessary most nights in July and August, and find it kind of funny to see New Yorkers buying summer houses in my hometown and immediately spending thousands retrofitting central air. For me one of the great pleasures of going home to visit my family is sleeping with the windows open to the chilly night air!
> No AC and wood heating are going to be a hard sell.
For some buyers, yeah, No Ac and wood heat are going to be a "Nope!". But I disagree that such is going to be the case for all buyers. There are going to be some people who actually want a house with no AC and wood heat.
The hard part of wood heat is that in a climate like NH, it means you cannot effectively leave the house for any prolonged period in the winter without making sure that any liquids in the house (e.g. paint) have been moved elsewhere. Ditto for houseplants and pets. Those wood fires won't light themselves.
My wife and I moved into an adobe home in rural NM last year, and we had to wait until our new air-source heat pumps were running in February before we could leave. Working with wood heat only for most of the winter was (1) a lot of work (2) very nice heat (3) a lot of work.
Yes, you could maybe get a housesitter but then we're into a whole new game.
I thought it said "propane for hot water, wood for heat". But re-reading part II, they clearly have a propane heat backup, but merely "plan to rely on wood".
Lots of people have a wood fired boiler for their hydronic heating system. Located outdoors.
I talked to a guy once that had a big corn hopper installed next to his outdoor boiler. And then another corn hopper under that one to feed the stove. Go go farm subsidies.
I’ve never seen one of these but my old neighbors from backwoods Minnesota raved about them. In addition to the vast reduction in blast radius from a fire, apparently the outdoor furnaces are large enough to fit big old logs without needing to slice and split so much. And the radiant floor heating isn’t more expensive than any other type in new construction.
Average home ownership duration is ten years. So yeah, you kinda have to make some considerations for the next person. No AC and wood heating are going to be a hard sell.