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Adaptive reuse (for background, see the design
topic in the tutorial)
is often ignored, and in fact is a concept that is largely unheard of, even in
green building circles, and at this point we have done little better.
There were two points with regard to reuse that we wanted to address: making
sure the room layout could be adapted for other typical family configurations
and making it easy to redo the wiring for electronics (i.e. telephone, TV &
computers).
Our room layout is relatively simple, and although we left out closets
everywhere except in our bedroom, we believe that adding them would be
reasonable, which would allow a couple with one or two children to fit into the
house fairly well. Due to having all the bedrooms on the second floor, the
house wouldn't be appropriate for anyone who is physically weak or
disabled. Since the ADU can provide significant rental income, the house
could potentially be more affordable, or make a nice package for someone who has
a family member who wants to live independently, but needs occasional
help. In addition to this flexibility, we believe we have designed the
house to be very comfortable & cheerful, thereby reducing the future desire
for major remodels.
Since utilities are the things that get updated the most, we started by
looking for open web floor trusses, but we were limited to 12" thickness
(since the house was otherwise pretty tall already), and the only ones that are
made that size use metal webs (instead of wood)- a product that we were unable
to locate (although recently we may have found a source). Web trusses
allow wiring and plumbing to run anywhere without having to drill any holes, but
do have limited flexibility in placing ducts (this requires thicker trusses, so
there is more space between the webs). They're certainly better for
adaptability, but without any experience with them, there is no way to tell what
the downside is (note: they are used regularly in commercial
construction). Its a topic that deserves further investigation.
Although electrical wiring rarely needs updating, wiring for electronics is
in the midst of an on-going evolution, and the typical solution appears to be to
fill the house with a lot of everything. Partly this is driven by the
number of electrical appliances in a typical home, which seems to grow
endlessly: toasters, microwaves, mixers, food processors, coffee makers, razors,
toothbrushes, hair dryers, clocks, radios, TV, stereos, computers, vacuum
cleaners, and on it goes. Electrical code requires an outlet every six
feet, and while a house had maybe four or six circuits fifty years ago, they now
have at least twenty: two or three in the kitchen alone. While this is one
solution to providing flexibility, its not clear its the best cost or most
environmental.
We could put telephone, cable and computer network in all over the place
also, but our current needs don't require that, and the may never. In fact
all that wiring may become obsolete and some new kind that replaces them become
the de-facto standard, so no matter what we do now, there is a reasonable chance
it will need to change in the future. In the typical installation, wiring
for electronics is put in the walls the same way as electric wiring: the only
way to get at it is to cut holes in the sheetrock and do a lot of awkward
fishing. A better solution is to put everything in accessible chases that
can easily be uncovered to reveal the wiring.
The biggest problem is that we've never seen a single house that has done
this (although masonry construction houses that are common in Europe, have to do
something similar, and both Rastra and SIP construction also require chases of
some kind: but even in these case the wiring is often not easy to access because
it is plastered over or otherwise covered). In office buildings, wires are
often surface mounted via a system like wiremold (the have a catalog on-line at
www.wiremold.com),
but the look is "office building" and isn't very attractive for homes.
When it came time for electrical, we still had no practical solution, so we
wired the house as usual: a rats nest of wires run mostly thru holes drilled in
the studs and joists. While this was a big disappointment, we did come up
with a reasonable solution for low voltage wires: we nailed 1 1/2 inch strips of
plywood held about 4" off the sub-floor along every wall we wanted to have
a chase. For vertical chases, we found out of the way corners to build
approx 2"x2" boxes, and here neither of those solutions worked we
resorted to a variety of other solutions, including using a 3 1/4" cove
molding along the ceiling, building a little 2"x2" box along the
ceiling, and running wires behind door casing.
Although the finished product is still probably better than hiding the wires
behind sheetrock, it leaves much to be desired. In the cases we ran wires
behind door casing, it turned out that those doors uses a clear finish wood
trim, so we nailed the casing rather than screw it because even with trim head
screws, it would have been unattractive. A better solution for that
problem would have been to find a way to put a short piece of conduit under the
sub-floor (like maybe we could have used 3/4" EMT with a gentle bend in it,
lined up so the ends are right where the baseboard chase is). Another
alternative we considered is running crown or cove around the ceiling of every
room, but that isn't necessary a low cost option, and if you're going to screw
it in, you want to use paint grade so you can hide the screws, but we could find
no paint grade cove: only expensive CVG wood or MDF.
There is also an interesting twist with putting chases behind baseboard:
because sheetrock is typically a little wavy, the top edge of the baseboard is
typically caulked to hide the crack, which makes removing/reinstalling the
baseboard quite a bit more labor. Also, if the chase is on an exterior
wall, it is typically that the baseboard caulk joint is part of an "air
tight drywall" system (see moisture control
in the tutorial), which is critical to keep moisture out of your walls.
One obvious solution is to staple a strip of polyethylene sheeting (say
6"wide) on the bottom section of the studs, and behind the 1 1/2"
plywood strip, but its more work, and alas, plastic sheeting is very easy to
punch holes in.
The only good answer I can think of is if someone manufactured something for
the residential market that was a drop in baseboard replacement (of course most
tract homes come with no baseboard, or some small cheap stuff, so building a
market could be hard). Maybe some year...
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