In The Magnolia Branches Overlooking the Wisteria Blooms
By Tam | April 3, 2008
We’ve moved into our house and the Colorado vNet system is about to be activated. I’m sitting in our office overlooking the wisteria in bloom on our neighbor’s roof and enjoying the sensation of being perched among the upper stories of the aged magnolia on our property.
Since the elevator installation has taken considerable sections of limited closet space in our 2350 sq ft home, the antique walnut biblioteque waits for re-assembly in order to become the linen ‘closet.’ Therefore, the boxes filled with linens that dot our second floor have not been reduced at all.
The elevator has been used for moving boxes and other items from floor to floor as well as to transport leg-weary owners and enthusiastic grandchildren. We’ll have to install a mirror in addition to the requisite wall phone. I found myself stuck between floors even before we moved in, but was rescued by my husband’s hand working of the particular recalcitrant part. I could hear comments such as, “good thing she’s not claustrophobic” and then the ready rejoinder that I was, to a certain extent. I would have preferred a cab that was totally see through to combat my mild phobia, however.
One of my sons-in-law has suggested using some of our art on the walls between floors to enliven the view.
I must admit that linens have become an obsession over the years. Jousting for ownership, I made the only silent bid I indulged in during our years of Connecticut estate sales; the bid was for a collection of antique linens owned by a former New York City hotel manager. That same sale produced a smoky gray mirror that’s in competition currently for residing on a bedroom or bathroom wall. The antique linens are sitting in one of those unpacked boxes and since I haven’t seen them for the last four years, I’m becoming eager to reveal their embroidered and laced selves. In the course of those ‘tag’ sales, I’ve picked up little items with stitched initials that bore no resemblance to my own just for their workmanship and the feel of that softened cloth.
The Bronwyn Williams-Ellis murals are in place, the Sakura mural with butterflies installed as the cooktop’s backsplash and the G.P.& J. Baker cushions made by Robert and Kathleen Kadosh resting in place on the window seats. Over the past few months, I had purchased materials by the piece and the yard from FabricGuru and been quite happy with the results, especially from the patterns from the famed English textile maker. We really couldn’t afford the current retail rate per yard, but the older and archived patterns were fine for our budget.
The D.I.G.S. hardware we bought on sale is mounted on our new kitchen cabinets while the wood veneered refrigerator panel is being designed and made by the marvelous woodworker Greg Smith. D.I.G.S. also supplied our bathroom hardware but the firm has discontinued manufacturing the line. We first used this line fifteen years ago in our Connecticut home.
The deer that had romped through the garden that became our property and, finally, our home have returned to munch through and strip the assortment of neglected plants I’ve hauled from rental to rental. Those valiant plants have struggled to survive the most difficult of locations and the third transfer by our favorite movers, Delancey Street. I owe them my admiration and now, continuous care.
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Blue, Anchoring and Meditative with a Touch of Magic; Red, a Source of Wealth for Those Who Knew Its Secrets
By Tam | December 29, 2007
“As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic. Look for it artfully combined with deeper plums, red-browns, yellow-greens, grapes and grays.” Pantone’s designation of Blue Iris as the color of the year for 2008.
“Soul-searching, magic, anchoring, and meditative” are adjectives that convey the weight a color can carry. Over the top? Perhaps, but as we’re so often told, the easiest (and least expensive way) to decorate is to repaint a room or the exterior of a house. We’ve had two bedrooms in our new house painted in pale shades of green on the walls and blue on the ceiling, a combination we’ve used in two other locations to purposefully transfer the feeling of sky, sea and nature:
“Nature is more depth than surface. Hence the need to introduce into our light vibrations represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air,” said Paul Cezanne and Raoul Duffy is quoted as saying “Blue is the only color which maintains its own character in all its tones… it will always stay blue.”
I find myself turning to more intense colors for both decorating and clothing. Red is a color that accentuates all other colors that are touched by it. We went to a Design Within Reach sale and found ourselves choosing six red Globus chairs designed by Jesus Gasca for the Stua line. At the same time, we bought some of Stua’s shelving and cabinetry for our master closet, choosing not to have wood worked to a higher cost for our clothing and shoe storage.
The choice of red for the chairs was not random; we plan to use enamel paint on a pair of cabinet ‘crowns’ for the kitchen being built by woodworker Greg Smith, a longtime family friend and a gifted craftsman. The cabinets flanking the cooktop are a pale blue chosen to match the backsplash that consists of Ann Sack’s Sakura tile.
“I want a red to be sonorous, to sound like a bell. If it doesn’t turn out that way, I add more reds and other colors until I get it.” Pierre-Auguste Renoir
“The ‘pure’ red of which certain abstractionists speak does not exist. Any red is rooted in blood, glass, wine, hunters’ caps and a thousand other concrete phenomena. Otherwise we would have no feeling toward red and its relations…” Robert Motherwell
Amy Butler Greenfield’s book, A Perfect Red; Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire, describes the importance of the color:
“Sacred to countless cultures, red has appealed to humans for time out of mind. Neanderthals buried their dead with red ochre, as did the Cro-Magnons, who painted cave walls with the same iron-rich ore. In ancient China, red was considered a lucky color, symbolic of prosperity and health. In the Arab world, it was sometimes construed as a sign of divine favor, sometimes as the mark of the damned — but above all as a male color, emblematic of heat and vitality. South of the Sahara, red was a color of high status, while in ancient Egypt it was the harbinger of danger, sacred to the trickster god Seth. Among the ancient Romans, red light was equated with divine fire. In primitive societies, the color has often been credited with magical powers, including the ability to exorcise demons, cure illness, and ward off the evil eye.”
“Throughout much of the world, red represents events and emotions at the core of the human condition: danger and courage, revolution and war, violence and sin, desire and passion, even life itself.”
We chose a color for our entry and master bath flooring to complement the dark gray maple engineered flooring material. An Ann Sacks gray limestone called Luxor will be laid in a herringbone pattern in the first-floor full bath in the master suite, consisting of tiles that are 1.7″ x 16″ in length and width. In the second floor bath, a marble called linen will also be laid in a herringbone pattern on the floor.
Covering the entrance foyer will be an Andy Fleishman concrete tile design called Maximus. The design is scored into the concrete and then followed by a grout that accentuates the pattern. The hexagon shape will also be used in the half bath nearby. In the kitchen and pantry a gray porcelain tile, Lino Viale, which has a linen cloth appearance, will be laid in a large format on the floor.
The color of most of the walls? A Benjamin Moore color we’re now using for the third time as our main color, number 1009, now designated as ‘bride to be’. A House Beautiful book from their Great Style series, Color, gave us the idea of using this particular color:
“To achieve the pale backdrop she was after, she chose a paint color for the walls that is neither beige nor cream, but a surprising face-powder pink — a soft color that changes with the light … At certain times of day, against the white trim, the blush-tinted walls seem almost sheer.”
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The Walled Up Passage … Leading to the Awful Dungeon
By Tam | October 28, 2007
Recently while reading to my grandson The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, I came across a paragraph:
Above the ceiling of the main waiting area was a cluster of secret apartments that had been built for the people who ran the train station years ago. Most of them had long been abandoned. Only one was still in use.
It happens that for months we’ve been planning to add a ’secret room’ to our house. The west bedroom will be fronted on the east side by a ‘gallery’ of art perhaps mounted on a wood-veneered or linen-covered wall complete with a door to an office beyond.
There’s nothing new, of course about secret or hidden rooms, passages, trap doors or other means of concealment in fiction, film or television. In fact, the element was so overused that priest and mystery author Ronald Knox included a reservation about the number of times the device could be used: Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
A site with the URL of hiddenpassageway.com and also known as Creative Home Engineering commands “Pull a favorite book from a library shelf and watch a cabinet section recess to reveal a hidden passageway,” ” Twist a candlestick and your fireplace rotates granting access to a hidden room.” Although our project is not as complex the description of the techniques used are quite fascinating:
“Optical sensor arrays, overtorque protection, thermal and infrared sensors, mechanical obstruction detectors” as well as fingerprint and voice recognition systems are employed.
But the subject of building such a room (on the cheap) becomes part of an active discussion we found on the Web that refers to a tesseract house. That in turn leads to the famed Robert Heinlein’s story, And He Built a Crooked House. And that led me to Fantasia Mathematica, a collection of four stories by the late Clifton Fadiman
When looking for further hidden references, I found an essay by George Sand, The Convent of the English Augustines:
We were at the bottom in a moment; and with more joy than disappointment found that we were directly under the passage, in a square space without any opening. Not a door nor window, nor any explicable purpose for this sort of closed vestibule. Why was there a staircase leading into a blind space? Why was there’
a strong padlocked door shutting off the staircase?
The little taper was divided into several lengths, and each one began examining for herself. The staircase was made of wood. A secret spring in one of the steps must lead to a passage, another staircase, or a hidden trap. While some explored the staircase, and tried to force its old planks apart, others groped along the wall in search of a knob, a crack, a ring, or any of the other thousand contrivances mentioned in the chronicles of old manors as moving a stone, turning a panel, or opening an entrance into unknown regions.
Alas, there was nothing! The wall was smooth and plastered. The pavement sounded dull; not a stone was loose, and the staircase hid no spring. One of us looked further. She declared that in the extreme corner under the staircase the wall had a hollow sound; we struck it, and found it true. “It’s here!” we all exclaimed. ” There’s a walled-up passage in there, but that passage leads to the awful dungeon. That is the way down to the sepulchre holding the living victims.” We glued our ears to the wall, heard nothing; still the discoverer maintained that she could hear confused groans and clanking chains. What was to be done?”
We’ve revised the secret door/room wall plan to delete the extensive bookcase aspect we had envisioned. Consistent with the gallery approach we’ve taken with our ‘floating walls’, we’ll further that look by using framed art along the secret door wall, perhaps on wood-veneered plywood or linen-covered panels.
The thought of creating this hidden room appeared when my husband and I looked up at the stairwell rising to the second floor. My first thought, was, “How are we going to find a good looking lighting fixture to occupy that space?” The second thought was, ‘why don’t we floor over that space and use it as a storage or office space?’ Windows were already part of the stairwell area at the second floor height so we would more than enough light to bring into that space.
We also decided to use an extra exterior window that had been removed in the master suite redesign as a window in that hidden room space overlooking the staircase to the second floor. Voila … a hidden room that could be viewed from the interior, leading the guest to wonder how they could access that space, a key ingredient to making the secret room even more mysterious.
If you’d like to see a hidden staircase on your own, venture to New York City’s Morgan Library and proceed to the West Room to find it.
Recently, we visited the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. One of the exhibits were pictures of Butyrka Prison in Moscow, depicting the hidden stairway behind the office cabinet, which was used to dispatch prisoners down it to the horrors of that prison. Somehow, it’s difficult to forget that image.
One of the most recent stories about a hidden room/passage was that of the 8th century convent of Mont Sainte-Odile in France. In this Guardian story by Jon Henley that came to an end in 2002, the search was on for “immensely valuable works, including precious early religious texts and several dozen heavy 15th-century illuminated manuscripts bound in wood and leather, began disappearing from the abbey’s first-floor library. Police were flummoxed.
” ‘It was one of those frustrating but also rather thrilling cases,’ Madeleine Simoncello, the Saverne public prosecutor, said yesterday. ‘Quite extraordinary items were vanishing, sometimes singly, sometimes by the dozen. By last weekend over 1,000 had gone, yet the room wasn’t even open to the public and as far as we knew nobody could get in.’ ”
“The library building adjoined part of the main abbey but was separate from it and kept permanently locked.”
“Eventually, a lucky gendarme pushed tentatively at the back of one of the library bookshelves. A plank swung back, and he found himself looking into a small, sealed room which led - via a rope ladder and a well-hidden, disused corridor between the two buildings - into a workshop belonging to what is now the convent’s hotel. One part of the mystery, at least, was solved.”
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Stopping at Bath for Bronwyn’s Tiles
By Tam | August 26, 2007
Most people go to Bath, England for the Roman baths that form the basis for the city’s fame. Or if you’re a Jane Austen reader the Assembly Rooms beckon as well as its companion fashion museum. Perhaps the Royal Crescent is the attraction, the Theatre Royal or shopping for crafts and toys.
We’ve added these stops on our previous itineraries as well as combing the antique centers, a Kaffe Fassett shop and a silver store that also carried the pebble jewelry that I collected. But it was our visit some fifteen years ago to Bronwyn Williams-Ellis’ tile studio that drew us once again during this recent vacation.
During that first visit in 1992, we bought The Swimmers, a 14-tile panel that was framed, finally, in California and now hangs on our office wall, waiting for its transfer to our new house. There it will be joined by two additional panels by Bronwyn we bought on this trip, a female and male figure that will be installed in our master bath.
In addition to that bath, we’re planning on framing another tile composition by Bronwyn that, at this moment, has a space reserved in a half-bath on our main floor, which will certainly hold the attention of those who visit the room.
We have some of Bronwyn’s fish tiles, too, that we are contemplating for our kitchen or pantry walls. Or perhaps the interior walls of the little balcony just off the kitchen.
We first found Bronwyn when we exited Walcot Reclamation, an architectural and antiquities dealer. At the moment, we could purchase from Walcot (at great shipping costs, no doubt) some terracotta rhubarb forcers or a Welsh conglomerate fruitmill.
Then as now, we had little hope that we could find a practicable way to import one of the antiquities we viewed. We left Walcot and wandered down the alleyway outside and encountered a glassmaker’s studio where we purchased a glass bowl. Bronwyn’s studio was next and we not only were taken with her ceramic arts but by the lady herself. Below is the entrance to her studio. (The photograph of Bronwyn in her studio taken by Paul O’ Connor )
Bronwyn is the great-niece of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, the builder of Portmeirion located on a peninsula off the coast of Snowdonia, Wales. The New York Times recently carried an article on the architect. Begun in 1925 and continuing until 1975, the village is also know for the setting of the TV series, The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan, and the Portmeirion Pottery established in 1960.
Bronwyn’s newest exhibit entitled Land:forms will be at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. Jon Benington, Manager of the Council-run gallery, comments: “It is amazing how Bronwyn manages to inject dynamic movement into an inherently static material such as clay. She achieves this by making her bold designs flow across multiple ‘fragments’ of clay. It will be a refeshing change to see the Gallery’s walls covered with organically shaped ceramic pieces as opposed to flat, foursquare canvases.”
“This exhibition has given Bronwyn the freedom to go back to the drawing board and explore landscape sources that are drawn from both her native North Wales and the softer Bath countryside.”
We, too, feel fortunate to have Bronwyn’s clay art compositions gracing our new home.
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Secret Destinations: A Sixteen-sided Spectacle, Charles Wade’s Obsession, and Varnished Leaves
By Tam | July 15, 2007
When we visit England, the temptation to surprise a traveling companion with a destination kept secret is always there. So it was with La Ronde, kept secret on two occasions. The surprise connected with the other two destinations, Wightwick and Snowshill was not in the architectural structure, but the collections and furnishings.
“A la Ronde has been a source of fascination to visitors since it was first mentioned in 19th-century guidebooks to Exmouth (Devon). The building was constructed in the 1790s and was supposedly inspired by the octagonal basilica of San Vitale at Ravenna. Its creators were two single women, Mary and Jane Parminter, who had been seduced by this Byzantine masterpiece during a ten-year Grand Tour of the continent at the end of the 18th century.”
“Particular attention has been paid to conserving the Parminters’ own extraordinary and unique blend of decorative craftsmanship using feathers, shells, paper and paint, besides more unusual materials like sand, moss, seaweed and glass.”
“The two short flights of the narrow staircase which leads up to the Shell Gallery are a Gothic fantasy of painted vaults and pointed arches encrusted with bands of shells on the walls. At the first landing a grotto has been formed around a looking-glass window above a glazed case filled with more shells, mirrors, pieces of quartz and quillwork. At the second landing another grotto and glass window has been placed above an elaborate quillwork doll’s-house facade … Above the entrance, the Parminters painted a crown in honour of George III in 1800, and on either side stuck watercolours of birds and shells …”
Although it’s no longer possible to examine the Shell Gallery in person, a camera has been placed at the level and a visitor can manipulate closed-circuit camera that encompasses the octagonal room.
Another house we visited on vacation for the second time was once owned by the Mander family: Wightwick (pronounced Wittick) was decorated almost exclusively from Morris & Co. catalogs heightened by the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites. Paintings in the house included work by Millais, Elizabeth Siddal (wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and sister-in-law of Christina Rossetti), Ruskin, Madox Brown and Rosetti. Stained-glass windows are by Charles Kempe, tiles around an Italian Renaissance chimneypiece by the famed William de Morgan. Siddal was considered the ‘face of the Pre-Raphaelites’ and was used as a model for Millais’s Ophelia and Rossetti’s Beata Beatrice. Unfortunately, she came to a sad end at age 32.
Our reference to Varnished Leaves alludes to the title of a book profiling the Mander family of Wolverhampton, England written by Nicholas Mander and covering the years from 1798 to 1998. The business proceeds that funded the building of Wightwick was derived from manufacturing varnish.
“Mary Mander was described by Edward Ould, architect of both The Mount and Wightwick, a little obsequiously, as having ‘more taste than any lady I have met.’ Her collections were voraciously catholic, if indiscriminate. Hundreds of objects — fans, enamels, Rockingham, Spode and Staffordshire china, Chinese and Delft blue-and-white porcelain, maiolica and faience, china cats, textiles and needlework, lace, beadwork, dolls, domestic brass, tobacco boxes and curios — cluttered every surface, as well as accumulated books, the usual Jacobean, late Stuart and Georgian furniture, pictures, Caucasian and Persian rugs and family silver. All was listed in her annotated inventories, with prices paid to dealers for seemingly untransportable items culled on energetic travels in places as scattered as Taormina, Granada, Cairo, Tunis, Khartoum, Fez, Cuba and Brazil, many long before the First World War. All was displayed in a context of ‘Old English’ fittings and materials, with ceilings by Leonard Shuffrey and heraldic glass by Bryans and Webb to Ould’s 55-foot English Renaissance Library. This grand Edwardian living hall was modelled on Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire, ‘a magnificent ruin’ which made a deep impression also on Jewson, the architect of Owlpen’s restoration.”
We were particularly drawn to the gardens at Wightwick, which because of the splendor of the house, are sometimes overlooked. The upright and singular pergola we thought quite unusual and are now endeavoring to use in our own re-landscaped back yard in some fashion. The circular pergola is also a bit out of the ordinary, though the Maypole effect perhaps not to our taste.
We’ve visited Snowshill about six times over a period of almost 25 years, never tiring of the the collections that Charles Paget Wade accumulated. It has been termed a treasure house for the content the owner amassed, acquiring the thousands of objects from antique dealers, shops and individual craftspeople.
We were told by one of the docents this last trip that Wade actually never lived in the house, ceding it to his collections and living in the cottage named the Priest’s House, in the courtyard.
Wade was quoted in 1945, commenting on Snowshill:
“I have not bought things because they were rare or valuable, there are many things of every fay use in the past of small value, but of interest as records of various vanished handicrafts.”
“What joy these old things are to live with, each piece made by the hand of a craftsman, each has a feeling and individuality that no machine could ever attain.”
“A room can be filled with innumerable things and yet have a perfect atmosphere of repose, if they are chosen with thought and care so as to form one harmonious background. The furniture should not stand out as a series of silhouettes, but merge into the background, the highlights being sufficient to show its form.”
“This collection, not a museum, will be a valuable record in days to come.”
Perhaps the following from his memoirs more precisely reveals the mind of the collector: “Here was a Kingdom beyond the ken of Grown-Ups, all free from that overlooking eye. This happy realm of under the table and round the skirtings. How intimate one with the legs of furniture, textures and patterns of carpets.” Indeed, if one goes to Snowshill, look for the tiny room revealed when one gets down on the floor and peers inside an opening … clearly, a favorite view of Wade’s.
There are pages at the National Trust focus on the nursery and toys at both Wightwick and Snowshill with a reference, too, of the miniature library at A La Ronde. And don’t overlook another example (besides Wightwick) of Arts and Crafts work at Standen, a National Trust property that we’ve stayed at for a week.
Oh, have we mentioned that Wightwick has a secret staircase that the mistress of the property used to avoid those unwelcome callers at the door? And did we mention that we’re to have a hidden space in our house to be used for an overflowing library? And with a bookcase door?
That’s for another blog post.
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House Diaries and Anxieties of the Vacationers
By Tam | June 15, 2007
We were preparing for a long desired and deserved vacation in England and Paris when told that our washer and dryer, to be a closet feature outside our master bedroom (instead of the longed-for ample space so highlighted today as a ‘must-have’ feature in new homes), was too small for the machines we had selected.
Instead of spending time packing a wardrobe for changeable European and English spring weather, we were again haunting appliance stores, using Consumer Reports research, and considering our options. We seemed to be reduced to considering machines that our grandchildren would consider plaything-sized. We had learned that a front-loading machine is viewed more convenient for a wheelchair user and a base would further lift up the machines as well as providing space for laundry soaps and cleaning aids. Actually, the space allotted is so narrow that for drying hand washables, we’re considering a pulley-operated drying rack for over the machine area.
Before we left, we were relieved to hear that the previously selected machines would fit in that confined space, so we went back to packing. But not before we heard that the city inspector had noted that we were supposed to cut an opening three feet square in the standing seam metal roof that was about to be installed to accommodate a vent for the future elevator, based on the fact that the shaft would traverse three floors of the house.
Larry wrote an informed plea which was acknowledged by the city, who has been to this point, unfailingly fair concerning our construction. The city recommended but didn’t require the three foot square opening but Lawrence Construction did advise us to go ahead with a 12-inch roof vent that can be modified later.
We went back to packing once more, but the packing was becoming increasingly disorganized. (One blouse that I was sure was packed, and that I looked for repeatedly on our trip, was found in the ironing basket when we returned)
The elevator that I most liked using was located in the I.G. Farben Building, Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany, at that time occupied by the US Army V Corps. Wikipedia has the following notation about paternosters, the type of elevator I rode for a year while working for the US Army in the late 1950s:
“A special type of elevator is the paternoster, a constantly moving chain of boxes. A similar concept moves only a small platform, which the rider mounts while using a handhold and was once seen in multi-story industrial plants.” If you read the article on Paternosters instances are given (particularly in Europe) of their use in many public buildings, universities and office buildings (See IG Farben Building).
I do remember that the word paternoster was given to this particular elevator because, it was said, it would take the length of time to say a paternoster (Our Father) during the elevator trip around the circuit of the chain. Wikipedia’s entry has another variation on the explanation: originally applied to the device because the elevator is in the form of a loop and is thus similar to rosary beads used as an aid in reciting the paternoster. The rider would wait for the box to appear in the opening on their floor and jump aboard, riding to their floor and exiting with another jump. One day, I found myself at the bottom of the building in the dark, having forgotten to exit, so absorbed was I in my book.
However, it’s clear that a paternoster elevator would not suit a wheelchair user!
The third challenge to our vacation was the Title 24 caper (I was reading mysteries on the trip so forgive the lame allusion). California’s Title 24 was established in 1978 in response to a legislative mandate to reduce California’s energy consumption. Part 6 deals with the Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential and Nonresidential Buildings.
Here is a summary of some of the 2005 rulings concerning residential buildings:
Residential Buildings
Efficient Lighting – High efficacy (e.g., fluorescent) in all permanent lighting or controls; high efficacy in kitchens; high efficacy or motion sensor in bathrooms, utility rooms, garages, laundry rooms; high efficacy or combined photosensor / motion sensor for exterior lights; high efficacy or dimmer in other lighting; airtight can lights (mandatory)
Duct Insulation – Levels depending on climate zone (R-4.2 to R-8)
Pipe Insulation – Hot water pipes to the kitchen have to be insulated (prescriptive)
Loopholes Closed – Credit no longer given for reduced glazing area or central water heating systems in multi-family buildings
Replacement Windows – Have to be high efficiency
Duct Sealing – required when air conditioner/furnace is replaced or ducts are replaced
Compliance Credit – High EER air conditioners, gas cooling, high quality insulation installation, properly sized air conditioners, efficient air conditioner fan motors, ducts buried in attic insulation
Third Party Field Verification – Changes made to encourage quality installation to be field verified; group measures requiring third party testing and verification and improve protocols and procedures
Outdoor Lighting – high-efficacy or motion sensor/photocontrol for fixtures attached to buildings
In England, we learned that the local utility would not grant any solar rebate for new construction if the Title 24 requirements were not exceeded by at last 15%, well beyond requirements to add a system to an existing home. That meant our new home would not qualify as the initial report prepared when apply for our building permits, stated we exceeded Title 24 by 8%. Our choice was either to eliminate solar or to pay about an additional $12,000 for the same system.
In our absence, the architect and builder consulted with the solar firm and the independent company we had hired to analyze our plan’s energy utilization. Ultimately, we discovered our house would actually exceed Title 24 by 22%, well beyond the utility’s standards. Apparently, the original report did not calculate the full value of the gypcrete (defined as a type of duricrust composed of hydrous calcium sulfate) used for the radiant flooring.
Many were relieved, but none more than the anxious vacationers. The English countryside and National Trust houses beckoned but more about that next time.
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The Architectural Tool of Great Accessible Import: A Wheelchair
By Tam | April 11, 2007
Regardless of how many guidelines, checklists and measurements exist for planning an accessible home, the proof may be in a wheelchair bought or borrowed for the purpose. We had one in hand, stored after a fused midfoot operation due to arthritic bone deterioration. A previous need for a manual chair had called for a rental when I clumsily broke a leg after catching it in the opening of a duvet.
Quite a few of our architectural meetings were characterized by comments, consisting of ‘that won’t work,’ or ‘it won’t be high enough’ or ‘that’s located too low.’ Altogether, I had spent four months in a wheelchair, months more in an orthopedic boot, and additional months with a cane. That’s a brief time in terms of wheelchair use but it only takes a few days of chipping paint from doorways, an inability to open either doors or windows in order to realize how limiting most living quarters are to wheelchair use.
Once the framing was done, we brought the wheelchair to the house and it was quickly determined that the master bath, as framed, would not allow easy access to the shower stall itself. We reported this to the architects who then worked out plans for a more wheelchair-and-storage-friendly master suite.
I found an article written by Bradley Duerstock very helpful. In an early entry in his article, Tips on Building an Accessible Home, Bradley Duerstock, PhD. of Purdue’s Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Center for Paralysis Research, School of Veterinary Medicine, I was reminded that we had overlooked the tenet of making the garage ceiling high enough to accommodate a van with a wheelchair lift. Fortunately, the height was correct as planned. I did find Vexel, a Spanish company, which has manufactured wheelchair car called Quovis:
“The quadricycle is strictly a classification based on weight and it is not subjected to the same regulations as passenger cars.”
“In North America the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) does not recognize the concept of a quadricycle, but has set safety standards for Low Speed Vehicles (LSV). Quovis exceeds the NHTSA safety standards, but there are operational guidelines that apply to the use of the Quovis in North America. The States are responsible for the enforcement of Motor Vehicle Laws and the LSV regulations as it applies to the use of the Quovis on public highways varies by State. The State LSV regulations are listed by State here.”
It appears that there are dealers for this car in California, Kentucky and Kansas.
Professor Duerstock also designed “an integrated accessible microscopy workstation was designed and developed to allow persons with mobility impairments to control all aspects of light microscopy with minimal human assistance.” When looking for citations about Duerstock I came across RESNA which stands for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America.
Professor Duerstock’s article reveals the additional difficulties experienced by those with spinal cord injuries and how essentially, adapting or building a home to accommodate disabilities is a unique happening, demanding its own set of solutions and inventive processes. What we are attempting to do is to anticipate situations one or both of us could encounter as well as guests to our home.
As Duerstock notes: There is a definite shortage of accessible housing in this country, which will only get worse in coming years with the aging of the baby boom generation. Likewise, there is an emerging interest in remaining in one’s home and receiving at-home care rather than automatically going to a nursing home at the onset of any degree of physical disability. Two major reasons for being placed in a nursing facility are due to a lack of accessible physical accommodation in the home and an inability to receive at home nursing care. I realize that nursing homes have their place, but I applaud all efforts to allow a person with a disability to remain in their home all long as feasibly possible.”
MIT has released a new version of an assistive humanoid robot called Domo which could help elderly or wheelchair-bound people with simple household tasks like putting away dishes, grasping objects and placing them on shelves or counters.
To access our house, there will be one of two paths, literally and figuratively. A ramped path will lead to a doorway with no thresholds to make a wheelchair difficult to surmount and that will be true of all doorways. At present, there are three stacked ‘closets’ in place, beginning with the garage level, which will be pre-wired for elevator use. At the moment, we’re undecided as to whether we’ll install the elevator before someone needs a wheelchair in our immediate family.
Hardware consists of levers, doorways and hallways are wide, both showers allow for wheelchairs to be rolled in and positioned with room to spare, controls are lower when needed, electrical sockets are within reach, meaning in a higher position. We have a several showerheads and a hand-held showerhead in the shower and one on the bath deck. Faucets are of the types that are easily turned on and off. Toilets are all at comfort height and grab bars will be positioned. Cabinets and a counter will be designed for wheelchair use, perhaps with shrouds to shield from hot pipes. Stairways will have rails on both sides and the steps will be illuminated both outdoors and inside.
In one of our half baths, we’re installing a WaterDecor Radius faucet, ‘touchless’ or motion-sensitive, which is not planned specifically for wheelchair use, but for our grandchildren who might tend to leave a faucet on and for my own arthritic and node studded hands.
In another posting we’ll address the plans for the kitchen and garden to accommodate a wheelchair.
This discussion of accessibility leads quite naturally to the increased awareness that returning Iraq war veterans will be addressing accessibility issues in increased numbers. There is a Department of Defense website termed TriCare for military members as well as a non-government site titled Military Severely Injured Center, both with extensive links. The New Yorker cover drawn by Barry Blitt entitled “Uphill Battle” needs no further caption.
Berkeley is planning to build the Ed Roberts Campus which will “be a universally designed, transit-oriented campus … in Berkeley, California. The 80,000 sq. ft. project incorporates exhibition space, community meeting rooms, a child development center, fitness center, offices for non-profit organizations, vocational training facilities and a café. The building integrates sophisticated design responses to the issues of universal design and environmentally sustainable development.” Berkeley is already considered one of the most, if not the most, accessible city in the US.
The National Academies is planning a conference next November in Irvine, CA and the theme is Aging, Longevity and Lifespan. Some of the issues posed are:
What are the likely future trends in disability rates — will they level off, continue to decline, or rebound? What are the key driving forces of change including early life conditions, obesity, life style changes (exercise, diet, etc.), and/or assistive technology? What can we learn from international and historical studies?
Last year’s conference in Irvine, Smart Prosthetics: Exploring Assistive Devices for the Body and Mind, singled out 16 projects that were awarded funding and represented a wide range of approaches to research on such assistive devices
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How We Found Our Flooring: The Asian Art Museum, Roman Hydronics and Radiant Heating
By Tam | March 21, 2007
Although it may seem like jumping ahead of our building schedule, we found the company we wanted to use for our flooring years before we began building our house. We knew we wanted to use radiant heat in the house and that meant manufactured flooring.
One weekend we went to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, becoming members of the museum during the process. A gray parquet floor covered the well-trod galleries. A gracious public relations contact the next week gave us the name of the Forest, Virginia company supplying the flooring, Gammapar’s Acrylic Impregnated Hardwood, and we were quick to examine their site and options. They are located on land once owned by Thomas Jefferson and their plant is less than five miles from Jefferson’s famous summer home, Poplar Forest. Coincidentally, the flooring we chose is from the Jefferson Collection, Maple Black.
Three images of the Asian Art Museum’s use of Gammapar as a parquet design (no longer available) can be viewed at the Armin Maier site. Although our previous floors had been the traditional oak, we had accumulated a number of antiques over the forty years that we had been married as well as more contemporary pieces, and we decided that a dark finish would set off our furniture.
Now that we had chosen our preferred floor coverings, we went ahead with plans for a radiant heated floor. I became interested in just how old the radiant system of heating homes was and as with most systems, this was not a new approach to heating. And we came across a word we hadn’t heard before: hypocaust. Just what is a hypocaust?
The photo at left is of the Caldarium in the Roman Baths at Bath, England. Roman hypocaust systems allowed hot air to circulate beneath the floor and through the walls of buildings. Floors were raised on brick columns (pilae) or, as in this case, trenches were cut below the floor to allow the hot air through. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
The US Energy Department describes the advantages of radiant heating: Radiant heating has a number of advantages — it is more efficient than baseboard heating and usually more efficient than forced-air heating because no energy is lost through ducts. The lack of moving air can also be advantageous to people with severe allergies. Hydronic (liquid-based) systems use little electricity, a benefit for homes off the power grid or in areas with high electricity prices. The hydronic systems can also be heated with a wide variety of energy sources, including standard gas-or oil-fired boilers, wood-fired boilers, solar water heaters, or some combination of these heat sources.
Hydronic (liquid) systems are the most popular and cost-effective radiant heating systems for heating-dominated climates. Hydronic radiant floor systems pump heated water from a boiler through tubing laid in a pattern underneath the floor. In some systems, the temperature in each room is controlled by regulating the flow of hot water through each tubing loop. This is done by a system of zoning valves or pumps and thermostats. The cost of installing a hydronic radiant floor varies by location and also depends on the size of the home, the type of installation, the floor covering, remoteness of the site, and the cost of labor.
Hydronic systems are not limited to heating functions. A hydronic cooling system is described in an Oregon Department of Energy paper:
Radiant cooling (generally with ceiling panels) is used quite commonly in Europe, where humidity levels are generally not as high as in eastern North America and where the comfort envelope of building occupants (the temperature range at which they are comfortable) is wider than here. That said, there is some interesting research underway in the U.S. on radiant cooling. This concept is being tried out, for example, at an architecture school studio at Penn State University. Chilled water is circulated through ceiling panels to provide radiant cooling, with 100% fresh air used for ventilation. The key is that the ventilation air is dehumidified before delivery to the conditioned space, thus eliminating the potential for condensation on the radiant ceiling panels. This system is saving energy in two ways: because pumping water requires less energy than moving air, and because the chilled water has to remove only the sensible heat loads — not the latent loads. With the 100% outside-air supply, the total amount of circulated air is reduced by about 80%, compared with conventional recirculating systems.
Attention is being paid to another source of energy. MIT recently issued a 400-page report they prepared for the DOE, The Future of Geothermal Energy, on the potential offered by geothermal sources, citing Iceland’s as an example of using steam to power heating, hot water and a significant portion of electrical needs.
Perhaps we should have considered moving further north after all: “In the Mayacamas Mountains, located 72 miles north of San Francisco, naturally occurring steam field reservoirs below the earth’s surface are being harnessed by Calpine to make clean, green, renewable energy for homes and businesses across Northern California.”
“The Geysers, comprising 30 square miles along the Sonoma and Lake County border, is the largest complex of geothermal power plants in the world. Calpine owns and operates 19 of the 21 power plants at The Geysers with a net generating capacity of about 750 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 750,000 homes, or a city the size of San Francisco.”
“The Geysers meets the typical power needs of Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties, as well a portion of the power needs of Marin and Napa counties. In fact, The Geysers satisfies nearly 60 percent of the average electricity demand in the North Coast region from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. The Geysers is one of the most reliable energy sources in California delivering extremely high availability and on-line performance and accounts for one-fourth of the green power produced in California.”
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Our Flirtation With Modular
By Tam | March 12, 2007
When we were in our gloomy period between architects, we briefly contemplated modular housing in order to expedite and reduce our building costs and time. Visions of trucks depositing near completed sections became enormously appealing. Several years ago in Connecticut we saw a Canadian prefab home springing up quickly nearby, seemingly skipping all the detritus and clutter that characterizes a house under construction.
Modular housing is not new in the US, as you can see from the Sears archive:
From 1908–1940, Sears, Roebuck and Company sold more than 100,000 homes through their mail-order Modern Homes program. Over that time Sears designed 447 different housing styles, from the elaborate multistory Ivanhoe, with its elegant French doors and art glass windows, to the simpler Goldenrod, which served as a quaint, three-room and no-bath cottage for summer vacationers. (An outhouse could be purchased separately for Goldenrod and similar cottage dwellers.) Customers could choose a house to suit their individual tastes and budgets.
Honor Bilt homes were the most expensive and finest quality sold by Sears. Joists, studs, and rafters were to be spaced 14 3/8 inches apart. Attractive cypress siding and cedar shingles adorned most Honor Bilt exteriors. And, depending on the room, interiors featured clear-grade (i.e., knot-free) flooring and inside trim made from yellow pine, oak, or maple wood. Sears’s catalogs also reported that Standard Built homes were best for warmer climates, meaning they did not retain heat very well. The Simplex Sectional line, as the name implies, contained simple designs. Simplex houses were frequently only a couple of rooms and were ideal for summer cottages.
Studio804 is well into their current 2007 modular project and it’s possible to follow along week by week. I’m not quite sure about their concept names, however: love shack, long + thin and fat boy. Nonetheless, this is a project of a not-for-profit, design/build program at the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Design “focused on the creation of community based architecture.”
LivingHomes is another example of prefab construction and their ‘about us’ section is unabashedly self-congratulatory: Their house is “the first residence in the nation to receive LEED platinum, the highest level of certification from the United States Green Building Council. We’re using high volume, factory production to increase the quality of our homes as we reduce their cost, schedule, and construction waste, compared to those that are similarly constructed on site.”
Marmol Radziner Prefab lays out its approach in this way: “Our green homes are not a kit of parts – we build the prefab modules in our own factory and ship them complete with your choice of pre-installed interior and exterior finishes, flooring, appliances, and more. We can oversee the entire process, from design to delivery and installation, so no additional contractor is required.”
Radziner also is concerned with green building issues: “For long-term sustainability, the module structures are made from recycled steel. The homes employ other green materials, including Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), FSC-certified wood, low VOC Green Seal paint, solar panels, and more. Floor-to-ceiling windows capture natural light, while expansive decks provide shade for passive cooling and promote the best of indoor/outdoor living.”
In no time at all, we’re all going to wondering about the overuse of the green aspect to profit. However, there’s always thinking small. Alchemy architects are coming up with some excellent smaller homes such as the wee houses, which sound like something I’d be reading about to my grandchildren.
And don’t overlook the Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibit, Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses. One of the houses, Turbulence House, was designed by Stephen Holl, architect, and “allows turbulent wind to blow through its center. The stressed skin and aluminum rib construction is digitally prefabricated in Kansas City then bolted together on site. A total of 31 metal panels, each with a unique shape are fabricated to form the ’shell’ of the house.”
Of course, if you want a really small house, consider The Omlet Eglu.
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The Magnolia and The Monkey Puzzle
By Tam | February 27, 2007
“The ecology of Monkey Puzzle is disturbance-driven, principally by volcanism, fire, landslides and wind, and it has developed effective adaptations, such as thick bark and epicormic buds, to survive such disturbances.”(Burns, 1993)
“Various authors have described the Monkey Puzzle Tree as bizarre, grotesque, weird, lizard-like, unique, statuesque, striking, and beautiful. Beauty truly does lie in the eye of the beholder. Most everyone, however, would agree that this coniferous (cone-bearing) tree is unusual.”
“Monkey Puzzle Trees have a pyramidal silhouette when young, with sweeping branches that arise in whorls from the trunk and arch upwards. With age the tree develops a more irregular shape with a flattened crown. The tree’s thick bark, protected terminal buds, and ability to resprout from older branches and the trunk make it superbly adapted to survive the natural fires in its native habitat. The dark green leaves are triangular, stiff, sharply pointed, and overlap each other. Each leaf can live for 10-15 years, and persist on the twigs and branches even after it dies and turns brown. The common name of Monkey Puzzle Tree is the result of a comment made by an Englishman in the early 1800’s, after he observed this well-armed tree. He said that it would be a puzzle for a monkey attempting to climb such a tree. Even though there are no monkeys in the native habitat of this species, that comment caught the public’s attention, and evolved into the tree’s best-known common name.” Dr. T. Ombrello
Almost immediately upon seeing our property for the first time, we noted the monkey puzzle tree at the northern edge of the less-than-quarter acre lot. We stepped gingerly around its edges, carefully avoided its downed barbed branches. Grandchildren were advised to stay distant and I wondered how we would protect them from the branches if they fell from the height we observed, some 75 feet in the air.
We consulted our arborist, Martin Arnest, as we all warily circled the tree. I was beginning to feel as though we had an adversary, a Tolkein inspired forest foe in this tree. I somewhat playfully suggested that we might rig up a huge net that would be suspended under the branches to catch any errant falls of the barbed droppings. Martin acknowledged that it was an interesting idea but the rigging and emptying of it would be challenging in itself. Finally, when we investigated other avenues to contain the descent of the branches, we informed neighbors of our tentative plans to take the tree down.
Our second challenge was to protect a magnolia on the property, a grandiflora. Martin identified it as perhaps an 80 year old tree, one in decline but with a number of years ahead in its lifetime. It shaded our lot as well as that of our neighbors and has a magnificent trunk perhaps four feet across. At the moment, we have a corner of our master bedroom planned for a desk with a view of the magnolia.
A University of Florida extension website describes a brief history of the magnolia:
The magnolia family is very ancient with fossil remains dating between 36 and 58 million years ago. The unusual distribution of existing magnolia species resulted when Ice Age glaciers destroyed ancient European forests but not those in Asia or America.
Surviving magnolia species represent some of the more primitive flowering plants. Magnolia flowers do not have true petals and sepals but are composed of petal-like tepals. Flowers do not produce true nectar, but attract pollinating beetles with fragrant, sugary secretions. Magnolia flowers are primarily pollinated by beetles of the Nitidulidae family because magnolias evolved long before bees and other flying pollinators.
Magnolias were well known and widely used by ancient cultures in Asia and the Americas. The beautiful flowering tree, Magnolia denudata, was known as “Yu-lan” (”Jade Orchid”) to the ancient Chinese and has been cultivated since the 7th century. The Japanese have grown Magnolia stellata for centuries as flowering pot plants called “Shidekobushi” (”Zigzag-petalled Kobushi Magnolia”). The Aztecs knew Magnolia macrophylla var. dealbata as “Eloxochitl” (”Flower with Green Husk”).
Europeans were not familiar with magnolias and they first discovered them while exploring the Americas. In 1688, Sweet Bay (Magnolia virginiana) was the first magnolia introduced to Europe. Unaware of Amerindian or Asian names for the species, 18th century taxonomists named magnolias to commemorate Pierre Magnol, a 17th century French botanist.
A French history by Bernard de la Rochefoucauld of the introduction of the magnolia has an almost fairytale quality:
They came from America when Roland Michel Barrin de La Gallissonière, governor of Louisiana, sent some plants to Europe in 1711. They arrived in Paimboeuf in Brittany and were taken by road to Nantes. The mayor of Nantes, René Darquistade, a keen botanist, put one of the plants in a greenhouse. After a few years, as the plant had not developed, he decided to throw it away. The gardener’s wife, who was passing by, noticed the little tree on the heap of manure and took it away. In the open air, the plant found a new lease of life, to the great delight of the botanist, who sent it to be examined at the University of Montpellier. There, Pierre Magnol, a contemporary to Linné and Plumier, produced the first description of the plant with François Bonamy. Magnolia grandiflora thus became Magnolia of Nantes, and it is today widely planted in our parks and gardens.
The ultimate challenge of our house building will be to make the building sit easily on the earth; to cultivate what is there with the goals of the architecture. If I could, I would landscape first and then fit in the house amid the greenery. Ambitious plans have to be dovetailed with the reality of just how much we can accomplish.
We are fortunate in our view, a panorama of the San Francisco Bay Area, one we’ll be able to see from many of our windows. A few years ago, utility wires were undergrounded on our street and presumably, other streets will follow. The house sits in a low curved location on the heavily trafficked avenue with the street flaring to the south and the north leaving us in a sort of apex.
Can we capture the sun and redirect the ground water for irrigation reuse on our small plot? Ah, but that’s for a future post on the blog.
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