what's joe up to...

We didn't have anything planned for the holiday weekend (I don't like traveling during holidays) but it started off with an exciting email from Jim at GMK Architecture with his most recent design plans for our Wisconsin home.  This most recent plan is the result of the changes we discussed when we met at his Madison office back in April.  This is about the fourth version that we have gone through since November:

Plan A - initial plan, long and narrow, like a glassed in bridge extending out toward the cliff; 2 floors with a long "pier" like deck that went out toward the cliff

Plan B - long, going out towards the cliff but then turned back on itself with bedrooms on backside of house; 2 floors. This change was necessary after the results of the geotechnical engineering study showed we needed to stay 50ft back from the cliff.

Plan C - 3 floors w/ master bedroom on top which had a south facing angled huge skylight above the bed.

Plan D - the current one - a 2 floor version of B with a skylight like C which will run from just over our bed, south over the kitchen.  The master bedroom is set up so that it is open into the kitchen and living room so the view from all the windows in the living room and bedroom can be shared.  There is going to be a large pocket door and a pocket wall that we can move into place for privacy when guests are over.  Most of the living/dining/kitchen area is going to be floor-to-ceiling windows looking out towards the cliff.  The master bedroom window looks west out into a beautiful stand of poplar trees.

We were excitedly waiting to see this update and it did not diasappoint.  After spending a lot of time this weekend looking at the plans, there aren't many changes that we will want made other than moving a couple doors and maybe a window near the master bedroom.  I think this is the final design concept and now its on to working out the details.  As Jim goes on to work out the structural and building details, we've got a few things we need to work on as well:

Heating/Cooling - no forced air (i.e. duct work).  We'll have radiant heat in the floors and use a geothermal well system to heat and cool the house.  Anne is working out the early details of the geothermal system.  We will be on a well for water, we'll be drilling that anyway.

Photovoltaic system - we had an assessment done by a consultant and are waiting on the results of how efficient our site will be and how many panels we will need.

Electricity/Phone - need to figure out what is the best way to get it up to the top of the hill.  Our access road is 1/2 mile from the paved road (and power) to the house site.  It's not feasible to trench up the road, so we need to figure out how to go up the side of the hill.  I think we will also have a back-up generator in case.  Since our power will be coming down the road from a long single run either way on the highway, in the event that there is a big storm/ice storm, a generator would be a good idea.

Septic System - not really happy about this, but here is no sewer system in this area so we'll need a septic field or large holding tank.  We don;t have much flat land at the top of the hill, so the latter is probably the only choice we have.

We've set a goal to start construction in April/May 2012 to give us time to finish working out these details and hopefully to have it completed by December in 2012, just in time for the end of the world!

We spent last night out in Joshua Tree National Park with our telescope out under the stars.  We stayed in Cottonwood Springs campground where every campsite was taken by dark.  Even though it was full, the people camping there were generally quite and their fires weren't too big.  The night was warm (55F), zero breeze, and one of the clearest skies we have had out there ever - the sky was very still, no twinkling stars.  We spent some time looking at Saturn, M13 Hercules Cluster, Veil Nebula, Sombrero Galaxy, cruising through various galaxies in Virgo, and a number of other Messier globular clusters.  Along with these, M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy, was the best we've ever seen it.  It was clearly visible even without averted vision and showed a lot of detail.   We also looked at M16 the Eagle Nebula - on several previous occasions, I've tried to see the Pillars of Creation region of the Eagle Nebula but had never been able to make them out before.  The Pillars are one of the early Hubble Space Telescope pictures that were publicly popular.  With a little searching, both Anne and I were able to see them which was really exciting!  Amazingly, the Pillars were actually destroyed around 6,000 years ago by a supernova, and we won't see them destroyed for another 1,000 years or so, because M16 is 7,000 light years away.

Milky Way picture - 30 second exposure looking southeast toward Sagittarius (you can see it if you look closely).