At 01:34 AM 12/15/2002, you wrote:
>I let my wife read this because I couldn't understand why anyone would get
>a floor so wet that it would even have an opportunity to drain, and she
>couldn't understand this either! I clean all the floors at home using a small
>vacuum cleaner to get rid of dust, and a steam cleaner I bought at Sears. We
>put nothing but fresh water in the steamer, and our floors clean beautifully
>with this machine. (We have laminate flooring and tile upstairs, with
>tile and
>carpet downstairs. No, I don't use the steamer on the carpet!) The slight
>skim of moisture on the floors when I'm done cleaning evaporates rather
>quickly.
I used such a machine for my house in town. It was very nice, but
I will explain the concepts of this house a bit better. First realize it is
located on a farm-(perhaps more correctly an eventual homestead) in VA.
Here we have copious amounts of red clay- being tracked in every
door. There is no carpeting - this due to the 1" layer of dust/dirt I
found under my carpet padding in my house in town, removing it after just
five years of use. We tend toward allergies I strongly suspect that house
full of dust mite breeding carpet was a major culprit. However, we also
built a large house with room for more than one generation of family- like
the Walton's. ;) We currently house 7, from 3-83. I couldn't see running a
stream machine over all that floor (4500 sqft) - (200sqft is taken up by
insulation ) I found dumping and refilling the thing to be enough work when
I just used it on my small kitchen in town.
The Elder rooms are designed similar to hospital or nursing home
rooms. These have their drains located near the in room toilets- wonderful
in the event of a toilet breakdown/repair. I won't explain further, but if
you visit a nursing home, just notice the lack of carpeting and try to
figure out why. ;) I usually just use water and a floor squeegee/ scrubber
thing, pushing the water towards the drain. We have dark grey colored
concrete and applied various finishes after it was dry-(once again I
apparently really did a bad job on my concrete research, trusting the
installer- grrr), but have found none that have worked well. Most are
peeling off. Perhaps I will try plain wax, I just thought it would be too
slippery.
> We have a heat recovery ventilation system that exchanges air and
>controls indoor humidity.
This was "on my list" however, it was not "required" to move in so of
course it hasn't been added yet. I had a system picked out, but my HVAC
friend couldn't see how it differed significantly from a "regular" heat
pump- except it wouldn't heat your house. After thinking about it I
wondered that myself- is it just a heat pump with an expensive name? Joe
from Building Science advocated them in his books.
> (I wonder what our electric bill is going to be. .
>. In our old house, an "all electric" home built in the 1970's, we used
>around
>20 kW hours per day. The people at BC Hydro couldn't believe we used so
>"little" power, when they were boasting of "power smart" homes that used more
>than twice what we did. I thought our power consumption was outrageous. .
>. I
>guess perspective is everything!)
I just got a Watt meter from Radio Shack. We have been going around
measuring each appliance, for a day of use to see how much power each thing
uses.
Sky tubes were another ...to be added later, perk. I really need them in
the middle of the house. Almost all glazing is located on the South side
of the house- with a five foot overhang (four was minimum needed, larger to
make a "porch" was too expensive.) . Rather than windows, to get the amount
I needed I used sliding glass doors. This has been great, each bedroom has
it's own outside access, could have it's own little courtyard/garden. One
daughter has a dog door in hers, so her pet can come and go as he wants-
limited to just her room inside. Last spring we housed baby lambs in a pen
just outside one child's door to make it easy to feed them round the
clock. All that inside -outside does track some dirt, but as the song
said, "Life in the country is kind a laid back..."
I just found an article about designing a homestead that mentions
'Grauhotz'- a farmhouse thing that housed people and the animals built in
the 1700's. Wonder what this will inspire next?
http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/1_2002.htm
Caroline
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Biofuels list archives:
http://archive.nnytech.net/
Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address.
To unsubscribe, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
