Sarah, as you convert a general CAD course into intro to architecture, keep in mind the vast majority of your students are much more likely to end up as engineers or scientists. World of architecture is tiny.
In fact I would probably veto such course change. No different than if a plumber tried to change the course into only drawing pipes.
My high school cad class was entirely mechanical drafting, but it was work at your own pace, so once I blew through it, I got to do what I wanted. It would have been nice if the teacher had a way to nourish that extra time with something...
Point noted, rusty. I'll try to keep it balanced, and really listen to the students. But the class is already an architecture class, they are currently designing a new addition for their teacher.
Just a random update: the cream cheese/ Greek yogurt combo worked perfectly in the tofu lasagna. I still mixed in ricotta, like the recipe said, but no tofu! I'd do the mixture again.
Um, I'm very embarrassed that I can't remember which of our TC regulars posted this video on FB, but it's wonderful for dog lovers - snook you will especially find it adorable!
manta, point agreed. as i said my own is 6ish yrs old. maybe it is just the upfront cost...
Sara re: this I feel that not everyone was cut out to be an academic, and thats ok, we need those people, but the education system is leaving them behind.
Have you seen Your profitability might just skyrocket. news item? From Mr Baker, AIA about paraprofessionals and architectural services?
What about the rest of you. Especially the practicing, licensed architects?
hmm...some trouble posting today. not sure what i am doing wrong...
anyway....we look for staff who can think critically without too much prodding, and if possible someone who is not intellectually timid would be ideal. a cog in the machine like in that article makes no sense to me at all. i assume it works at large firms. ?
i like sarah's idea. any office will appreciate someone capable of seeing even a bit farther than their nose, no?
is your school a tech HS sarah? when i was in JH and HS we had shop class where we learned basic plumbing electrical wiring electronics, auto repair etc...and also a semester of drafting. i sort of assumed that was what you would teach, but now sounds like more elaborate than that...?
kinda late, but this is dad's place. we lived here as well for a year or so and can attest it is very comfy, if cold in the winter. no central heating as is the norm in japan, and lots of glass for the connecting to nature stuff (which is great in summer but chilly in winter)...
winter (you can just see the bit where the groundwater is melting the snowfall
anyway....we look for staff who can think critically without too much prodding, and if possible someone who is not intellectually timid would be ideal. a cog in the machine like in that article makes no sense to me at all. i assume it works at large firms. ?
what? and question the way we do things around here? you're fired.
@ toasteroven, yeah you know i want people to challenge the way we do things and to tell me my design is shit too. as long as they can support the comments and/or show me how to do it better. i think the point of hiring staff is to make the office more than i could do on my own, not just to add extra tools to save some time....call me crazy.
about house, it's nicer than it looks in photos. dad in law owns a construction company so he had it redone with proper plaster and mud walls ($$$) and hardwood floors, exposing the massive wooden structure in rooms and so on. japan has an amazingly rich material pallet to draw on....
Jump, those photos are interesting. The house looks very normal/suburban. I might even go so far as to say a mix of german/tudor waddle and daub, japan, and american suburbs. Which is really interesting since you say its original, just a bit updated. I think I was expecting something more like the japanese tea house in philly. It's really just so normal.
No, this isn't a tech high school. It's just a normal, public school. My HS didn't even offer drafting/cad. We had an ag department, and those guys welded boxes for a vulcraft down the street. I'm amazed at the things they teach in large schools.
Has anybody else seen the new Disney comercial where the parents suprise the kids with a trip to Disney world? It makes me happy. I've never been to Disney world. Is it all that? Anybody else seen the comercial? Am I hormonal?
sarah i hate disney as a company. but have mega appreciation and nostalgia for both thier older movies and when i visit Disney World.
You can pretend to be a kid for a bit.
Although honestly my biggest problem in life (not in terms of maturity) but just presentation is that sometimes i still act too much like a kid. With childlike innocence and naiveity.
I loved going to Disneyland in Ca. as a kid, but looking back it seems like it was mostly stress and waiting in lines. Maybe that;s a grown up's cynicism though.
jump that house is amazing. Totally beautiful. It somehow still amazes me that people live in such considered and traditional spaces - like Sarah, I really only know Japanese architecture from museums - the Japanese Gardens in Portland and Philly are both very good. I imagine myself feeling entirely serene every day if I live in a house like that.
Finally got to take breath for the first time this week after my early meeting today. I'm beat.
Yeah, I don't think so, Donna. At least, I hope not. Haven't been depressed or nauseous. (Why does that have to be such a hard word to spell?) One of my good friends is pregnant though. I've lost my drinking buddy. It's sad for me, but she's happy this is the last time she has to do this.
tawking 'bout furnaces, had a blower door test for our uber chilly house today. the bad news is that it leaks like a sieve, especially from the newish gas fireplace surround and in the livingroom that was converted from a porch. good news is that I got a coupla tubes of caulk, foam, and neat infrared photos of all the major drafts. certainly learned a ton - so the $100 fee was worth it even if we don't save that much in the next few months. but knowing how energy intensive our bungelow is, certainly makes this greenie feel like a hypocrite.
my dad in law's house is original but updated quite a bit sarah. still it remains at heart a farm house. it isn't exactly suburban american to my mind though the scale is similar.
tatami in most rooms, or else hardwood. the kitchen used to be finished with dirt floor so it sits down about a foot from the rest of the house and now is finished with oak recycled from whisky barrels. no sofas, no armchairs and we usually sleep on futons, so the life inside is quite different. also only sliding doors, including all round the outside walls in most every room, and in between the rooms on the inside. which means if you have a bedroom in this kind of house there are no walls for hanging posters (how do teenagers manage it?) and if you want to go outside you just step out from your bedroom. privacy is zero.
usually the deal is that you heat the room you are using and the rest of the house is left cold/hot. no heat or AC at night either. there is a wooden hibachi (coal brazier) in the interior pic that used to be used to heat the room, nowadays it is usually done with portable kerosene heaters (very hi-tech ones actually) which work pretty well.
it is all geared to the summertime really, when the interior sliding doors (fusuma) are changed to be even more open (made with twigs instead of paper) and the whole house lets air through. quite amazing. but in the winter very cold. snook's place looks much more cozy.
but the actual nice thing about this home is that is restful and with all those sliding doors opening up to the outside world the massive property becomes a real part of daily life. front yard has a fountain and a carp pond with a path through the traditional garden, while the back yard is more or less a planted forest, and the land all round is still farmland. and all that just 15 minutes from the mall ;-)
i tell you, folks new how to live once upon a time.
It looks beautiful, jump, and sounds very restful.
I'm curious about way one moves through spaces - I've often wondered this in looking at historic japanese floor plans - does one move from one room to the next, always? I mean - there's not separated circulation sequence, is there? So - if you have a bedroom - do people end up moving through it to get to say the kitchen? How does that work?
Actually how does the kitchen work, too? How is cooking done? Appliances, food storage, etc? I've always been interested in this and you can't tell from the historic stuff - they never talk about what is really like to LIVE in a house.
Last question - how do people normally furnish / personalize the rooms? Does each room look like the next, or are there peculiarities of furnishing? Is there differentiation in decorating? How would that be accomplished? (does one hang framed pictures, or are the walls/sliding doors themselves the focal point?) How is electricity provided - in the floor?
Don't critters get in the house when you open it up in the summer?
About heating just the room you are occupying, this is what I want to do here and is what I think of every time that dumb furnace kicks on. I keep the thermostat way low and have a few electric space heaters and lots of blankets. I have a 120 year old brick house and a forced air furnace makes no sense.
I have been thinking about getting one of those blower tests too. I'm pretty anxious about it as I KNOW the house is ridiculously leaky. But if I switch to a different heating system, why can't the house be leaky? I need more than caulk to get this place in shape, I need storm windows, attic insulation, crawl space insulation and more to make a furnace make sense.
I want to get a blower test/efficiency scan whatever-it-is dealio done on my house too. I *think* we have blow-in insulation in the walls, but honestly we might not - my house is very, very leaky. I actually fantasize about it burning down so I can start over and do ALL radiant floor slabs (it's slab on grade, and I hate basements anyway).
Scratch burning down to floating away in a flood - like in City of Sound's posts of the video from Brisbane where the cars are all floating away. That scared me - we live very near a rive, behind a levee, and pay FEMA insurance monthly. I really DON'T want my house to burn down or float away, but thinking about re-designing it is how I find lemonade!
So back to tk's post: how do I find someone to do that kind of energy efficiency evaluation on my house? I used to know a guy who did it, but he moved away when his wife went to grad school.
@manta, most new homes are probably the same as what you would find in the usa but a bit smaller, no basement, and with not much of a yard. it is still possible to get traditional homes though, for the folks who don't like western style of living. japan is pretty rich in choices that way...
kitchens are the same as in usa/canada except there is no oven usually. instead there is a fish grill (like a salamander for the cooks out there) and most food is cooked on gas burner. muminlaw's kitchen is like that. fridges are smaller too since most people do groceries every day and don't need massive freezers etc.
hallways between rooms is normal enough, but more usually around the outside of the home in a hallway/room-extendy space called an engawa. basically a back porch with sliding doors connecting to the rooms on one side and glass doors to the outside on the other side.
it isn't strange for rooms to be connected to each other only by sliding doors so that you do have to go through one room to another. which maybe sounds weird but have to remember that rooms are not given names and uses change all the time. futons get put into the closet every morning so a bedroom even is only a temporary thing.
when we were first married we lived in a traditional house and moved our bedroom around depending on whim and the weather/time of year. ditto for the living room because we used a kotatsu (a low table that you would sit around on cushions) and no sofa at all. which meant literally that we lived in a kind of universal space a la mies van der rohe. but totally extreme. there were no rooms, only spaces that could be opened and closed to each other.
electricity is in the walls usually.
personalisation is cool, but without walls to hang stuff pictures are pretty rare. maybe you get one wall to put a poster on in a kid's room but thats about it. its almost like being a nomad in your own home.
then again, i don't mean to give the impression everyone lives this way, anymore than most people live in a home like snook does. it is becoming ever more rare. myself i prefer traditional places because hallways are a waste of floor area and it is great to be able to make rooms bigger and smaller at the drop of a hat.
didn't obama make some kind of program to do those energy checks, donna? maybe you should call the white house...;-)
@ strawbeary, animals sometimes get in the house. usually bats and birds. other animals stay away. there are insect screens on outside too, though i usually don't use them because i like uninterrupted view.
heating only the rooms we use is brilliant. we heat the toilet seats not the bathroom and hot water is heated up on demand instead of kept in a tank. Kotatsu's also come with heaters you can attach to the bottom and blankets that keep the heat in like so...
. my MIL's cats sleep here in wintertime. very toasty and surprisingly common. if the feet are warm the room doesn't need to be, somehow...
we don't use a kotatsu in our place, but mum does. it suits her place and late on winter night when the family gathers it is often with everyone sitting on floor with feet under the heater. sounds kinda weird now i write that...
donna, I scheduled the energy eval through our gas company (happens to be centerpoint energy). they subsidize the test (the retail price is ~$300 or so) and provide a bunch of other energy conservation programs too. If I want to swap out the thermostat or other tasks, they will send technicians over gratis to install what every I buy...
If I ever buy a house, right after the home inspector will be a blower test before we close - lots of valuable info about how well a house is built and where the major flaws might be.
yeah my utility co does it as well Donna. There are freelance specialist. People I know have done it. So i guess you might be able to find in Yellowbook/google.
Snook gorgeous house and lovely dogs. I'm glad to see the dogs are without paw boots - it's hard to keep people serious who insist on their pups wearing them (even if they need to).
Donna I too am having a craving for bourbon, but the path through scotch sounds bearable and inviting. I think I'll do the same.
Missus is all well. The pox has run it's course. And I've sent her on a jet plane back to work. Now the fun begins as I find a way to magically recapture the lost week of preparation for the start of teaching on tuesday. Arghhh. I need to write a charrette brief for street furniture based on the ideas of tectonics and sustainability.
Jump, not to be crass, but every one is thinking it anyway. With paper walls, and walking through rooms to get to other rooms, how does one have "relations?". And if everyone has their feet under the same blanket, do you ever get that awkward feeling of touching other peoples feet, like you MIL's?I see it all working well if you're newly weds, but after? And if there's no oven, how do you have cake!?
jump fantastic photos and thanks for the lessons in Japanese living. I don't have to worry about heating spaces where I am at but a thought on it made me realise that we do the same with cooling generally. Cool the area you are in, typically with a ceiling or standing fan (the latter is usually ugly as sin/f*ck but does a great job moving the air around on humid days
Just so folks don't get the wrong picture of my life from the above:
My 3yo just pooped with the bathroom door open, THEN closed the door because ' I don't want anybody to see me wash my hands.'.
well, i guess it does explains the amazing number of love hotels, eh.
it is all very cozy and makes for close families i suppose. i never found it awkward myself. occasionally i complain about the cold rooms but in general the lifestyle is low energy and flexible as heck. i also like that it is low energy but not based on hyper control and efficiency. i am definitely in the mcdonough camp on that end.
for all those with kids, any advice on getting an almost 3 year old to take a nap? my wife has started nannying/babysitting for one of my professor/colleague/friend's daughter and that is the only problem that she's had so far...
Wait, how do you know it was a clip on? And did he wear it as a joke?
I just looked over the fashions (Jezebel has a great round up) and I'll admit, tonight, Johnny Depp looks way more stylin' than Brad does.
I have no idea how to get a 3yo to nap. Angus is a terrible sleeper, for which I blame myself, of course, because I never figured out how to teach him to fall asleep. I did read to him before every nap/bedtime - don't know if it helps or not, maybe it just gets his imagination wound up?
arggggh!!!! last day to prepare for classes and I'm feeling rather behind! the syllabi and schedules are sort-of finished - guess they're good enough, but the assignments are woefully lacking - at least I have a few days before they need to be handed out. But the next few weeks are solidly booked already with sooo little 'free' time to actually sit down and write. Oh, wait; what am I doing on archinect when I could be working on the 'climate action plan outline' assignment, or figuring out what case studies to assign in studio? maybe I should take advantage of waking up early and not being able to get back to sleep (damn back!) - naww, I need some downtime to sip coffee and collect my thoughts!
tawkin 'bout clip-ons, my sis just sent us a hand-me-down clip-on for the shrub. but when will he ever need one?
Dream analysis anyone? Lately I'm frequently having studio dreams in which it's 13 weeks into the semester and I haven't even started on my studio design project because I've been too busy doing all my other classwork. Interpretations? I dreamed it again last night - probably a dozen variations on it in the last 6 months. And yes, I'm overwhelmed with responsibility right now!
And if anyone's interested in talking red carpet looks, my favorite was Emma Stone's severely chic monotone, seen here. I'm not crazy about her makeup, but the dress and accessories are perfect.
I didn't like her dress, but I may have been the only one who didn't. I saw that Angie/Pitt thing. I wasn't sure what she was doing, but it seemed so gala-inappropriate. Maybe its somehting about how they're stars, and not real, and a woman fixing her man's tie is so ordinary and domestic.
I liked this one, but it looks terrible in the photo. Weird, huh.
The GG weren't as funny as I thought they were going to be.
I think I must be the only person in the world who doesn't find Gervais very funny. (And I normally LOVE british humor!) (Although come to think of it, his style is more American than anything.) Anyway, I don't like the British Office, and I don't ever find him funny. Plus, and this is awful to admit, but I have trouble understanding his speech. He mumbles & it's unintelligible when combined with such a heavy accent!
manta, I often don't understand Gervais either. But when I do, I generally think he's hysterically funny but way, way over the top - and the reel of last night's most controversial moments of him hosting was, in my mind, quite a bit mean-spirited, though also funny. But maybe a little too much on the side of mean.
Ugh, MLK day for me means trying to get work done while knowing I need to take my kid out to burn some energy. He could have had a much, much more valuable day learning of King's contributions to society at school. I admit, today I'm a shitty parent.
I took Frito Jack out for a romp in the deep snow this afternoon, as he was fetching his favorite deflated ball ("Purple Rain"). I was shoveling off the deck from our last storm cause we have another coming for a predawn visit. It needed to be done so I could bring
wood in for the fireplace. Just so we can feel cozy.
I just blew off the things I really needed to get done cause it is a Holiday and the phone isn't ringing.
I imagine the Ski Slopes on the East Coast are jambing, with all the snow.
Jump think your In laws Place in the mountains if a far cry nicer than our little digs.
Thread Central
Sarah, as you convert a general CAD course into intro to architecture, keep in mind the vast majority of your students are much more likely to end up as engineers or scientists. World of architecture is tiny.
In fact I would probably veto such course change. No different than if a plumber tried to change the course into only drawing pipes.
My high school cad class was entirely mechanical drafting, but it was work at your own pace, so once I blew through it, I got to do what I wanted. It would have been nice if the teacher had a way to nourish that extra time with something...
Point noted, rusty. I'll try to keep it balanced, and really listen to the students. But the class is already an architecture class, they are currently designing a new addition for their teacher.
Just a random update: the cream cheese/ Greek yogurt combo worked perfectly in the tofu lasagna. I still mixed in ricotta, like the recipe said, but no tofu! I'd do the mixture again.
Um, I'm very embarrassed that I can't remember which of our TC regulars posted this video on FB, but it's wonderful for dog lovers - snook you will especially find it adorable!
The True Meaning Of Dogsledding
manta, point agreed. as i said my own is 6ish yrs old. maybe it is just the upfront cost...
Sara re: this
I feel that not everyone was cut out to be an academic, and thats ok, we need those people, but the education system is leaving them behind.
Have you seen Your profitability might just skyrocket. news item? From Mr Baker, AIA about paraprofessionals and architectural services?
What about the rest of you. Especially the practicing, licensed architects?
[i]oh yeah its been awhile[/b]!!!
dam, half right..
oh yeah its been awhile!!!
hmm...some trouble posting today. not sure what i am doing wrong...
anyway....we look for staff who can think critically without too much prodding, and if possible someone who is not intellectually timid would be ideal. a cog in the machine like in that article makes no sense to me at all. i assume it works at large firms. ?
i like sarah's idea. any office will appreciate someone capable of seeing even a bit farther than their nose, no?
is your school a tech HS sarah? when i was in JH and HS we had shop class where we learned basic plumbing electrical wiring electronics, auto repair etc...and also a semester of drafting. i sort of assumed that was what you would teach, but now sounds like more elaborate than that...?
kinda late, but this is dad's place. we lived here as well for a year or so and can attest it is very comfy, if cold in the winter. no central heating as is the norm in japan, and lots of glass for the connecting to nature stuff (which is great in summer but chilly in winter)...
winter (you can just see the bit where the groundwater is melting the snowfall
and just for fun, a bit of contrast
summer
what? and question the way we do things around here? you're fired.
nice place, btw...
lol.
@ toasteroven, yeah you know i want people to challenge the way we do things and to tell me my design is shit too. as long as they can support the comments and/or show me how to do it better. i think the point of hiring staff is to make the office more than i could do on my own, not just to add extra tools to save some time....call me crazy.
about house, it's nicer than it looks in photos. dad in law owns a construction company so he had it redone with proper plaster and mud walls ($$$) and hardwood floors, exposing the massive wooden structure in rooms and so on. japan has an amazingly rich material pallet to draw on....
Jump, those photos are interesting. The house looks very normal/suburban. I might even go so far as to say a mix of german/tudor waddle and daub, japan, and american suburbs. Which is really interesting since you say its original, just a bit updated. I think I was expecting something more like the japanese tea house in philly. It's really just so normal.
No, this isn't a tech high school. It's just a normal, public school. My HS didn't even offer drafting/cad. We had an ag department, and those guys welded boxes for a vulcraft down the street. I'm amazed at the things they teach in large schools.
Has anybody else seen the new Disney comercial where the parents suprise the kids with a trip to Disney world? It makes me happy. I've never been to Disney world. Is it all that? Anybody else seen the comercial? Am I hormonal?
sarah i hate disney as a company. but have mega appreciation and nostalgia for both thier older movies and when i visit Disney World.
You can pretend to be a kid for a bit.
Although honestly my biggest problem in life (not in terms of maturity) but just presentation is that sometimes i still act too much like a kid. With childlike innocence and naiveity.
Jump-
The window views are lovely! Summer or winter.
Sarah you're pregnant maybe?
I loved going to Disneyland in Ca. as a kid, but looking back it seems like it was mostly stress and waiting in lines. Maybe that;s a grown up's cynicism though.
jump that house is amazing. Totally beautiful. It somehow still amazes me that people live in such considered and traditional spaces - like Sarah, I really only know Japanese architecture from museums - the Japanese Gardens in Portland and Philly are both very good. I imagine myself feeling entirely serene every day if I live in a house like that.
Finally got to take breath for the first time this week after my early meeting today. I'm beat.
Yeah, I don't think so, Donna. At least, I hope not. Haven't been depressed or nauseous. (Why does that have to be such a hard word to spell?) One of my good friends is pregnant though. I've lost my drinking buddy. It's sad for me, but she's happy this is the last time she has to do this.
Beautiful house and gardens. What do you do for heat? I strongly dislike furnaces.
tawking 'bout furnaces, had a blower door test for our uber chilly house today. the bad news is that it leaks like a sieve, especially from the newish gas fireplace surround and in the livingroom that was converted from a porch. good news is that I got a coupla tubes of caulk, foam, and neat infrared photos of all the major drafts. certainly learned a ton - so the $100 fee was worth it even if we don't save that much in the next few months. but knowing how energy intensive our bungelow is, certainly makes this greenie feel like a hypocrite.
thats kool TK.
my dad in law's house is original but updated quite a bit sarah. still it remains at heart a farm house. it isn't exactly suburban american to my mind though the scale is similar.
tatami in most rooms, or else hardwood. the kitchen used to be finished with dirt floor so it sits down about a foot from the rest of the house and now is finished with oak recycled from whisky barrels. no sofas, no armchairs and we usually sleep on futons, so the life inside is quite different. also only sliding doors, including all round the outside walls in most every room, and in between the rooms on the inside. which means if you have a bedroom in this kind of house there are no walls for hanging posters (how do teenagers manage it?) and if you want to go outside you just step out from your bedroom. privacy is zero.
usually the deal is that you heat the room you are using and the rest of the house is left cold/hot. no heat or AC at night either. there is a wooden hibachi (coal brazier) in the interior pic that used to be used to heat the room, nowadays it is usually done with portable kerosene heaters (very hi-tech ones actually) which work pretty well.
it is all geared to the summertime really, when the interior sliding doors (fusuma) are changed to be even more open (made with twigs instead of paper) and the whole house lets air through. quite amazing. but in the winter very cold. snook's place looks much more cozy.
but the actual nice thing about this home is that is restful and with all those sliding doors opening up to the outside world the massive property becomes a real part of daily life. front yard has a fountain and a carp pond with a path through the traditional garden, while the back yard is more or less a planted forest, and the land all round is still farmland. and all that just 15 minutes from the mall ;-)
i tell you, folks new how to live once upon a time.
It looks beautiful, jump, and sounds very restful.
I'm curious about way one moves through spaces - I've often wondered this in looking at historic japanese floor plans - does one move from one room to the next, always? I mean - there's not separated circulation sequence, is there? So - if you have a bedroom - do people end up moving through it to get to say the kitchen? How does that work?
Actually how does the kitchen work, too? How is cooking done? Appliances, food storage, etc? I've always been interested in this and you can't tell from the historic stuff - they never talk about what is really like to LIVE in a house.
Last question - how do people normally furnish / personalize the rooms? Does each room look like the next, or are there peculiarities of furnishing? Is there differentiation in decorating? How would that be accomplished? (does one hang framed pictures, or are the walls/sliding doors themselves the focal point?) How is electricity provided - in the floor?
Don't critters get in the house when you open it up in the summer?
About heating just the room you are occupying, this is what I want to do here and is what I think of every time that dumb furnace kicks on. I keep the thermostat way low and have a few electric space heaters and lots of blankets. I have a 120 year old brick house and a forced air furnace makes no sense.
I have been thinking about getting one of those blower tests too. I'm pretty anxious about it as I KNOW the house is ridiculously leaky. But if I switch to a different heating system, why can't the house be leaky? I need more than caulk to get this place in shape, I need storm windows, attic insulation, crawl space insulation and more to make a furnace make sense.
How do you keep plumbing from freezing?
Looks like jump is going to be busy, sorry for all the questions on top of the other questions!
I want to get a blower test/efficiency scan whatever-it-is dealio done on my house too. I *think* we have blow-in insulation in the walls, but honestly we might not - my house is very, very leaky. I actually fantasize about it burning down so I can start over and do ALL radiant floor slabs (it's slab on grade, and I hate basements anyway).
Scratch burning down to floating away in a flood - like in City of Sound's posts of the video from Brisbane where the cars are all floating away. That scared me - we live very near a rive, behind a levee, and pay FEMA insurance monthly. I really DON'T want my house to burn down or float away, but thinking about re-designing it is how I find lemonade!
So back to tk's post: how do I find someone to do that kind of energy efficiency evaluation on my house? I used to know a guy who did it, but he moved away when his wife went to grad school.
@manta, most new homes are probably the same as what you would find in the usa but a bit smaller, no basement, and with not much of a yard. it is still possible to get traditional homes though, for the folks who don't like western style of living. japan is pretty rich in choices that way...
kitchens are the same as in usa/canada except there is no oven usually. instead there is a fish grill (like a salamander for the cooks out there) and most food is cooked on gas burner. muminlaw's kitchen is like that. fridges are smaller too since most people do groceries every day and don't need massive freezers etc.
hallways between rooms is normal enough, but more usually around the outside of the home in a hallway/room-extendy space called an engawa. basically a back porch with sliding doors connecting to the rooms on one side and glass doors to the outside on the other side.
it isn't strange for rooms to be connected to each other only by sliding doors so that you do have to go through one room to another. which maybe sounds weird but have to remember that rooms are not given names and uses change all the time. futons get put into the closet every morning so a bedroom even is only a temporary thing.
when we were first married we lived in a traditional house and moved our bedroom around depending on whim and the weather/time of year. ditto for the living room because we used a kotatsu (a low table that you would sit around on cushions) and no sofa at all. which meant literally that we lived in a kind of universal space a la mies van der rohe. but totally extreme. there were no rooms, only spaces that could be opened and closed to each other.
electricity is in the walls usually.
personalisation is cool, but without walls to hang stuff pictures are pretty rare. maybe you get one wall to put a poster on in a kid's room but thats about it. its almost like being a nomad in your own home.
then again, i don't mean to give the impression everyone lives this way, anymore than most people live in a home like snook does. it is becoming ever more rare. myself i prefer traditional places because hallways are a waste of floor area and it is great to be able to make rooms bigger and smaller at the drop of a hat.
Donna - our utility company does those tests, and the prices are very reasonable.
didn't obama make some kind of program to do those energy checks, donna? maybe you should call the white house...;-)
. my MIL's cats sleep here in wintertime. very toasty and surprisingly common. if the feet are warm the room doesn't need to be, somehow...
@ strawbeary, animals sometimes get in the house. usually bats and birds. other animals stay away. there are insect screens on outside too, though i usually don't use them because i like uninterrupted view.
heating only the rooms we use is brilliant. we heat the toilet seats not the bathroom and hot water is heated up on demand instead of kept in a tank. Kotatsu's also come with heaters you can attach to the bottom and blankets that keep the heat in like so...
we don't use a kotatsu in our place, but mum does. it suits her place and late on winter night when the family gathers it is often with everyone sitting on floor with feet under the heater. sounds kinda weird now i write that...
Awesome. I long to live in a house void of the roar of a furnace and ducts blowing air around.
And what about plumbing lines, are they heated to keep from freezing?
donna, I scheduled the energy eval through our gas company (happens to be centerpoint energy). they subsidize the test (the retail price is ~$300 or so) and provide a bunch of other energy conservation programs too. If I want to swap out the thermostat or other tasks, they will send technicians over gratis to install what every I buy...
If I ever buy a house, right after the home inspector will be a blower test before we close - lots of valuable info about how well a house is built and where the major flaws might be.
yeah my utility co does it as well Donna. There are freelance specialist. People I know have done it. So i guess you might be able to find in Yellowbook/google.
happy sat.
wow feels like I'm having a relapse again.
Snook gorgeous house and lovely dogs. I'm glad to see the dogs are without paw boots - it's hard to keep people serious who insist on their pups wearing them (even if they need to).
Donna I too am having a craving for bourbon, but the path through scotch sounds bearable and inviting. I think I'll do the same.
Missus is all well. The pox has run it's course. And I've sent her on a jet plane back to work. Now the fun begins as I find a way to magically recapture the lost week of preparation for the start of teaching on tuesday. Arghhh. I need to write a charrette brief for street furniture based on the ideas of tectonics and sustainability.
Jump, not to be crass, but every one is thinking it anyway. With paper walls, and walking through rooms to get to other rooms, how does one have "relations?". And if everyone has their feet under the same blanket, do you ever get that awkward feeling of touching other peoples feet, like you MIL's?I see it all working well if you're newly weds, but after? And if there's no oven, how do you have cake!?
jump fantastic photos and thanks for the lessons in Japanese living. I don't have to worry about heating spaces where I am at but a thought on it made me realise that we do the same with cooling generally. Cool the area you are in, typically with a ceiling or standing fan (the latter is usually ugly as sin/f*ck but does a great job moving the air around on humid days
Questions that never occurred to me, Sarah.
I'm into a nice tumbler of 10yr Russell's Reserve. Pretty tasty.
And looking forward to brunch at my favorite restaurant tomorrow a.m.
Hey! My life sounds better than it felt a minute ago!
Just so folks don't get the wrong picture of my life from the above:
My 3yo just pooped with the bathroom door open, THEN closed the door because ' I don't want anybody to see me wash my hands.'.
?!
lol sarah.
well, i guess it does explains the amazing number of love hotels, eh.
it is all very cozy and makes for close families i suppose. i never found it awkward myself. occasionally i complain about the cold rooms but in general the lifestyle is low energy and flexible as heck. i also like that it is low energy but not based on hyper control and efficiency. i am definitely in the mcdonough camp on that end.
steven, that made me LOL...
for all those with kids, any advice on getting an almost 3 year old to take a nap? my wife has started nannying/babysitting for one of my professor/colleague/friend's daughter and that is the only problem that she's had so far...
Steven that was awesome. My 3y.o. is sitting on the pot this very instance. It's a stall technique so he doesn't have to go to bed.
Phillip, mine doesn't take a nap anymore. Maybe this new charge does t need one either. Otherwise, good luck!
best way is to put them in a room with 20 other kids who are taking a nap and then tell him its nap time. peer pressure is so powerful.
we never tried to get our kids to sleep in daytime unless they wanted to. maybe donna has a tip...
lol steven.
donna, huge cool points deducted from your man (brad pitt) for wearing a clip-on bow tie at the golden globes tonight!!!
Wait, how do you know it was a clip on? And did he wear it as a joke?
I just looked over the fashions (Jezebel has a great round up) and I'll admit, tonight, Johnny Depp looks way more stylin' than Brad does.
I have no idea how to get a 3yo to nap. Angus is a terrible sleeper, for which I blame myself, of course, because I never figured out how to teach him to fall asleep. I did read to him before every nap/bedtime - don't know if it helps or not, maybe it just gets his imagination wound up?
well even though i have tomorrow off, have to go in for a few hours to try and finish some stuff before week begins on Tues.
Somehow the weekend is almost over and i didn't seem to get much done.
Hey archi, glad to hear missus ok.
Steven hilarious squared!
night all.
arggggh!!!! last day to prepare for classes and I'm feeling rather behind! the syllabi and schedules are sort-of finished - guess they're good enough, but the assignments are woefully lacking - at least I have a few days before they need to be handed out. But the next few weeks are solidly booked already with sooo little 'free' time to actually sit down and write. Oh, wait; what am I doing on archinect when I could be working on the 'climate action plan outline' assignment, or figuring out what case studies to assign in studio? maybe I should take advantage of waking up early and not being able to get back to sleep (damn back!) - naww, I need some downtime to sip coffee and collect my thoughts!
tawkin 'bout clip-ons, my sis just sent us a hand-me-down clip-on for the shrub. but when will he ever need one?
donna, when they cut to one of the commercial breaks angie was helping him try to fix it and she was re-clipping it for him...
Very funny. That is pretty lame!
Dream analysis anyone? Lately I'm frequently having studio dreams in which it's 13 weeks into the semester and I haven't even started on my studio design project because I've been too busy doing all my other classwork. Interpretations? I dreamed it again last night - probably a dozen variations on it in the last 6 months. And yes, I'm overwhelmed with responsibility right now!
And if anyone's interested in talking red carpet looks, my favorite was Emma Stone's severely chic monotone, seen here. I'm not crazy about her makeup, but the dress and accessories are perfect.
I didn't like her dress, but I may have been the only one who didn't. I saw that Angie/Pitt thing. I wasn't sure what she was doing, but it seemed so gala-inappropriate. Maybe its somehting about how they're stars, and not real, and a woman fixing her man's tie is so ordinary and domestic.
I liked this one, but it looks terrible in the photo. Weird, huh.
The GG weren't as funny as I thought they were going to be.
Hi all,
Just got in too work.
gervais was funny as ever, although i only watched about 30 mins...
I think I must be the only person in the world who doesn't find Gervais very funny. (And I normally LOVE british humor!) (Although come to think of it, his style is more American than anything.) Anyway, I don't like the British Office, and I don't ever find him funny. Plus, and this is awful to admit, but I have trouble understanding his speech. He mumbles & it's unintelligible when combined with such a heavy accent!
Whew there I got that off my chest.
He was funny when I saw him on Ellen, but he wasn't doing an act, he was just being interviewed.
Hope you feel better now, Manta.
manta, I often don't understand Gervais either. But when I do, I generally think he's hysterically funny but way, way over the top - and the reel of last night's most controversial moments of him hosting was, in my mind, quite a bit mean-spirited, though also funny. But maybe a little too much on the side of mean.
Ugh, MLK day for me means trying to get work done while knowing I need to take my kid out to burn some energy. He could have had a much, much more valuable day learning of King's contributions to society at school. I admit, today I'm a shitty parent.
I took Frito Jack out for a romp in the deep snow this afternoon, as he was fetching his favorite deflated ball ("Purple Rain"). I was shoveling off the deck from our last storm cause we have another coming for a predawn visit. It needed to be done so I could bring
wood in for the fireplace. Just so we can feel cozy.
I just blew off the things I really needed to get done cause it is a Holiday and the phone isn't ringing.
I imagine the Ski Slopes on the East Coast are jambing, with all the snow.
Jump think your In laws Place in the mountains if a far cry nicer than our little digs.
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