No. 34 - Palo Verde House Plan (Free PDF Download)

No. 34 - Palo Verde Free House Plan Download

This house plan calls for structural insulated roof panels (SIPS) and insulated concrete form walls (ICFS), and insulated slab.

An Oasis in the Desert!

The Palo Verde is a client modification of the No. 31 - Fraxinus plan. This is a free downloadable PDF plan. A SketchUp Model is available for this plan.

DETAILS:

• Bedrooms: 2
• Bathrooms: 2
• Floors: 1
• Conditioned space: 735 sq. ft.
• Garage: 672 sq. ft.
• Overall dimensions: 21' x 35' with 24' x 28' attached garage
• Foundation type: Insulated slab with deep footings
• Construction type: SIPS & ICFS
• Heating & Cooling: Ductless Mini Split Heat-Pump
• Print size: 24" x 36"
• Immediate PDF download with license to build
• Design criteria: International Residential Code
• A modifiable SketchUp Model is available for this plan.

Download

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The week in pictures: Porch posts, finalizing our shear walls, and insulating the roof

This wall is ready for Tuesday's shear wall inspection. Ready for plywood! Installing trimmer studs to catch the sheathing. Porch beam up! Local 8x8 western red cedar porch posts are up; tomorrow we build the roof! Installing exterior roof insulation today.

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Ithaca House: Beams, Rafters & Roof Sheathing!

The summer weather is here and we are making great progress on our house!

Last Sunday we built the interior load bearing wall - a stud wall area and two built up posts where a more open entrance area will be. We built the overhead beam in place from 2 x 8 material as the location where our rafters would meet and be attached.

This week we installed our 2 x 12 rafters front and back. They were 18 foot lengths and we overhung them 2 feet in the front for an eave that will eventually be boxed in to house speakers and lighting, and extended for aesthetic by attaching them via pergola to some posts yet to be installed up front.

We also had our roof sheathing (⅝” CDX) delivered along with the foam insulation that we will use for exterior insulation.

The plywood we installed today - it went quite smoothly and just about concludes any heavy lifting required for this job. It’s been a smooth process, quite a joy to work on!  The simplicity of the design is delighting us at every turn!

This week we’ll continue work on the roof. We’ll nail the plywood down, paper it, and then prepare the framing around the outside for the exterior insulation. Then we’ll install all the foam boards. We hope to perhaps install the posts for the side porch and get that underway as well. We’re also placing our metal roofing order this week. Looking forward to having a roof on before summer’s end!

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Ithaca House: Raising Walls

Wall Jacks & Tweakers!

THE NIFTY TWEAKER

We spent last week building and raising all the walls of our house. Friends with a wall jack offered to help us raise them if we built them as large units and we agreed. We have built walls as full lengths a few times, but have never used a wall jack before. To say we were amazed and delighted with the technology would be an understatement. Occasionally in building or doing any sort of work, you encounter tools that impress you with their simplicity and their tailor made value - a tool expressly built to accomplish something and absolutely able to do it with a minimum of effort. Prior winners of the Amazing Tools award include clamps of all sizes and a clever little tool called, cunningly, The Tweaker (it’s great for twisting studs into place for nailing).

The wall jack achieves this lofty status as well because a thirty foot segment of wall can basically be raised by one person. Pictures follow, but you basically nail the cleated foot of the jack into the ground, right the mast like part of the jack with the metal cable tied into a window (or if you have no window, you can drill a small hole in the plywood and tie it that way). Then you use your arm to pump the handle and raise the wall into place. It helps to have another person or two around to help level/plumb the wall and nail in the bracing, but really, this is such a great way to raise a wall especially without a ton of people or if you have an exceedingly heavy wall to lift. We have four walls standing now, and have built the interior load bearing wall as well.

This week we are on to raising the rafters. Hard to believe and a source of sheer delight! 

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Ithaca House: Insulating the Slab, Preparing to Frame

Insulating above & below the slab

We have officially broken ground and begun a new project, back in our home town of Pt. Roberts. It’s been so good to be home, and we were able, thanks to friends helping us move speedily along, to get started right away.

After getting home in late May, we took a couple of days to get adjusted and then Jeff Peltier of Hank’s Backhoe Service (insert link) got us off the ground by beginning our excavation and setting up our foundation concrete pours right away. We were able to easily coordinate with him and as he got pours done for us, we handled installing electrical conduits, sewer buck-outs, yard and subfloor plumbing, insulating the slab, and even doing some of the gravel work to expedite things. The pours came together well and inside of a month, we were ready to begin framing. We did take a few days off to handle some business and have a bit of leisure, but now we are officially on to framing.

Pictures are not the most exciting when you are starting groundwork - the yard is a mess, things are still semi churned up and there’s only so much excitement we can expect people to muster for our concrete work, sill plates, and the subfloor work, but for those diehard fans, it’s worth noting that we are learning as much as we can from this concrete pour in preparation to perhaps try one on our own someday. This time around, we insulated the slab, and are also installing sleepers and interior grade insulation under a 1 ⅛” plywood subfloor. Our insulation values on this home are going to be as high as we can make them - our goal being a highly energy efficient house.

And of course, thanks also to Jeff’s speedy work, along with a lot of fabulous aged manure from his family’s horses, we now have a garden growing, too. Now it’s beginning to feel like home.

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Read My Tiny House Beekeeping Story in Tiny House Magazine, Issue No. 42!

Read the article...TINY HOUSE MAGAZINE ISSUE NO. 31

I was flattered and excited to have some of my musings about bees and small houses featured in Tiny House Magazine. If you haven’t checked out the magazine and are a tiny house enthusiast, you should enjoy it and can check it out or subscribe to it HERE.

They featured an article I wrote a few years ago (when I was actively keeping a few colonies of bees on site) about the potential health benefits to bees of smaller cell size (speculative, but might interest beekeepers!) and the akin issue of the financial health of we humans living in smaller houses. While cleaning up the article for re-publication, I was surprised at how relevant the material still seems. The trend toward larger house size in both honey bees and humans might have both have unintended drawbacks! If you’re interested in bees or just checking out Tiny House Magazine, please give my article a read (Tiny House Magazine, Issue No. 42). 

Also check out a related website, the hugely popular Tiny House Blog.

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