House Design Update

Some cool House Design images:

House Design Update




Image by Juan Galicia

Just an update on this project www.flickr.com/photos/38713682@N03/6159687038/in/photostream

As you can see I started the facade, I decided to go with a traditional facade.... of course that in here it doesn't look so traditional but thats how they do a lot forest cabins, and since this would be in a forest (in theory) It seemed appropriate.

Got a lot of work ahead of me... I even plan on making the furniture for it :p

PS: I know the photos suck.. dont worry its just a progress update.. i´ll make sure to do them right when i finish the whole thing :p

new house design appt 004




Image by roger_mommaerts

From left: wall and trim color (bottom square is white trim color), carpet choice (only in bedrooms), porcelain tile: 13" in utility room (laid straight) and second bathroom (laid on diagonal), 18" in master bathroom (laid on diagonal), hardwood for entry, hallway, study, dining room, family room, kitchen and breakfast area, 4" travertine tile for backsplash (laid on diagonal), granite for kitchen countertop, maple cabinets in kitchen and all bathrooms.

Bat House With Slate Exterior




Image by yaquina

Here is the plan for a bat house that I designed. I built two of them and placed them at a nearby wildlife refuge (with the blessing of the refuge manager).

Design features:

- The top and front are made from slate floor tiles ( each at Home Depot). There are several reasons for using slate (vs. wood):
- It requires no maintenance (painting). It is already the right color for our area (dark) and does not need paint for weather protection.
- It warms quickly in sunlight, warming the house in the morning.
- It provides thermal mass, holding heat into the night.

- The landing pad is covered with a flattened piece of bark. Bark looks natural, and provides the roughness that the bats need for landing. After gluing the bark to the landing pad, I gave it several coats of exterior varnish to make it last longer.

- The design incorporates two ventilation features:
- A vent between the two front slates. This allows for some air circulation which the bats need on hot days. This is a fairly standard feature in recent bat house designs.
- A vent just under the slate roof. Air is drawn through a small gap between the rigid insulation and the upper front slate, and exits through five screened holes drilled in the back, very near the top of the house. This allows some air flow at the front crevice, even at the top of the crevice, and at the bottom of the nursery area. It also allows air flow under the roof slate, mimicking a slate roof. I am not an expert on slate roofs but I know most roof undersides need to allow for airflow to avoid water condensation on the underside of the roof.

- Some of the partitions are slanted because there is some research in our area showing that our bat species prefer a wedge-shape instead of an entirely vertical partition.

- The rigid insulation holds heat in the house from below, and reduces heat coming down from the roof on sunny days. This makes the bat house temperature more stable, and warmer at night, which most bats prefer.

- The design includes an "attic nursery", designed to meet the needs of mother bats with newborns. The mothers and pups like a temperature of around 90-100 degrees. The sloped attic floor should be a litte more forgiving for clumsy infants, vs. a vertical surface which if they lose their grip would drop them to the ground where they would be helpless and die. The down side of a non-vertical surface is that guano may accumulate here. But it does have some slope and guano is light, so most of it should get knocked out and fall to the ground. But we'll have to see what happens.

- I glued rough material (bark in one house, sisal rope in the other) to the roof of the attic so the bats could hang from the ceiling of the nursery area. The rope turned out to be a bad idea, though I did eventually get it to work. A piece of pet netting would work fine.

- I opted to extend one partition below the bottom of the house. This was mainly due to the dimensions of the wainscoting (which is 3.5" wide) - I did not want to have to rip any of it. But I also wanted to see if the bats would use this partition for landing and taking off.

- I melted wax onto the entire outer wood surfaces, for the following reasons:
- No maintenance. Wax never needs to be painted. The wax will dry out eventually, but that will take at least 15 years I would guess.
- As it weathers, the wax darkens the wood, to the color that is appropriate for our climate.
- The weathered wax finish will blend in well with the dead trees upon which the houses are mounted.
- On really hot days the wax melts, flowing into every little crack and knot in the wood. Any excess wax just drips off.
- Most waterproofing finishes are a form of dissolved wax, so when you put a waterproofer on your deck you are really just putting down mainly dissolved wax. I have experimented with melting wax directly into cedar, and have had good results (though it is very labor intensive). To get the same amount of wax into the wood with a waterproofing seal, I would have to put on many, many coats. Also this wax would not reflow on hot days, and waterproofer really only lasts about a year.


The total material cost for this house is a little over . The only special tool required was a tile saw to cut 45 degree bevels on the slates, but those are not completely necessary.

If I build more of these I think I will flatten the slope of the roof a bit so I can fit in one more partition. The front partition gap is a little bigger than I like (1.15").