As in all great campaigns, there usually are some changes between what’s on paper and the final product. Here is what Chris Tavernier the architect envisioned:
The Foundation
Lower Level
The wooden Deltec building was to sit on top of a concrete foundation approximately 10 feet above ground level in the lower part of the picture, and about 5 feet out of the ground in the upper part of the picture. Experienced Island Readers will look at the cistern capacity (11,700 gallons) and say “Too Small!”. But remember, it’s only us two and not full time. Per the USVI building code it could actually be as small as 6000 gallons, which then I would say is pushing it. One modification we made later was to divide the cistern into two separate tanks, so that if one developed a leak then the other would still have water. One thing I forgot to specify was where the access hatch to the cistern would be, which led to problems later. The doors in the pump room had to go as well, grade level during construction didn’t allow them. You’ll notice the upper two thirds of the picture is empty, this was to be our hurricane proof bunker for our golf cart and other stuff. It came in really handy later. Another modification was to excavate deeper to make this part of the building higher inside, the end result was almost a 9 foot tall ceiling in the bunker. The last mod was a 3 foot wide door opening between the equipment room and bunker to make up for the lost outside doors to the equipment room.
Upper Level
Main Floor
Yes, it’s all one room! For my job I live in hotel rooms half the month, so this is plenty for us as long as Buttercup doesn’t spread her stuff around too much. Where’s the bed? Solution was a Murphy bed against the lower wall adjacent to the bathroom. Out of a total of 10 sides in the room 4 are French door sized openings. There are a total of five 3 foot by 3 foot swinging casement windows in the main floor. We specified the swinging directions for these based on the prevailing winds, we may be sorry later that we didn’t go with the more normal in the Islands louvered windows. Since I make furniture in my Texas shop hopefully the angled cabinets won’t be too much of a problem. A swinging bathroom door as depicted would take too much room away, so for now the choice is a barn/saloon style door sliding on rails on the main room side. For clothes (don’t think we’ll need that many) storage I’ll build a armoire in the bathroom. On the kitchen side the double sided sink plan will be about as depicted, as will the wall with the stove. Instead of a full sized fridge (hard to run on off grid power) we’ll do a much smaller fridge which will free up room for a pantry cabinet I’ll build. Last thing is instead of the washer/dryer setup pictured it will be a shelf to put a studio apartment type washer, with a large sink next to it to set a spinner dryer in. It would take way too much power to have even a small forced air dryer. Time to break out the clothespins!
The Deck
We don’t go down to beautiful weather to live inside. The deck is about 1000 sq feet and stretches to the limits of the property line setbacks. It goes almost all the way around the building, both to catch the beautiful views and because I think it’ll make building maintenance easier later. That being said we do need shade. There’s a huge difference between 90 degrees with 20 knots of wind and being in the shade, versus broiling in the very intense sun. We were both to discover this later during the construction phase. I’d like to say growing up on the Texas border makes me immune to heatstroke, but apparently sometime in the last 40 years I lost it! So we are going to shade the parts of the deck in front of the French door sized openings both front and back, but not with a permanent roof. One thing we saw was that hard decked overhangs and porches tend to act as a lever to tear the roof off buildings during hurricanes so we needed something that could come down during hurricane season. So the solution for now is Sunbrella pipe awnings over those areas. This will also help with water collection. Another lesson learned from Island residents is that you need a morning and evening deck. Nothing will wake you up faster than a huge ball of fire glaring off the water into your retinas on your first trip outside after rolling out of bed. So my plan is to read the morning paper on the back deck, and drink my sundowners on the front deck. I know, I’ll miss the sunset but once you’ve seen one sunset or sunrise you’ve seen them all! I don’t want anything on the roof of the building for winds to catch, so the solar panels will be hung on brackets just below floor level of the deck. One challenge is that the deck will be at parts 10 feet above grade. There’s 27 8 x 8 posts on average 8 feet apart to anchor the deck to. All the concrete mounting pads will have 3/4 inch eyebolts embedded in them. From these eyebolts 1/2 inch steel cable will run in a X pattern to the tops of the deck posts and beams to anchor and stabilize the deck.
Elevation Views
Looking North
Looking West
Looking South
Looking East
One thing you might have noticed is that I keep saying “French door sized openings”. The reason I say that instead of the much shorter “French doors” is because the plan is to have no doors, or at least any doors with glass in them. The initial plan is to have rolldown hurricane shutters in these openings on the very outside. The next layer will be “Isinglass” http://amzn.to/2EYHpAU curtains. This is a very sturdy transparent plastic usually used on boat tops. The layer after that is bug screens. For this we’ll be using “Superscreen” paired with “ScreenEze”. ScreenEze http://amzn.to/2GAMlcl is a heavy duty screen mounting system that allows you much bigger unsupported screened in openings than normal. Superscreen http://amzn.to/2FlCsQj is bug screen that is about twice as heavy as normal screen. Of the three openings facing the ocean two will be fixed since we don’t plan to enter/exit out of them, and the other one along with the single back opening will be retractable screens. The last layer will be louvered three part wooden doors I’ll make in my shop. If this doesn’t work for us then we can change all of this out later for normal French doors since the openings are a standard size. Another detail that might change as we build is the stairs to the deck. Depending on how long building takes we might change it to a wheelchair ramp!