Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Our pond home

Hi Brettski,
I am currently building our home on our pond property and we went through a lot of the same circumstances that you are. We were going to build a detached structure that would house living quarters, in which we would live while we built the main structure. The thought of paying for two foundations, two slabs, two roofs, two exteriors, two heating systems, two... well, you get the idea, was not efficient enough for me. I, personally, do not mind two-stories and stairs, and eventually I designed the current plan which is a passive/active solar barn. The living quarters are upstairs and the middle third of the lower level, while the south side lower level is a large solarium where I will keep an aquaponics system and store heat for indoor usage, and the north side lower level is the shop. Sorry, I don't have a lot of time right now to post additional details, because I need to get out to the property before sundown and see if the footings dried up enough for the block-layer who is on schedule for tomorrow. Here are my renditions of the outside:
Front (faces north):


Side (faces east):


Side (faces west):


Back (faces south):


If I don't get back to this thread soon, don't worry, I am pretty busy with the house right now, and have only been checking the forum about once a month. I will try to check back on this thread in the next few days, though.

Wow, that's gonna be a monster, bbjr. Very nice. I'm excited for you. I love to hear those words:

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We have pretty much set our sights on the gambrel roof design with a pair of shed dormers (one at each side). I'm talking with concrete guys and truss mfgr's right now.

Looks great Good luck

The gambrel is such a great design for many reasons, and since you have already built a similar structure, you know what to improve upon this time around. Plus, the most beautiful outbuildings in our region are old, gambrel roofed barns. I think it is a great choice for a secondary building (or in my case, the primary building ).

How about adding some sheds or porches on the sides of the gambrel I think it really adds character. Here is a nice example.


Here are some links of old barns pretty interesting stuff.

http://www.picable.com/Nature/Landscapes/Round-Roof-Barn.225823

http://www.thornhillauction.com/110306howell.htm


http://www.yessy.com/EARTHSPASSION/BARNS.html

I have a friend who built a totally full radius roof barn similar to this one which is arched but not a full radius. He is a framer by trade and used scrap 3/4 plywood off of jobs and made a template and cut radius sections from the ply wood and nailed and gluded them to create basically 2 x 6 round arched trusses.
http://www.preservationnation.org/resources/case-studies/awards/Bender_Farm.html

Oh, perfect....
RockyT lays in a great lookin' classic gambrel barn, complete with the white crossbuck doors. But wait! Let's tuck it into the trees and set it looking out over a pond. No advantage taken with THAT presentation.

That is a very cool lookin' package. I like it.

I'm not ready to even think about a radius roof, let alone actually attempt it. Besides, I can't imagine trying to bend a standing seam metal roof to fit it.

There's an older barn locally that has just that type of roof (radius). I don't know how they did it, but the metal roof looks like it conforms pretty well. It was just installed last Fall. If I remember, I'll swing by there and take a few pictures of it.

See Bski I told you I can be nice. So you need to be also. Cause I know were you live


Hum 4 dormers, maybe thats why you don't like them.

I just bought one of these
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/231-touchtable.html

I'm torn...
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I've been plodding thru drawing all the details for construction of our pond home and I'm kinda jammed up on the overhead doors.
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I've elected to go with the gambrel barn design. The ground level will be all garage and shop. This post regards the ground level area.
I started with 8' tall walls. At best, this would allow a 7' tall overhead door with standard track hardware. Low clearance hdwe only gains 6 more inches of door height. As hoped, this thread produced some additional thought and prompted me to consider taller doors to allow movement of a small tractor with ROPD. The consensus seems to be a 9' tall OH door will give me all the options of convenient use.
I've done some adjustments, but a collection of various limitations (that range from costs to aesthetic architectural appeal) have taken me to 8' as the best option for OH door height.
This is not to say that I cannot make the 9' door height work; I can....I just would rather not. The ONLY reason I would adjust to the 9' OH door height is if the difference between the 8' and 9' is like night and day.
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So....here's what I want to know from you's guysez:
a) other than a small tractor for hobby farm level type of maintenance, what other equipment "height items" should I be thinking of?
b) Does an 8' door height totally preclude ingress/egress of the desired items in question "a" ?

Brettski, Instead of altering your house design for a tractor why not eliminate the fold down joint on the roll bar and weld it up shorter if you have sufficient head room. My tractor has alot of height on the rollbar and canopy and could be lowered, but that depends on your equipment.
Or possibly a lowered foundation entrance on the one bay, my uncle did that to the house he built years ago, it was like an inclined pite for his equipment.
Just a thought.

Thanks AP
I think the key description here for this consideration is "hobby farm", indicating that the need for large, bulky equipment is not planned. Quite frankly, even hobby farm is overblown since it ultimately is planned as small acreage residence. As I scratch my head and think about what equipment one might need to do normal DIY maint in this situation, the tallest implement is a small tractor. So, I poke around the www looking at small tractor specs and find that many would actually fit thru an 8' tall opening.
What am I possibly missing on this?

Brettski, how many acres is your LNP?, and when your in the market for a tractor give these guys a look, their out of Texas and they have their own semi's that deliver all over the country.
I got a 4cyl Diesel with heavy duty Koyker loader and large box blade for a little over 12 grand delivered.
I've had it for almost 3 years and moved alot of dirt, and rocks& snow!!
http://www.tripleddd.com/

Brettski, glad to hear your planning is moving forward. We have had a John Deere 990, which is a 40 hp machine, for about a year. It has been able to do most everything around our 6 acre place that we have asked it to do. The ROPS for this particular unit will fit under an 8' door. My only concern with the fold down ROPS is that most people drop it to put it in and out of the garage and eventually stop putting it back up.

a) Heightwise - probably nothing. There are darn few implements that a hobby farmer or tender of a modest piece of property would need that are taller than a tractor, IME.
b) FWIW, Bski, I measured my tractors this A.M. The smallest is about 7'4" to the top of the rollbar. The biggest is about 7'8". If you get an honest 8' opening, you may be OK for most tractors you would want to use. As we mentioned earlier, many new ones (Kubotas come to mind) have fold-down roll bars anyway.

We needed 9' doors on my shop to park our hrose trailer, which is 6" taller than "normal".