Building the Live-in Green Machine: Stage One

I've lived in apartments my entire adult life, and when we first started talking about building our own house, I pictured it pretty much like my kindergarten crayon house drawings.  Four walls, a pitched roof, windows blocked out in rectangles, and flowers with giant petals lined up under a Rothko strip of sky, a perky sun plastered to the right.  To build this early fantasy house, men would come in and lift up the walls and nail them against a frame.  I'd seen barn raising in movies. I know how it's done. 

This concept became a bit more complicated, but not by much, when we started looking at glass and steel modules designed by an architect in Minnesota and pre-made in a factory.  I envisioned trucks delivering three fully loaded house boxes, which a crane would surgically pick up and drop gently into place.  I'd walk in and start cooking.  I wasn't totally a house moron.  During college I had helped build sets one season at the Woodstock summer theater, so I knew that one had to look at floor plans and elevations to figure out where the futon and the bookcases would go.  So easy peasy.  

Wrong.  Building a new house, and particularly a green one, is constructing a machine, with nearly every element as complicated and inter-related as a Victorian steam engine. Screwing up one part can screw up everything, so Michael and I have to understand every inch of it – and we both have to agree on it all! 

Let's start with the boxes themselves.  There will be three: two floors of a main house and a guest house seated on top of a garage built on site.  The modules will be sided with Corten steel, a magic substance that begins rusting and then stops after a few months, the rusty layer then providing protection.  At that point, they will either look like Serra sculptures or abandoned warehouses In New Jersey.  

Next, comes the insulation that lines the boxes.  As it turns out, every builder has a different opinion on the best type and there are dozens.  We can have reflective insulating systems or fiberglass, mineral wool, and plastic or natural fibers that come rolled up in a blanket.  Foam boards can attach to the walls or foam or cellulose can be blown into them. Part of the decision on what to use relies on their R value, an equation that measures their ability to block heat conduction; the higher the value the better the insulation. The ideal R values vary depend on where you live, what kind of heat source your have, and whether you're insulating walls, ceiling, floors, or crawl spaces (we can skip those).  We found R-value calculators on the Great Google and were certain we wanted spray foam, which has great R numbers and seals a space beautifully, but the first factory bidding on our modules likes foam board and fiberglass all knitted together with tape. Another factory that comes in with a bid might prefer hay-stuffed walls.  Whatever wins has to be right.  After living through this winter in a barn with negative R values, I want a heat-holding insulation fist. 

Windows naturally leak air so you want those to have good R values too, triple pane being the best.  And with windows, it's not just their heat-trapping virtues, but where, how many, and what type they are. Michael would live in a glass box and I would live in a cave with a tiny skylight.  We have managed to suffer through this particular pane, but now another decision awaits us.  Windows no longer just go up and down, like the double hung of my youth. And they don't have to be rectangles. We can peer through round, peak or rake headed, Gothic, oval, or quadrilateral glass. They can fold out like awnings or shove out or pull in as casements. On the second floor we'll probably use the fabulous Loewen Access windows, whose gear mechanism has the complexity of an old-fashioned Swiss watch.  They twirl 180 degrees, go up, go down, and if we paid enough, could probably transport us into space. On the first floor, we might go for casement windows, but whether they push out or pull in is still up for grabs. 

And no one is ignoring what goes on inside those boxes. We spent a dispiriting day last week on IKEA Road in Paramus wandering among kitchen cabinets, clutching the plans we had made and printed out from the monster store's website after a few bitter fights over drawer sizes.  When I checked this particular IKEA branch out on Yelp, one short comment read: "It's where relationships come to die."  

By the way, it's astonishing how stupidly passionate one can get over whether kitchen cabinet doors should be white or off-white, or if a window should be pushed in or pulled out, or if the walkway is covered between two of the modules. I have been heard shrieking over whether an inside door should have one, four, or six panels, and before this process I didn't even know doors had panels. Fortunately, our marriage so far has weathered all these decisions.  

And next, we view the Green Giants, the systems that will support our house machine. The engineered flooring will conceal PEX coils snaking back and forth carrying radiant heat generated by an intricate collaboration between geothermal loops dug deep into the earth and solar electricity. To figure how much solar we will need we calculated the amount of kilowatts for every single electrical device -- large and small -- that we expect to be using in our new spaceship.  (The great Google has websites for doing that, too.)  I now know that at .18 per kilowatt the annual cost for my toaster is $25, for the two desktop computers it's $175, and my crockpot costs me $35.  However, geothermal will be the monster kilowatt sucking machine and will require about the same amount of electricity that we'll be using for the whole house.  So, that means we need two giant solar slabs, and they won't just lie there sunbathing on the roof.  Two trackers seated to the southeast of the house will move 40 solar panels back and forth, and up and down depending on the location of that perky sun moving across the sky.  

Yesterday we met with Pete, our contractor, who seems happy with the initial state of the architect's design and the general layout of the land.  Michael and I have reached agreement on the kitchen cabinets, the number of windows, the passage way between the main and guest house, and our solar slabs, which I believe will also find evidence of extraterrestrial life.  We opened a bottle of wine last night and celebrated the first stage of this adventure.  With luck, the snow will eventually melt and the digging can begin for stage two.

Winter Rules, Like It or Not

"I like winter here."

"Me too."

"I mean I really like winter here.  Not just tolerate it."

"Really?"  Coming from Michael, who was born and raised in Northern New Mexico, where winters can be cold, but are also dry, this was a totally unexpected preference. Snow around Albuquerque usually only laces the Sandias, looming to the East and framing a sky massive with dramatic and enveloping light, even during the shortest days.  Now, that's likeable.  Winters here in the upper Hudson valley are giant weather box stores, their long corrugated skies enclosing us in cold steely air, their aisles of road and short hills selling us nothing but cheap snow and ice.  I like winter here because I grew up in it and still bear those joy-loaded memories of no-school days and winter sports.  Michael mostly stays inside, except to venture out in the snow blower to clear our driveways and head to town for wine or dinner. So what's to like about winter in Hudson?  Some possibilities:

Checking the Weather.  Except in rare instances, weather in Manhattan serves only to create the day's wardrobe; here, it is the day. We check the weather obsessively – every few hours on three apps:  NOAA (the US weather service, which gives a week's worth of forecasting), Dark Skies (predicts our microclimate over the next few minutes through the following week), and Weatherlink (connects to a small station installed near our barn by Michael and our landlord/friend Dave that provides information on current and past weather right outside our door).  Weather's unpredictability here feeds my anxiety, which seems to be essential in keeping my rabbit mind alert, aware, and not bored. During my happy (no irony) decades in NYC, it was fed on dark streets by the antsy fear of bandits unmoored by expensive and brain-eating drugs. But after vigilant cops and cheap sleep-inducing heroin had softened up the streets, it was time to move where Mother Nature was the mugger, and my underlying anxiety could be constantly served by her acts of climate change vengeance.

Eating and Drinking and, If Not Merry, Being Less Sullen. Each morning I wake out of my daily bear-like slumber considering dinner.  Winter opens up my freezer, summer's treasure chest.  Out come the pureed pumpkin or butter beans for soup, or the long sweet green bean pods, bitter kale, or broccoli spig stems to accompany the roasts, or San Marzano tomato sauce for guilt-slathering on pasta, to dress the pre-grilled defrosted eggplant slices, or to thicken soups and stews, or, of course, packets of green New Mexico chilies, the fat thick ones to fill with cheese for rellenos or the messier thinner chilies to chop up into sauces.  No dinner is cooked without oil or butter.  Nor is it ever without a couple gleaming glasses of dry white wine.  The extra five pounds these winter meals bring are worth it (except for the falling-and-not-getting-up part).  Most nights we eat in by ourselves, but not every one, which brings me to the next winter routine, perhaps the most important one, and maybe why Michael likes winter. 

Seeing People Really or Virtually.  The darkest winter I ever spent was on an Air Force Base in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where its black rich loam was mixed with snow by the incessant wind snaking across the endless plain and oozed under doorways and windowsills as "snirt." Temperatures dropped to way past zero regularly, and it was against the law not to help a stalled traveler on those desolate highways.  I never had more fun or made better friends than I did that year.  Lesson learned for bad winters in Hudson. Good friends and family bring color and sound to this gray silent season, which make them even dearer than in the warm seasons, when we take their sensory effects for granted.   Roads permitting, I cook for friends at least once a week. Also, once or twice weekly we have dinner at DABA, sitting at the bar, listening to stories by the staff and other regulars.  I scrub potatoes and chop onions two mornings a week at the Salvation Army kitchen with some of the best and most interesting people I've ever met. Michael and I are also getting to know the eccentric indigenous members of our local loser political tribe.  And, once more with gratitude to the Internet, we connect regularly to our kids through email and messaging and skim the surface lives of our friends and relatives through Facebook.  And that brings me to the next likeable winter routine.

Browsing and Streaming.  We have no television, but the Internet and its fabulous device chums provide endless brain-numbing nearly guilt-free distraction during the long dark, cold evenings. I share with almost every woman I respect a love of grisly Northern European murder mysteries in all media: books, TV shows, movies available on Kindle, Netflix, Amazon Smile, Hulu, ITunes.  Michael enjoys browsing Ducati forums and looking at the latest trends in electric cars.  To our everlasting shame, we both watch streams of The Blacklist and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.  And his work and my occasional contracts are all screen based.  Most of our time then is spent indoors and most of that is staring at light disguised as characters and images.  We do, however, occasionally venture out and squint at actual light. 

Getting Outside and Playing in the Snow.  As a kid in upstate New York, I loved winter sports-- jumping moguls at inexpensive local ski areas, building bonfires next to a frozen pond for night skating, or gliding through woods after an ice storm. When we first started weekending up here, I bought skates for the pond across the road and cross-country skies for the hills outside the barn with the idea of reviving a chunk of my childhood. Unfortunately, over the past ten years, the pond has rarely provided a skin hard and clear enough for skating, and the snow is usually either too skimpy or too heavy for cross country skiing.  And, there's the falling thing.  

This year, sufficient snow has not been the problem, so last week I trapped my boots into my bindings and trudged off the sidewalk into the back yard drifts. Immediately, two feet of powder amputated the bottom half of my legs. With no visual cues for my skis, I dutifully wallowed forward on my knee stubs for about thirty feet. Ugh. Ick. Enough ski fun.  Turning, turning (very, very awkwardly) in the gyre and hoping the center would hold, I pushed back to the barn, finally popping my skis up over a tiny plowed bank beside the sidewalk. As I slowly slid off it, I lost balance. Gravity and age, having shaped my body into a plump pear, now, like Harry and/or David, seated it solidly into a soft gift box of snow. I couldn't get up and I couldn't shift position. I tried to release my binders with my poles but I couldn't get any leverage.  Fifteen feet away Michael was zooming about in the snow blower clearing the driveway, happily encased in the soundless, warm tractor cab. I thrashed, screamed, and waved my poles at him, but he remained oblivious, focused raptor-like on great shoots of ice and snow hurling to the side. (I think that's what he likes about winter.) I gave up and considered taking my boots off and walking in my socks back to the apartment, when he finally looked up, turned the engine off, and rescued me. 

So, probably no skating or skiing for the rest of this winter.  But there's a back up, not so much a winter sport as a chore. So that Michael and I can at least share something outside, I bought two sets of snowshoes, tepid sources of fun, but it's really hard to fall over in them and they do fulfill the dreary exercise requirement.  So a couple days ago we trudged on our Yeti feet down to the future building site and tracked into the snow the outline for our imaginary house and pond. And that was very likeable, and leads to the next more likeable winter activity.

Planning the House, Meadow, and Garden.  During this Arctic winter, we have spent some of its time anticipating the New House, fiddling with our architect's revisions and our engineer's ideas for the curves of our driveway and pond. Hope for green energy glimmers from calls to solar providers and consults with an HVAC expert (also a neighbor) on radiant heat and geothermal loops.  Even better, an email from Barbara, our wild flower meadow consultant, says it's not too early to start thinking about buying seed. In fact, I already have the seeds to my vegetable garden and I'm updating last year's notes.  I can't think about these things too much, however, because they tend to produce delight and excitement in the future, which then replace my chronic anxiety and pessimism, which, I believe, are essential for a truly happy life. Which brings me to my final likeable winter routine.

Meditating or, Anyway, Sitting Still. Winter slows time.  Which can be annoying, as in, "God, when will this ever end?"  But it can also be a comfort for those of us who now measure it out carefully. A winter day may be boosted by a singular event (soup kitchen, dinner at DABA, a political meeting, a consult on the future house, cooking for friends, long phone call with kids) but it is always surrounded by silence or it may be determined only by silence. During the day Michael and I rarely add additional sound to its soft white stillness while we're in the apartment working, browsing, or streaming. I also may meditate for a half hour or so in the early morning, ideally with my cat Killick curled up within my inadequately opened lotus.  This daily mental experience of absorbing winter's soundlessness and lack of light brings me closer to death's neighborhood but paradoxically reduces my chronic anxiety about life's end (which, of course, is what all my anxiety is or ever has been about) and even suggests joy – not the dithery anticipatory hobgoblin delight of my youth – but something subtle and underlying, vaguely resonating light and affection, something simply good lurking just beneath the cold and the dark.

We're now up to a couple feet of snow covering a nice thick bed of ice.  We just dodged a sleet/ice-storm bullet and anticipate a weekend of subzero temperatures and "life-threatening" winds.  As long as the power in the barn holds, what's not to like?