Scraped land

The land all scraped and ready for building. The contractor prepared an estimate for five truck loads of vegetation. Fifteen were actually required. Oops.


The position and orientation of the house. We stood in the baking sun as ropes were laid out on the ground in the shape of the house. It doesn't look very big on the ground.


The building team considers the options for water and sewage. This too is complicated.

Environmental review

Having decided on the Hidaka plan, it's time to review how far the original specs have been met, and the environmental goodness of the plan.

First of all, the materials will not be sourced locally. The wood, windows, and roofing will be coming from Canada, while the brick facing will be from Australia. This is hardly ideal since all these things should be available locally, but they aren't. Balancing this negative aspect are the positive aspects that the Canadian wood is in theory sustainably produced, and the Australian bricks should last indefinitely without the need for costly and polluting maintenance. The brick facing also adds a layer of insulation.

Unfortunately, on investigation, the Canadian wood doesn't look that good. The wood is from West Fraser Mills which is part of the Sustainable Forest Initiative. However, the SFI is condemned as a 'greenwashing' organization promoted by the forestry industry, and West Fraser Mills are singled out as being especially unsustainable. These accusations are quite at odds with the vague claims made by the importers, Selco Home, that Canada is an 'environmental' country. I have contacted Selco to criticize their vague claims and to ask them to improve their act by putting pressure on their supplier, and by providing more detailed info on their website. They responded to say that they will look into it and report back.

The solar system has been slightly downsized from 4 kw, but it should still meet our needs. We will have an Eco Cute heat pump as planned to increase the efficiency of the system.

The double glazing with argon insulating gas and low-E filtering should result in far lower heating requirements in winter, and greater comfort in summer.

Underfloor heating and radiators have been dumped as too expensive, in favour of a single, centrally located heat storage radiator filled with thermal bricks. These are reported to be able to heat a whole house easily.

There will be two rainwater tanks, one for each side of the roof. Ehime Prefecture provides rebates for these, cutting the cost in half. The water can be used for the garden. The pond is definitely on - I hope to make it quite large. This should serve to increase the biodiversity of the land, in spite of the house being built on it. Household water will not be reused, but it will be largely purified onsite with a septic system. It may be possible to compost and use the sludge retrieved from the septic tank.

When the land is cleared for building and to eliminate the invasive sasa bamboo, the cut trees and other greenery will be piled up on the site for composting and burial instead of being treated as 'industrial waste' as is normal.

With fruit trees and perennials planted in a forest garden and a plot for annual vegetables, we should be able to get most of our fruit and veg from the land. I'm also considering some movable rabbit runs for the small area of lawn around the house.

The house will thus be largely self-sufficient in power, and may even add more to the grid than it consumes. It will not yet be self-sufficient in water, although it may be able to handle its own waste. The building will not have been built in the most desirable fashion, but it will be built to last a long time with minimal maintenance.

New Plan

We have a new plan from Hidaka Planning. This is a 2x6 building with a brick facing. It is a good deal bigger than the previous two plans, and has goodies like wooden decking and a balcony that can actually be sat on.

Floorplan

This is a provisional floorplan. We expect to make some changes. I want to camp out a few times on the land to before we make a final decision. That way I'll know where the sun falls and the direction of the wind.

Whittling down

After comparing estimates and plans from Fonte and Khome's, we decided to ask Khome's to continue planning.

Fonte make beautiful, solid houses with great attention to detail. Also their approach to customer care is very thorough and thoughtful. There are some complex matters to navigate and they are very helpful with that. However, these things necessarily come at a price, and even at the initial planning stage, Fonte's proposed house overran our budget and involved some very big compromises in terms of size and features. Ultimately we decided that we should forego some of the finer touches in favour of affordability and function.

The Khome's plan met most of our requirements for size, function, and price, with a design that fits the location well. We were very pleased to see something as well-thought out on the first draft.

Now we have to think carefully about what refinements will be necessary, and how important they are to us.

Khome's plan

Today we went to visit Kadota-san at Khome's. He surprised us with a 3D mockup of the house and garden. The roof and second floor lifted off to show the floor plan, which makes it very easy to see what the plan would be like to live in.

More food for thought.



We won't be parking 4 cars there, so we can use that space to better effect. The south-facing roof will accomodate a big solar array.

From the other side

Having bought the land, we decided to have a look at the neighbourhood that it's located in (the wrong order I know). After checking that all the sasa grass and thorn bushes haven't grown back overnight, we followed the road in front of our hill to have a look at the land from the other side.


We're quite well satisfied with how it looks. We also had a look at some of the large ponds dotted about the area. Fishing looks like it might be good.

Specifications

We want the following basic specifications for our house;

• Minimum of 2x6 construction, but preferably 2x8 or higher.
• Minimum of double glazing, preferably with wood frames. No aluminium.
• 4 kW solar panel system.
• Passive solar design.
  
• All electric with Eco Cute heat pump.
• Underfloor heating and/or radiators.
• Rainwater storage and reuse of household water with external pond.
  

Other "wants" that are probably impractical include;

• SunMar composting toilets (wifely opposition, no experience on the part of housebuilders)
• Wind turbine (the area is reasonably windy but the turbine maker was not helpful when I asked about installing one, and the thing may be noisy.)

House mockups

Mockup - from the entrance

Mockup - from above

Weekend slashing

On Saturday, the rain cleared up so I and Hinata went to the plot in the afternoon with our scythes and sickles. We slashed away at the sasa bamboo and thorn bushes. After 30 minutes, Hinata hit himself in the shin with his newly sharpened sickle, causing a 5 cm gash that oozed 'mashed jelly' according to him. He promptly freaked out and fell to gibbering, and had to be admonished sharply. We drove to the Hojo Hospital for Fools Who Can't Use Tools and had it dressed. He had lost his taste for slashing by then and mooched about the site looking at the insects and the graves in the graveyard.

The densest thickets were like something out of a fairy tale - dark, and prickly, and impenetrable to all but those utterly pure of heart, like me. I had some very large blisters on my hands when I finished for the day. The evening's beer tasted especially good.

Sunday was rainy, but I felt drawn to my land anyway. I went on my own and got a lot of slashing done, opening up a swathe almost to the Northern Border. I also found an old metal trailer that might make a nice ornament with some planters around it. There were a lot of mosquitoes in the thickets.


The view to the north looked very good with rain clouds swarming over the mountain peaks.


Kajiwara-san of Fonte sent me a mockup of the house, that I hacked around a bit in Photoshop.


The green blob behind the house is a pond for collecting rainwater and recycling household water. There will be a lot more trees left than this suggests.

Hojo land

We found out that the land near the architects was subject to landslides so we gave up on that. Thank the Lord.


Then our estate agent friend found us some land in Hojo. We bought it last Thursday after a lot of humming and hahing about whether we can get water in and waste out. We find we can. The idea is to process our turds with a baffle tank a goldfish.

First plot found

Retaining wall. This will need checking for strength

10,000,000 yen's worth of land

Land ho!

We searched everywhere for the right piece of land, for nearly 2 years.

It had to have the following characteristics;

• On solid ground
• Not close to the sea, but with sea views if possible (a tsunami is expected to hit Matsuyama at some time)
  
• Enough space for a garden
• Not within earshot of a road
• In the school district of our son, or at least, the district of some decent schools
• Not so expensive that we couldn't afford to build a house (within 10,000,000 yen)
• Land that is not protected for agriculture or that is best suited to agriculture

We had nearly given up. But some land next to our architect's house is available, at a very good price. We need to check that the walls around it can be adjusted to fit the legal requirements, at a reasonable price.

The land meets all our requirements. Our son will have to change schools, and he is not very pleased about it at the moment.

Prologue

I'm Rod.

I'm a freelance translator.

I live in a rented house in Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan with my wife and son.

We want to move out of our rented house and into a house that we have designed and built for us .

We want our house to be earthquake-proof, comfortable to live in, non-polluting, and self-sufficient in terms of energy.

This is actually quite a big challenge, and it has taken a lot of time and energy to research.

I want to share what we have learned, so that anybody else who wants a similar house can benefit from our experience.

I will try to post in simple sentences that can be translated easily into Japanese by Google