I am building a communal house for Aspies, and How...

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The real life project has been in the rough planning stages for a few years; long before I ever heard of AS. At the time, it was to be simply a home for me.

A lot of work is done. I've broken down construction costs to individual components such as door knobs and faucets. I havent worked out a formula for how many nails and screws for example.

Part of the whole process was that I would work temporarily in certain jobs related to the contruction techniques. This would allow me to estimate and calculate costs. I did manage to get experience in certain fields; some plumbing, flooring, electrical... I havent managed to aquire experience in roofing, foundations or heating, though I plan on using in floor tubing rather than forced air ducts. I hate dust, and the sound of a furnace firing up(and the metal ducts popping from heat), awakes me at night. I know a little about radiant heating as well.


Currently, I have lists of all elements of every common room for a house; I noted the cheapest and most expensive. This needs an update, as its about 2 years old.

What I need to do now is rearrange some floor plans to allow for more communal living, and also take redundancy into account. Furthermore, I will be checking into solar and wind powered generation; this is first on my list for this afternoon... a phone call to some experts.

Tonights plan is to set up a proper web page and perhaps a forum. The theme will be split into two; I plan on focusing both on disabled people and also baby boomers that have not prepared for their eventual retirement. This is not saying that they would live anywhere near each other.

The plan is that I will enable people to build themselves a life whereever they are; open source planning, as it were. Everything I learn will be posted to my web site.

Amen, Brother!

Merle

I really like this idea.
It sounds like you are taking the commune into the 21st century.
Practical knowledge made globally available for the shared goal of simple living.
It really is quite brilliant.

I'm still working on it. I'm a bit hung up while I learn some technical stuff about web design and hosting; php and the like. As well, I am solidifying exactly what I am doing for a focus.

and it is looking quite splendorous, as well!


Merle

Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton, has a lot of good ideas along this vein.

http://patrifriedman.com/projects/projects.html

Wondering...

I haven't decided, but I might be heading west to BC sometime. I wouldn't want to stay on a permanent basis, but I was thinking that instead of paying for a motel stopover it might be good to exchange labour for lodging.

A former Ottawa valley hick boy, I've worked on farms in my youth, can drive anything, build, sew, lumberjack, dig, skin deer, cook, etc. If you wanna be a lad you gotta wear plaid!

My aunt rents one of those (as an affectation, she's never lifted a finger in her life) and they are pretty cool. There's a really cool bale wall going up the length of the drive that's all snaky and fluid looking.

I might be able to find some cost-cutting measures, too. My friend's father has built a house on a plot of land on an island in Lake Superior. Its in an unincorporated township, meaning it's lawless for all intents and purposes. As such, building and fire codes are a non-issue for him, so he found some safe but "illegal to install" stuff like woodstoves for cheap.

Radiant floors are great once they're up and running, but they can be a pain in terms of the expense of the specialized glycol, filters, and water PH. If you don't keep a close watch on it the acids from the creosote buildup will rot your boiler out. There are some problems with the "Wood Doctor" boiler/furnaces, like some faulty welds and electrical weirdness that causes the forced air fan to trip the breaker, but they have good warranties and I think they're made in Winnipeg, so it won't take long to get it fixed or replaced.

Or are you planning on heating the water with woodstoves on the inside? This gets rid of the need for the special glycol since the water never leaves the house, plus it simplifies the whole pumping process. You can just toss a 40-pounder of smirnoff into it! Again, my friend's dad has some great ideas, and made his own system which also runs his hot water heater.

Hmm...idea...what about an outbuilding or a bunkhouse style structure that backpackers can pay to stay at for extra income, youth-hostel style? Lots of people stay at campgrounds or sleep in their cars, and a nice warm place is nice for a change.