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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 23, 2020 6:56:08 GMT -6
Talked to a couple of people lately about my labyrinth. I neglected it for a couple of years. As I mentioned on another thread, the family was going to get together last weekend to burn it off and repair. The weather had other plans, so it has been delayed until mid-November. I built a 7 circuit Classical Labyrinth. You can see the type on Page 3 of this link Here is a thread from here at TR that has some links. This was taken several years ago. The bright spot inside is a bucket of salt. I don't use weed killer. The only things I will use are fire and salt. The larger bright spot just outside is a pile of rocks* that I was using to replace some smaller ones with larger ones and vice versa. I was trying to place larger rocks on the boundaries of the outside circuits, getting progressively smaller as you enter the inner circuits. Not completed as of yet. The slightly over 60 ft long roof you see at the lower edge is that of the house. You can see how large the labyrinth is. *Mostly if not all sandstone. Probably a fossil or two included, as I was ignorant of the possibility at the time I built it.
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 23, 2020 8:56:53 GMT -6
What shrubbery, bushes, tees, etc. did you use to make the walls? or haven't you gotten that far since you are talking about burning it off? In your picture, it looks like the outline has been formed and some of the inside passages. It is somewhat blurry so it is difficult to tell what is what. What are you going to use as the prize center piece? a gazebo with lovely floral touches?
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 23, 2020 10:03:49 GMT -6
What you see is a weedy labyrinth. The rocks line the path boundaries, which should be just dirt. Very stark. I'll be adding oyster shell and sand to lighten the path, because the rocks match the dirt. When the house was built, the area was scraped to provide soil for the roof. Very little can grow except weeds. Because I want to burn it yearly, I have no plans to grow anything. As for the center, it is only about 3ft by 4ft? I might place a pot of herbs with a small goddess statue or Buddha or St. Francis in it. I have those statues already. I used what I had available. I did have a grandiose plan at one time to build a log Medieval labyrinth as a mirror to this one, but thought better of it.
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 27, 2020 4:57:49 GMT -6
The problem with depending on passive solar heat is that when the sun does not shine a person could "freeze". Like us at the moment. It got pretty cold outside, freezing rain, clouds blanketing the entire sky for a couple of days and will for a couple more. The house got down to 63deg. I was ok, though my nose was cold. Steve, however, was "freezing". So, much to my chagrin, he started a fire in the woodstove. We strive not to do that until around Thanksgiving. We do not have a central heating system, instead relying on passive solar, the woodstove, and a couple of electric radiator space heaters to take the chill off when a fire is unwarranted, but they are expensive to use.
The way our house was built maximized the solar gain from the sun and airflow for the woodstove. Not including the addition, our house is 60' x 20'. You can walk from one end of the house to the other in a straight line right at the windows. You need to pass through a bedroom on the east end, but, otherwise nothing impedes your way.
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 27, 2020 7:02:05 GMT -6
Wow no central heating system for back up? Does the fireplace usually give off enough heat to keep you warm everywhere in the house, when you don't want to use the electric heaters?
It was really cold in our 5th wheel last night. We try not to use the LP gas heater. We turned our fireplace on and one electric heater but there was a cold breeze blowing right on me while we watched TV. We have an electric blanket that is very nice, too, but that's in the bedroom, of course.
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 27, 2020 7:24:18 GMT -6
Yes, the woodstove can keep us warm. It is on the southern wall. It is 45ft away from the west wall. That is why there is a "hall" almost all the way through the house. When using the stove, we keep the East bedroom closed off as the stove is 5ft from the doorway. We use a box fan at around 35ft away down the "hall" from the stove to blow cold air to the stove which then circulates the warm air towards the furthest reaches west, my office/schoolroom. The addition is our bedroom. When Mom moved in, we gave her our old bedroom (currently the schoolroom) as it was next to the bathroom. The addition juts out with 3 outside walls. We have an electric pad, not blanket. At night, we close a curtain at the schoolroom doorway and follow the same procedure with the box fan pulling cold air out of our room to bring warm air in. Steve sometimes uses the radiator to warm the room and then shuts it off, if there is no fire burning. I would have moved back to our old room, but Steve did not want to.
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 27, 2020 8:37:46 GMT -6
Brrr... Fan and Stormy, you two make me want to get the blankets out of the closet. Still fairly cool here, actually had a low of 35 F, and today's high should be 65, a few tattered clouds over the peaks. Plenty of sunshine, and a warming trend over the next few days will get us back to the mid eighties.
Labyrinth, hmm, I can do miniature Stonehenges in the gravel, or rake patterns in the gravel where we once had a water feature, but only a lizard-sized labyrinth would fit in our yard.
Your house plan sounds very interesting, Fan, hope you get some sunshine soon.
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 27, 2020 11:25:05 GMT -6
Is this small enough of a labyrinth for you, Andy? Small ant sized? I actually thought about providing a blueprint of the interior of the house. There are some pretty cool and free computer-aided drafting (CAD) programs out there that I just discovered this morning*. I was certified on Autodesk's AutoCAD 12 back in the day. Sometime around '94? AutoCAD 13 had just come out and the instructor let me play with it when I was done with the assignments. But, probably the easiest would be to just draw it on graph paper. But, not as much fun. * Tinkercad Going to have Gson play with this one.
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 27, 2020 18:14:24 GMT -6
I drew the house using pencil and graph paper. 1 square = 2' We have pocket doors for the bathroom, but drawing them would be difficult. So, I drew conventional swing doors. The east bedroom has a curtain instead of a door. Same with the schoolroom/office. The center wall is concrete in order to keep the north wall from bowing and for the roof, also. I did not draw the eaves which extend about 5'.
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 28, 2020 5:56:53 GMT -6
This house was intended to be our empty nest house. When we bought it, the East bedroom did not exist. The East side of the house was a Great Room. The Dining Room was the other bedroom. (Yes, totally open, no privacy) Our teen-aged daughter came with us and needed her own space, so the east bedroom wall was built. She had a bifold door. The Dining Room was still a bedroom, though. Steve built a couple of 2' long walls creating a still wide doorway, and these walls were pushed north a little to allow for the sun to hit the floor of the "hall" as much as possible. We put a curtain up for privacy for that room. Our son stayed in NJ to graduate from High School. Then, he went to work for a year in Tennessee at Dollyworld for a vendor that he worked for at Six Flags in NJ. After that he decided to come to live with us while he went to the local community college. When he transferred to a 4-year school, he moved into an apartment. We kept it as a guest room. Our daughter went to college for a year, then moved in with a roommate. We turned her room into a "cat room", so they could be indoors at night, but outside during the day. We had 8 or 9 at the time. Don't ask. But, after the birth of Gson, she needed to move back in. The cats got thrown into the garage. We split the East Bedroom into 2 separate rooms. Our daughter took the north half. She got a real door. Then Mom shattered her ankle. She spent quite some time in the hospital and at a nursing home before she was released to us. In the meantime, we built the addition and moved into it. Our empty nest house became a 4 generation house. Our daughter had gotten back on her feet financially, but stayed with us to help with Mom, thankfully. (Mom had an external fixator and was a difficult patient.) The Dining room finally became a Dining room. We removed the walls that Steve put up. When Stevie moved out, we took down the walls separating it into 2 rooms, and it became the guest room/schoolroom/playroom. When Mom died, using bookcases* across it, we split the current Schoolroom into a guest room to the front and an office to the back, which gave more room to the school/playroom in the east bedroom. But, over time, decided to move the guest room to the east and schoolroom/playroom to the west. We use bookcases as walls to make a closet in the east bedroom. We are an empty nest again. Yay! *Finally learned that we shouldn't build walls. You never know when things might change. BTW. It is really hard to slam a curtain. PS Forgot to draw the kitchen sink. From the toilet to the kitchen is where the sink should be. The septic waste pipe is a straight line under both.
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 28, 2020 7:04:48 GMT -6
Bookcases for dividers -- sounds like LOTRO home decorating. So many transitions over the years. How long have you been there now?
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 28, 2020 7:26:52 GMT -6
I may have gotten the idea to use bookcases from LotRo. We moved here in 2005.
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 28, 2020 9:12:17 GMT -6
Ant-sized labyrinth is kool! LOL, now I have plenty of space, I'll get two!
Wow, lots of add-ons/ additions/ alterations -- must keep youse busy. LOL, yeah, slamming a curtin ("rustle-rustle") just does not have the emotive impact that a twenty-five pound wooden door conveys...
Thanks for the floor-plan, was having a hard time visualizing the hobbit-hole layout. Gutho/ Tad and Holdo wanna know the precise location of the fridge, and where you keep the pickle-loaf...
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 29, 2020 11:37:20 GMT -6
Holdo will never find pickle loaf in my frig. And even if I did have such a thing in my RL frig, I have the freezer on the bottom style unit. Holdo would be too short to reach the lunchmeat drawer. But, tell Holdo to keep his paws off my Turkey Hill Peanut Butter Ripple ice cream. I'll break his fingers.
The heat is trying to kick on. The sun is peeking out from behind the clouds occasionally.
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Post by fanuidhol on Oct 30, 2020 6:58:49 GMT -6
From the get-go, one of the things Steve and I have done best is having a revolving door* in our houses. All 3 of my bonus (Step) kids moved in with us at various times, though not all 3 at the same time. We did have 2 at once for about 4 months. One even came back twice. We expected the other two to return, but, their circumstances changed. And as you already read, our bio kids, also, left and came back and left again. *And, also, moved into the house I grew up in (My Mom's) for about a year when we hit a rough financial patch. We actually helped her more than the other way around though, by taking over all the cleaning, cooking, and maintenance while she still worked. Her commute was over an hour each way, so the house was tough for her. We left shortly after she retired.
It is just past sunrise here. The low for the night was 28deg outside and 64deg inside. No fire yesterday. The sun warmed the floor and house enough to bring it to 71deg inside. The high yesterday was 52deg outside. My morning ritual at sunrise on an expected sunny/partly sunny day is to open all the curtains completely. We won't have the maximum solar gain until the Winter solstice when the sun is lowest in the sky, and reaches about 10ft? into the interior of the house. It is not unusual for us to open windows when it is below freezing outside and in the 80's inside.
I plan to edit this post today with a table if I can, to give temperature readings for inside and outside at various times.
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