Retirement/Dream Home Suggestions

[COcheesehead]

I get wider (for wheelchairs and gurneys), but why taller? I think you can still easily find a replacement door that is wider than typical, but I bet you'd run into trouble if it's higher.

We have tall doors in our current house. I am not sure of a performance advantage, but they change the look especially if you have higher ceilings. It makes the interior appear a bit grander.

 

[jmp470]

We have 8 foot doors all around and arches are also 8 foot, with wider halls. Moving stuff is a breeze. The other nice feature is everything feels more open and grander, as COcheesehead stated.

 

[ivinsfan]

Talk to people from there area/climate about lessons learned. This is our first year spending the winter in st. George Utah. Living in the desert calls for completely different home orientation than our summer home in vermont (protect from vs let in the sun for example). Where to put outdoor spaces depends on not just the view but seasonal sun. Some people here have homes where their patio have a great view are uncomfortably warm even in spring and fall - probably unusable in summer. Also pay attention to prevailing winds for those spaces.

I would really focus on how to reduce exterior maintenance. this home was built with decorative pine awning that disintegrate after 10 years.

Given you are likely to be in wildfire country, plan plantings and buffer to protect yourself.

If you have significant snows, make sure architect plans for how snow leaves roof. We had a home in vermont that looked fantastic but metal roof funneled much of the snow right on the front walkway.

Enjoy the process!

Fellow snowbird in St George. We use VRBO and tend to book different places in different areas. One of the first things we ask is the orientation of the patio and or back yard, so we get maximum seasonal sun. It's a deal breaker for us.

 

[Music Lover]

I tell this to everyone building a house and have suggested it on this site a couple times:

Take plenty of pictures just prior to the insulation and drywall stage. This will give you a future reference to where all the wiring and plumbing is located. Take it a step further and add some measurements to make it easier to locate studs...it's as easy as starting in a corner and writing on each stud with a Sharpie...16", 32", etc. If you want to hang something heavy on the wall later and you'll know exactly where the studs, wiring, and ducts are located.

 

[COcheesehead]

I tell this to everyone building a house and have suggested it on this site a couple times:

Take plenty of pictures just prior to the insulation and drywall stage. This will give you a future reference to where all the wiring and plumbing is located. Take it a step further and add some measurements to make it easier to locate studs...it's as easy as starting in a corner and writing on each stud with a Sharpie...16", 32", etc. If you want to hang something heavy on the wall later and you'll know exactly where the studs, wiring, and ducts are located.

This is an awesome comment. Someone told us to this on our last build and it came in very handy when it came time to mount TV's and install Sonos speakers.

 

[kcowan]

We're not 'Dream House People', but a number of years back, waiting in a garage, we were talking to a guy, about 6'3", who had installed in his place a higher kitchen sink so that he could do dishes, etc, without screwing up his back.......at floor level was a pull out step that his wife could stand on so that neither would be uncomfortable using the sink.

Since there's an 11" height difference between DW and me, we thought that was a handy idea.

We have friends who remodelled their cottage kitchen to do the same for their 6' daughter and 6'8" SIL. They had to raise the bay window as well so it was pricey ($30k).

 

[Out of Steam]

Some random thoughts, not specific to aging:

Besides views, consider the optimum solar orientation of each space. Do you light morning light in the master bedroom, or kitchen?

As someone with seasonal depression, having the master bedroom on the west side of our current house is a real negative.

As we're looking at already-built houses, it is not something that will be a veto for a future house, but I would add high-quality lighting into any future bedroom without good morning light.

 

[Starsky]

It's fun to make a house your own. My two favorite custom additions to our house have been:

1) Home automation - We have a couple of Alexas and front and back exterior cameras. All our interior and exterior lights are on Lutron wireless dimmer switches, so we can turn on and off the lights by voice inside the house or remotely via our phones. The sprinklers are automated and connected to the web too. It makes it a lot easier to leave the house when we know we can tell what's going on, and we can set all the lights to look like we're home. We went a little further and also added speakers throughout the house in the ceilings for a distributed music system.

2) Our double shower with rain-head and steam generator. It's not for everyone, but if you like a good steam bath, having one in your shower is pure heaven. (especially after a cold swim!) I use it every day. I've found it's also fantastic for getting rid of congestion and allergy symptoms. It added about $3.5-4K to the total cost of my shower including the generator, controller, dedicated electrical circuit, and extra work to create a fully enclosed shower space. It's not cheap, but it has been 1,000 times more useful than adding a Jacuzzi bath.

I also liked adding certain special and unique - what I call 'statement' - lighting fixtures inside our home. It really makes certain rooms pop. It can also add lots of functionality - especially in the bathroom (for example with makeup mirror lighting); and even in the kitchen when used for specific task areas. I usually will look in lighting specialty stores, not big boxes - for these special fixtures. There is much more to choose from than you typically see at Home Depot, and the fixtures are usually better quality overall, though more expensive.

 

[RunningBum]

2) Our double shower with rain-head and steam generator. It's not for everyone, but if you like a good steam bath, having one in your shower is pure heaven. (especially after a cold swim!) I use it every day. I've found it's also fantastic for getting rid of congestion and allergy symptoms. It added about $3.5-4K to the total cost of my shower including the generator, controller, dedicated electrical circuit, and extra work to create a fully enclosed shower space. It's not cheap, but it has been 1,000 times more useful than adding a Jacuzzi bath.

All 3 of your features sound neat, but especially this one. What's the upkeep like, is it more work than normal shower cleaning? I have a walk in shower that I really like, but I really could get into a good steam bath. I like your comparison to the Jacuzzi bath usage.

 

[RunningBum]

One thing I did over the years was to tour high end homes, and look for features that I would really like. A multi million dollar house might have dozens of extras I'd never spend the money on, but then I'd see that one thing that I'd know I'd like. Take pictures and notes. Sometimes it's just a matter of thinking about the rooms you've felt comfortable in over your life, and why that is--perhaps wood work, stone, lighting, coziness in a nook, whatever--and incorporating that. I can remember as a kid thinking how neat a small glass block window in the bathroom was. I put a good sized one on my master bath over the tub and it gives a lot of light but keeps privacy.

 

[Starsky]

All 3 of your features sound neat, but especially this one. What's the upkeep like, is it more work than normal shower cleaning? I have a walk in shower that I really like, but I really could get into a good steam bath. I like your comparison to the Jacuzzi bath usage.

There is virtually no extra maintenance. We simply keep the shower door ajar during the day and it dries out nicely. I've found that regular use keeps the steam unit clean and reliable. We've had this Kohler steam generator for close to 8 years with no problems and I use it daily. (I'm wearing out the controller first.) You can also add essential oils in a small depression where the steam comes out to get the full aromatherapy treatment.

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

We moved to an Unorganized Township in Maine. It is all dense forest. We built a large farm house, on Solar Power. We have 150 acres of land with 1/4 mile of river frontage. My pension and investment income bring in double of how much we 'need'. We 'farm' for the enjoyment of it.

 

[street]

Everything on one floor and no steps is what I have done.

 

[meierlde]

One thing that is very popular around my part of the Colorado mountains is a wood stove. They are really nice and cozy and fun to look at in the winter, but they are a lot of work to keep running with the soft woods available around here. It just takes a lot of stoking to keep the fire going. I am not talking about gathering, cutting, and splitting either. A lot of the homes around here are heated only with the wood stove. I would not recommend going that route, but a wood stove for enjoyment and emergency heat would be great.

One thing I have seen in the way of wood stoves is the rocket mass heater, (see youtube) it sents the exhaust gasses thru a bunch of pipes encased in essentially earth so the mass of earth gets hot and re-radiates heat out after the fire goes out. A link to how to make one https://diyprojects.com/make-rocket-heater/. Note that they use 1/10 the wood of a more traditional stove, and emit a lot less smoke. I suspect before two long in Co mountains you will have periods where the use of wood stoves is banned, due to air quality concerns (it already is in cities like Albuquerque) Some reports on Youtube claim that burning for 3 hours will provide heat for the rest of the day, and are far less polluting than regular stoves.

If you don't want to go quite that far consider a ceramic stove which I saw in a number of palaces in Austria. Essentially you take an ordinary stove, and add a layer of ceramic around the outside. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater

Again the ceramics store heat and re radiate so you get heat even when the fire goes out.

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

One thing I have seen in the way of wood stoves is the rocket mass heater, (see youtube) it sents the exhaust gasses thru a bunch of pipes encased in essentially earth so the mass of earth gets hot and re-radiates heat out after the fire goes out. A link to how to make one https://diyprojects.com/make-rocket-heater/. Note that they use 1/10 the wood of a more traditional stove, and emit a lot less smoke. I suspect before two long in Co mountains you will have periods where the use of wood stoves is banned, due to air quality concerns (it already is in cities like Albuquerque) Some reports on Youtube claim that burning for 3 hours will provide heat for the rest of the day, and are far less polluting than regular stoves.

We have a two barrel Vogelzang wood stove. The upper drum has 50' of 5/8" copper tubing coils in it. We circulate water through this tubing and to a thermal-bank downstairs. That is also circulated through our radiant flooring.

We try to capture most of the heat to water, to store it, to later transport it to heat our floors.

We will normally see -20F every winter and we consume 3 to 3 1/2 cords of firewood each year, in our 2400 sq ft house.

I have a Solar-Thermal heating system that is 80% constructed. It should reduce our firewood consumption to 1 cord a year. [mostly for cooking]