You ain’t kidding. Few years back when I put solenoids on my sprinklers, I realized how much I dont care for a green lawn when its that much. That was a 350$ water bill, so I turned them off.
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If the powers of heaven and earth wanted me to have vibrant lawn - rain will be provided.
AKA, “Darwin Grass” 
(one of my kids was doing a project for Environmental Science merit badge in Boy Scouts and actually listed “Darwin Grass” in his notebook. A college education has helped him more fully understands the concept of sarcasm.)
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I take a more Greek mythological approach to things: the gods help those who help themselves. I need to take some of this approach to the back yard where soil subsidence is becoming A Thing™.
That’s a heck of a lot of water.
I feel like the ideal is to simply keep the grass reasonably alive as opposed to the vivid, thick green that so many aim for (perversely, as the threat of increasing water restrictions looms, some lawns become even greener). I managed to get ahead of the curve early this year with routine watering rather than wow the grass is starting to look kinda brown and am simply maintaining soil moisture rather than trying to replenish it.
Sprinkler system might be a project for this fall. Expect I’ll do a semi buried system connected to the hose spigot with an external solenoid box. Don’t plan on watering any zone more than than 30 minutes a day twice per week.
I can’t envision a Spartan watering his lawn and intoning “Oh Great and Powerful Zeus let this lawn strike fear into the Persians.”
Hmmmm, it is raining right now - clearly my lawn was not meant to die! The weak grass has been culled.
If one had plenty of zones available, a more narrow strip of “landscaping” zones fully circling the house would make a lot of sense. The idea being to keep a somewhat constant moisture level adjacent to, and under the slab should greatly delay the need for, and hopefully minimize the extent of foundation repairs. I don’t really have that separation in the back yard, so I basically have to try to maintain reasonable soil moisture through most of the yard. Ironically, in the front yard, where I actually could do that, I don’t want to put the trees at risk, because the HOA demands two healthy trees at prescribed locations in the front yard. They don’t even help my AC bill, because they shade the street.
15 years ago it was difficult to find an open floor plan without a HOA. I figured once the builders figured out how good HOAs can be at whipping new residents into line, who would otherwise be too busy settling in to keep the yard in prime shape, that homes built after '95 were likely next to impossible to find without a HOA. And worse, while I haven’t had time to confirm, I recently heard from people who should know that state law now requires developers to establish a HOA. WTF!?!
Now that I am researching stealth antennas, I am annoyed that I didn’t try harder to find a place we liked without a HOA 15 years ago.
I wish ours would, but with two pools to operate and probably an acre or two of HOA owned landscaped areas to maintain, I don’t think it is a realistic option.
I would not mind a voluntary neighborhood association : would perhaps donate to it and do some occasional volunteering. But some of my neighbors on Next Door are far too interested in compelling everyone in the neighborhood to meet code and satisfy their intense needs to dictate the terms of other I’m existence for me to ever support a HOA as quasi-government.
Also: Addressing that soil subsidence problem. Expect that I’ll be running that soaker hose for much of the rest of the year to rehab the soil.
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my next house will have a traditional foundation under it - not a “when will it fail” slab, preferably with a basement.
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Hard to come by in the DFW region.
My domicile is allegedly post-tension slab so this is less emergency to stave off foundation repair next year, more long term to stave off foundation repairs ever. If it makes you feel better, that’s the back porch, not actual foundation.
Good luck with that. Basements make sense where you already have to build a footing wall 24, 36, or even 48 inches below grade to get below frost heave. So adding a few more feet for a basement can provide more space at a lower cost per SF than at surface. Around here 1st floor SF is much cheaper than below grade. You are probably better asking for either a deeper and more reinforced perimeter beam and more internal webs, and then the debate of heavy rebar reinforcement, or more post tension cables in all webs.
Or maybe step back to pier and beam construction. That solves several issues and exchanges them with some others.
If not pier and beam, I would also move all suppply plumbing out of the slab, into the walls or ceilings. It has some issues, but less than a house where all the in slab plumbing starts to rot in 30 years.
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My neighborhood is 100% post tension slabs, about 15 years old, and I can think of at least 4 houses within sight of my front door that have had piers installed in the last few years. But we are in an area that is considered worse than average for the metroplex for expansive soil.
Slab or post tensioned slab = constant failure but fast build times = end result is piss poor performance for the end user i.e. the home owner.
Pier & beam is much more reliable and better over a concrete heat sink for many reasons other than the usual foundation cracks, broken pipes under those wonderful slabs etc.
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Made progress towards the goal of enclosing the building today.
Finished the building wrap. Taping took like 5% of the wrapping time, but it sure was satisfying.
Sorting out the process of installing the panels. It’s a pain in the a__ since it involves a lot of ladder shifting. So very much ladder shifting.
25% complete. Think I’ve got the process down now.
This part of the shed should now stay dry if it rains, no?
Looks a little more like a building every day.
I should maybe think about not using the shed as a giant trash can.
If I ever have to replace the roof I think I’m just going to go with sheathing, tar paper, and shingles or roll roofing. These panels look nice, but with all the proprietary accessories and soon-to-be-apparent alignment issues I’m not sure I can recommend them.
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How bazillion degrees is this solar box going to get?
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Ceiling insulation is in the cards.
Otherwise, light transmittance on the panels is 35% so a good deal of the heat is cut out already.
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I may be misunderstanding, but…
Why install light transmitting panels at all of there will be a ceiling to insulate?
I’ve been meaning to look back through the tread to see if you answered that already, I may have missed…
Also, maybe next time just regular corrugated “barn roof”?
A combination of…
- I wanted to keep my options open for a quasi skylight
- Related to 1, the manufacturer advises not to mix colors
- Opaque-ieh colors are limited from the manufacturer to green (5% transmission), a gray color not in stock anywhere (25% transmission if I recall) and a white (something like 25% transmission despite being seemingly opaque); otherwise since they’re primarily marketed for deck roofs and greenhouses, light transmission is apparently desired
Some of their shoddy-er panels are available in different colors - some of which might be more opaque - but I didn’t like the performance implied by the far shorter and less generous warranty.
At this point the semi-skylight option seems to be closing; I might just rig something with white Masonite behind the panels if their heat transmission performance is that bad.
Didn’t do metal because I didn’t know what it would sound like in a thunderstorm, I gather that galvanized steel has surprising lifespan issues in our climate, and didn’t want to anger my neighbor to the south any more than they already took exception to my outbuilding.
I am accepting of the possibility that this approach is something I may come to regret.
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We had a patio done with that when growing up in California. It may only transmit X% of light - but what doesn’t go through is then transmitted as by conduction.
Are you planning on sleeping in this?
This is sort of the nature of shining light on an absorbent surface. Conventional roofing might do this slower, but it still happens, thus attics regularly hitting 160F. The ideal would be for sunlight not to hit the insulation itself, naturally.
Probably not. But I’d like the option to make it habitable in the future.
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