We want a site that has great southern exposure on a level lot on a decent lake. It needs to have room for a small house and plenty of workshop/garage. It needs to be on a paved road -- without a shared driveway. It should allow the house to have a long east-west axis -- with most of the windows on the south side.
Our current property has southern exposure on a great lake. We built our house there in 2001. It's now too large and we can't close it down for the winter. We are tired of accessing our house through a shared dirt road -- bids were $40,000 to pave a private driveway.
In 2004 we bought a lot on Lake Ossie - 5 miles away from our current house. It has a 60x40 pole barn, 24x26 garage, and a building site down near the lake. We decided to sell the lot in 2014 because it has western exposure and limited southern exposure due to a large hill and neighboring house.
We went searching for a different lot. We didn't find anything. The Ossie lot didn't sell.
So, we've been thinking hard about how to make a passive solar house work on the lot that we already have.
So, we've been thinking hard about how to make a passive solar house work on the lot that we already have.
- We can put the house at the bottom of the hill - as close to the lake as possible.
- Keeping the house close to the north lot line allows for the most southern exposure.
- We can route a driveway between the existing sheds. It will hug the south slope of the hill - which also clears some of the trees blocking solar gain.
- We can rotate/replace the roof on the 24x26 shed and put the solar panels on the south facing side of the roof.
Here's the survey map of the site:
