A Good House

By Richard Manning

Manning is a reporter who lives in Montana. Shortly after he remarried, he and his wife decided they wanted to build themselves a new, environmentally-sound home on an large acreage near Missoula, his home town.
And he means literally build their own home. Most of the work was done by him with the help of professionals. The professionals provided the guiding hand and he did what he could to help, and not just a little. Manning has a background in construction and more than just a rudimentary knowledge of concrete work, wiring and carpentry. He taught himself plumbing and finish carpentry in the process of building the house.
During the book we follow the Mannings as the house moves from design to construction to finish work with Manning explaining his thinking in how the building of a home effects not only the local environment but the whole Earth. Towards the end of the book he admits his own selfishness in building a home in the wilderness, how crowded and noisy he found the city and just plain unbearable. This is his justification for what he did.

This is my dark little secret: that all of the good I have tried to build into this house is nothing more than a grand rationalization to hide my abhorrence of people. Not of individuals, but of the braying, collective mass. I can speak of energy consumption, fighting profligacy, even craft, but reduced to its simplest level, this house is about noise.
I could no longer stand the noise of the city, even a small city like Missoula -- the rush and the crush and rude violations of space.

This is probably the only part where his logic breaks down. Everyone finds cities noisy and crowded but most just have to make do. Which is a good thing. Because if we all streamed out of the city to find our 38 acres of wilderness then there wouldn't be any wilderness left.

This was a pretty good book. At times the technical aspects of the building were hard to follow, especially the description of putting up the house frame with its talk of joints and posts and studs. This part didn't really register with me but the part where he describes his travails with the composting toilet sure did. That part will stick with me forever. He has made his peace with that extremely fussy piece of plumbing but, if I have any say in the matter, I will never have a composting toilet, never! His description of what he had to go through! At one point, the composting unit overflowed and he had to shovel his own ... yuck!
Anyways, gross out part aside, this was a good read, informative and enlightening. And at the back of the book is a helpful list of the literature that helped Manning along in the process of building his dream home.

For another review see Peaceful Prairie.

New Words:

Spudded: a spud is a kind of spade. 'Michael, Tracy, and I had spudded in these trees just a day before, and we were worried about the deer.'

Soffitand fascia: Soffit is the under-surface of any part of a building such as the arch, eaves or cantilevered section and fascia is the vertical roof trim located along the perimeter of a building, usually below the roof level, to cover the rafter tails at the eaves. 'The wires were in, the windows hung, pipes placed and soldered, roof on, rafter ends blocked, exterior walls sheathed, internal walls framed, drains stubbed, soffit and fascia cut and nailed down.'

Kerf: the gap left when material is removed by a saw. The width of the kerf is equal to the set of the saw. 'I flip the board and cut the other end to length, allowing the saw's kerf to exactly halve a thin pencil line for a tight, butt joint.'