Building a home in the digital age
IT WAS a little unnerving this time last week to wake up to a thin layer of snow on the mountains that are visible in the distance from this tiny and remote village in the eastern Free State that I like to call home.
It reminded me why I sometimes don’t like to call this home: it’s probably the coldest place in the country in winter, and winter, as seen in last week’s snowfall, can last as long as six months.
Add to the mix a rented, 100-year-old south-facing farmhouse with a mountain on its northern side that blocks out almost all of the winter sunshine, and it can be an almost unbearable place to live in winter.
What could have possessed the owners of the original farm to build this sandstone house in such an inhospitable position, other than the fact that it is a good vantage point from which to see and defend against advancing marauders?
Despite the fear and loathing occasioned by the rapid onset of winter, my beautiful wife and I have resolved to linger in this village a while longer and have purchased a sizeable piece of land on which not to make the same mistakes as were made by the designers and builders of the house in which we presently reside.
Of course, that’s a lot easier than it was 100 years ago, even if you don’t have a lot of money to do it with, although choosing a piece of land that gets lots of winter sunshine is an obvious first step.
After that, technology comes to the rescue, as you’d expect.
First, especially if it’s rural farmland you’ve acquired, you’re likely to have some difficulty figuring out where your land begins and ends, and the arcane system of geographic co-ordinates used by the land surveyor will probably look like Greek to you. Luckily, a quick
What could have possessed the original owners to build this sandstone house in such an inhospitable position?
Google search turns up an application you can download and instal on your computer that converts the meaningless co-ordinates to something Google Maps and Google Earth can understand — and before you know it, you’ve got your piece of land mapped out quite precisely.
Next, you don’t need to be an architect or a rocket scientist to design in 3D the house you hope to build. Not only that, but you can actually position your design on your piece of land in Google Maps and see how it interacts with the sunshine and shadows at any given time on any given day of the year — using a free Google application called SketchUp (it’s a 35MB download and fairly tricky to operate, but there are many tutorials available).
Now that you’ve figured out exactly where to put your house, and in which direction it needs to face to make the most of the weak winter sunshine, you need to decide what it will look like.
Unlike 100 years ago, you need not be limited to what your imagination is capable of coming up with.
Simply download and instal a smartphone app, such as the wonderful Houzz, and you immediately have hundreds of thousands of photographs and products to inspire you.
Houzz is specifically aimed at renovators and builders and has a section for every room imaginable, as well as exteriors and landscaping ideas. Swipe through the photographs (or, separately, products), tap to add something that strikes your fancy to your personal “ideas book”, and you can quickly build up a wealth of reference material to help you design your own home.
Websites such as the popular Pinterest (also a smartphone app), which lets you pin things you like on the internet to virtual pinboards, offer equally excellent ideas-gathering services.
Designing a winter-proof house has never been so easy.