Gm's Volt: Made In China?

Well, this may entail a *very* long post, even for me. Perhaps it would be best to continue our correspondence by email

Long story (somewhat) short:

Ideally, the land will be somewhat remote. You don't want to be too close to large population centres. You absolutely do NOT want to be anywhere near a 100 year floodplain. Ever. Saturated soil is never good

Where I chose to site the house my land is quite high, not the highest point of the municipality, but close. I could have had a walk-out basement, but for reasons that should be clear I did not do so. The land actually slopes a bit higher to the NW so my house has partial protection from winds from that direction.

House siting should take into account your climate and expectations. For example, if you are in an area like mine with -40 winters, you want the general house siting SE, with a floorplan to take full advantage of solar gain in winter, but with overhangs to block summer sun.

Home construction should take into account how durable you want the house to be. I'd much rather sacrifice square footage then build a poor quality but huge house. I went with ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) above grade and for the basement.

The ICF has a finished width of 12 inches. It can be difficult to find windows in the States with the necessary jambliner depth to accommodate a wall that deep. Up here, it’s fairly easy. Locally, Polar Windows makes them to order for 10% more than a standard 2x6 wall casement.

Roof is a fairly steep gable, no fancy valleys that are doomed to leak in 10-20 years. Shingles are composite cement/metal with a 50 year guarantee. I like these as by design they are fire proof

The attached garage is a two stall. I insisted on a cinderblock wall up to the roof deck. The reason for this is if a vehicle in the garage should happen to catch fire, that could easily spread into the roof and you lose the entire house.

There have been houses in Winnipeg and nearby with unfinished attached garages, that have experienced a garage fire. Typically, within 10 minutes, the house is fully involved. Since the soffits are vented, you get a blast furnace effect. Not for me, well worth $1800 to fireproof the garage.

The garage ceiling has Roxul mineral wool insulation, which is also approved as a firestop. Door to the house is a commercial one fire rated. All the black pipe conduit to my garage – of COURSE I have conduit – is also fire stopped. A lot of folks may laugh at fire stopping and safety, but that can easily save a life

The interior partition walls have Roxul mineral wool, primarily for sound control. Yes, it also is a fire stop. There are 3 bathrooms in the house, all arranged around a central plumbing stack. The house elevation onsite allowed me to keep all the waste pipes in the slab, where it goes out to the septic tank

The soil conditions here are gumbo, so the clay is generally poor for drainage if you build in a low area. Although not necessary, I did 30 ft piling to stabalise the footings and foundation. My house will NOT move

The house will function without power. Sure the fridge will stop, no running water except for a backup hand pump, but a single airtight wood stove easily heats the entire house at -40. The wood stove has outside air intake, which is necessary in a tight house. Outhouse outside for emergency use. Otherwise a Bryant Evolution Plus 90 gas furnace easily heats the house on low fire. HRV for constant fresh air

I have design experience on various government projects to Mil Std 285, NSA 65-6, NSA 94-106, and NSA 73-2A. I think that affected my long term outlook. So I realized it would be very difficult to build in a house-wide survivable power and comms network. If you research these standards, you’ll know what sort of event I’m talking about

I am thinking of PV’s to supply backup essential LED lighting, but there are no civilian PV systems capable of meeting the above standards. Thus, lights out in a worst case scenario. There are various light sources, including my Coleman naptha lantern, in my house

Primary power is supplied by a Federal Pioneer 200 amp StabLok panel with built-in generator isolation switch, fully CSA approved for Canada. It’s not an ATS, but in my experience those are not as reliable as is claimed. The manual built-in isolation switch is rated 70 amps, more than enough for backup

The generator feed from the shed has a Citel M100-120T, MCOV rated 150 V. Total rated 2,730 Joules. The primary feed from the central metering box in the yard – all underground – has a Rayvoss RayCap hardwired before the panel

I found an older but rebuilt Onan 18 kw diesel. No electronics and it runs very well. I wouldn’t want to keep a lot of diesel on hand to run it 24x7, but just for occasional use. I have a smaller gas generator for portable use

I think in the final equation, what sort of sustainable house you chose to build must be designed for your own comfort level, and expectations. You may want to visit hardenedstructures dot com

 

Of course, which is why I am pessimistic about the entire situation. I do enough international business travel to not have very high hopes. There has been so much accounting trickery and hocus-pocus I really don't think anybody can determine what the true numbers are now

 

Wow, me too. Not too many sensible ones left anymore, are there?

 

To improve the situation perhaps those in business could start by refusing to buy imported parts and to stop lending money for goods people can't afford. There's enough blame to spread everywhere.

 

I agree

 

LOL... "...start by refusing to buy imported parts...." On a forum dedicated to a car exclusively MADE IN JAPAN:humble:

BTW, by definition, lenders lend money to people who can't afford whatever they are borrowing such money for. :bounce: Easy credit is generally most beneficial to poor people, who otherwise would be precluded from things like owning a home. But as with all things, some will abuse it.

 

Schwab Market Watch..

The bulls showed some surprising resiliency to finish solidly higher as financials were fueled in the final hour by rumors of impending relief to a struggling bond insurer. The renewed optimism in the sector overcame early pressures from an analyst downgrade and dismal comments about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Meanwhile, Intuit offered a tepid profit outlook,_ two GM units saw their credit ratings fall deeper into junk status,_ and 3Com fell after a Chinese telecom equipment maker gave up on its bid. But Express Scripts traded higher following upbeat profits. Elsewhere, Treasuries gave up early gains to finish lower after a Fed official warned about inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 97 points (0.8%) to close at 12,381, the S&P 500 Index advanced 11 points (0.8%) to 1,353, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 4 points (0.2%) to 2,303. On moderate volume, about 1.4 billion shares were traded on the NYSE, and 2.3 billion shares were traded on the Nasdaq. Crude oil rose $0.58 to $98.81 per barrel, wholesale gasoline increased $0.01 to $2.53 per gallon, and gold ended down $1.00 at $948.20 per ounce. For the week, the DJIA closed 0.4% higher, the S&P 500 Index gained 0.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.8%.

Intuit (INTU $27) closed sharply lower after cutting its fiscal 3Q and 4Q profit outlooks. The maker of TurboTax software anticipates EPS ex-items of $1.31-1.34 in 3Q, below the Reuters estimate of $1.37, and a loss of $0.03-0.05 per share in 4Q, shy of the consensus of a $0.02 per share loss. The company's CEO said, "Clearly macroeconomic conditions out there are challenging for small businesses today," which the company relies on for sales. Intuit recorded fiscal 2Q EPS ex-items of $0.40, down from $0.44 a year ago but ahead of the Reuters estimate of $0.36.

Standard & Poor's cut the credit ratings on GMAC, which is 49% owned by Dow member General Motors (GM $24 1), three notches to B+ and reduced its rating on the mortgage unit Residential Capital, which is fully-owned by GMAC, by four notches to B. The reduction in ResCap is based on challenges it faces as it attempts to return to profitability, a difficult funding environment, and the perception of reduced parental support from GM.