Why would you want to build a low-maintenance home when you can spend the rest of your life repairing things? If I tell you how to build such a home, readers may run away and build new homes somewhere else or give up and rip their homes apart. The key to low maintenance is redundancy. Have more than one way to prevent water intrusion and protect your home from mold. Create cavities to improve ventilation behind materials and allow for future wiring, avoid freezing plumbing, minimize heat loss, and allow the home to cool itself.Pick a site with good drainage away from the foundation. Excavate while observing soil conditions, look for pockets of moisture or organic soil and remove them carefully, bagging them for lab analysis. You don't want to build on underground streams or unstable material. In the process of forming a foundation footing, set up drain piping wrapped in filter fabric made to keep out sand and debris. Place the walls and floor slab with drainage channel membrane, specially made to disperse water pressure and protect the underside of the slab. Regular plastic can be used, but is not best.Using reinforcing rods in the walls, engineered for your conditions, will prevent walls from cracking. Mastic and the same drainage membrane on the exterior foundation walls blocks moisture and directs water down to the drain piping - which should be directed to a correctly sized dry well, or downhill. With the wide foundation walls set, a metal channel floor system can be constructed. The exterior walls should be Aerated Autoclaved Concrete block, which is extremely lightweight, like pumice (but strong enough to support a six-story building), has a higher insulation value than its equivalent wood-stud-and-fiberglass-batt-insulated wall, and is fireproof. It can be routed for wiring and piping. It will even hold nails, wall anchors, screws, and any other fasteners. I would finish with stone, in a rustic location, with a tar paper-and-drainage-cloth backup system, then adhered synthetic stone, or real stone if the foundation walls are wide enough. With real stone, allow for a 1-inch air space, weep channels, base wall flashing, and wall ties to hold the stone to the block behind. Obviously, real stone is a lot more work, and therefore more costly.Finish the roof with steel rafters, insulation board and metal roofing. You won't have to worry about the plinking sound of raindrops if you install a reflective, insulated, foam backing under the roofing and over the rafters. It separates the two metals and reflects heat back in to keep your heating bills down, while reflecting outward to reduce cooling costs as well. This system will cost more to build, but is non-flammable. It won't support mold, will stop bombs and radiation (somewhat), and you can hide from civilization. We'll miss you. Good luck!Readers are encouraged to send questions to: HERALD Homes, 379 Central Avenue, P.O. Box 220, Lawrence, N.Y. 11559-0220Attn: Monte Leeper, architect.
