Status reports Archives

February 8, 2007

We are approved.

This evening we've received confirmation that our project has cleared the final regulatory hurdle between us and our building permit. As of 7pm tonight, we officially have a permit to continue with construction and development of our property in Berlin, MA.

To say we're ecstatic would be an understatement. Several of us are getting together to celebrate with champagne, yummy foods, and good company. While we're relieved to be past this obstacle, we realize it's just another step forward in the entire project. Now we move into the next phase... a very busy design development process where we decide everything from what heating system we'll use to what our kitchen countertops will look like.

There's a lot of work ahead of us, but this step means we're no longer stalled, and we now can see our goal in sight. Stay tuned here for further updates!

Posted by dbs at 12:20 AM

October 15, 2006

What we've been up to...

It's been a while since we've updated things here, but we've been slowly working our way through the permitting and approvals process. This is a long, tedious process, and as such doesn't leave a lot of room for excitement.

An excellent article was just published in the Boston Globe about our travails...

Read the Boston Globe article.

Posted by dbs at 4:54 PM | Comments (1)

April 28, 2006

Mosaic Newsletter Issue #1

Welcome to the first issue of Mosaic Commons' new newsletter, designed to let those interested in the community know what's going on with us. For more up-to-date information, check out our newly redesigned website at www.mosaic-commons.org, or attend one of our site walks, intro meetings or social events.

Comprehensive Permit Application Filed

On March 13, the Zoning Board of Appeals for Berlin held the first meeting to consider our comprehensive permit application. Over 40 people turned out. Sawyer Hill’s project managers and other professionals were on hand to present details about our community and answer questions from the ZBA and Berlin residents. Jen Wiley-Cordone also attended, and reports that the overall tone of the meeting was positive. The Boston Globe reported on the ZBA hearing
here.

The hope is that the ZBA hearings will close by July.

Septic Field Purchased

The closing of the purchase of the Zwicker parcel took place on February 22. Sawyer Hill is now the owner of this parcel and it has been added to the existing parcel. The total area owned is now 64.9 acres. Adding this parcel will significantly reduce septic construction costs and complications for the project compared with the septic options and costs previously available on the original Bigelow parcel.

Well Testing Completed

Water testing at the wells has been completed. Water quality samples have shown no dangerous chemicals like lead or arsenic.

Financing

The Cooperative Fund of New England has agreed to loan Sawyer Hill $350,000.

Project Schedule

Project schedule still anticipates complete approval of the 40B approvals process in the summer of 2006. If this works out to be true, some site construction work can be undertaken before the weather changes this winter. If not, construction will not start until spring or summer of 2007.

Holy Cross Visit

We were invited to speak to a sociology class at Holy Cross on "The Good Society". The students raised questions from logistics of creating a cohousing community to how involvement in the group has changed individuals personally. This opportunity allowed us to share the passion as well as the reality behind building the community.

Posted by dbs at 4:06 PM

March 15, 2006

A site visit and ongoing work.

A week or two ago I talked with Chris and Stew about stopping by the site some day when they were there. During the last site walk, I had walked with some other Mosaic-ers down to the newly purchased corner of the property, and tried to get an idea of where the actual borders were, and where the septic field would go. There were zillions of surveyor stakes and markers there, and we couldn't get a good idea of where things were going. I wanted to be able to say "There's where the field will go, this is where the plumbing and power will run..." etc.

Stew readily agreed, and said that yesterday (Monday, 2/27/06) would be a good time, as he'll be out there checking on some ongoing work.

We met onsite on February 28th around 1:30pm - it was AMAZINGLY cold out (my car thermometer said 16 when I left the house, had risen to 19 by the time I got to the site). Stew had brought his 70lb golden retriever 'Jake' with him, and we set out for a walk.

There were apparently several crews at work on the site. Here's what was going on:

1) The pump testing was beginning - this was a sort of stress test on the wells to find out how long they could operate at peak output - how did the wells refill after being pumped out, etc. It'll run for several days. Today was mostly setting up - one of he wells had the pump installed already, the other was being worked on. It involved a pair of large rigs on site - we asked why they needed such a large - what appeared to be a - drilling rig for just a test, and they noted that on the southern-most well, something had blocked the pipe about 50' down. This is not uncommon - it's usually just a
piece of rock coming loose and shifting, probably during the hydrofrac procedure. They were going to clear it out and set the pump down at the bottom.

2) There was another crew working down by the septic field - they were installing test wells - these are basic water testing holes, going down about 20' I think, that are just doing further analysis of the perc attributes of the soil. There'll be a bunch of these . Folks visiting the site will see white PVC pipes with caps on the top, sticking out a couple feet out of the ground. (these are smaller than the earlier pipes that were put in last year - these are only about 2" across, and are capped).

There were a couple new developments of note.

In order to get heavy equipment down to the septic site, they crews needed to clear a new feeder path, with permission from SVT of course. This path goes from just past the site of the northern well head, diagonally toward the new northwest corner . They didn't cut any trees larger than about an inch (Stew made a circle with his thumb and forefinger), and walking on the trail, it looks like they did a good job. But we have another road/path in the woods now. This road will go all the way to the northwest corner of the property, and then 'zigzag' down the hill to where the septic field will be.

The site of the septic field is probably the most isolated, private spot on the entire property. Not only are there absolutely no houses in sight (including ours, when they're built), but there are hills on 3 sides (including several hundred feet of our own property), and woods down into the lake on the south side. Couple this with, call it, a half acre of cleared, flat property in those woods, on side of a hill (terraced - some part will be flat, another section will be on a terrace above it.), and you have an -amazing- quiet spot back in the woods where no one will disturb you.

It's a gorgeous walk - I recommend folks head up there and enjoy it :)

Oh, one last bit - the question came up "Where is the pipeline going?" - because the pipeline also has to avoid the wellheads, it will NOT be following the existing road/paths through the woods. The pipeline will be following hte far western edge of the property down to where our houses will
be. This will likely mean a new pathway will be born along that strip, making a perfect western path countering the north/eastern path that is already in the woods. A great loop for walking on.

Posted by dbs at 3:12 AM

November 7, 2005

the face of consensus

This past weekend we had our Private Unit Design workshop.

Weekend-long workshops are always exhausting. This one was no exception. On Saturday we settled on designs for all five of our unit types. We examined full baths and half baths. We debated ducting options and closet arrangements. We agreed to make the 2-bedroom units all townhouses rather than stacked flats. We made all sorts of choices on accessibility issues.

Today we examined building types (duplex and triplex designs). We discussed whether to jog or not to jog. We considered shared porches. We measured and we taped and we stickered and we penciled. And we made a wrenching attempt at unit selection.

The Private Unit Design component of cohousing design is one of the stickier, emotionally fraught parts of the process. As Martin and Sierra put it, it hits people literally where they live. It's an attempt to find the uneasy balance between providing for everyone's personal needs and sticking to a site design that is simple enough to build. No one wants to be told that they can't build their home the way that they want to build it, but to get through this process we all have to be prepared to do exactly that. It means a lot of compromise. A lot. And in a group where everyone has already compromised a lot to get to where we are. This weekend I watched people who I love dearly struggle to find ways to meet their neighbors' needs. It was a fierce and beautiful sight.

It is a motley bunch of oddballs we have fallen in with here. I am continually amazed at our ability to keep moving and get the hard decisions done. It may be a funny-looking crew but it is, ultimately, my community. And it is my home.

This is what consensus looks like.

Posted by twp at 3:17 PM

August 28, 2005

Common House Design Workshop

On August 7th we had our Common House Design Workshop. This was a weekend long event (kicked off by the slideshow) where all Mosaic folks would make the decisions governing how our common house should be designed. The goal of this workshop was not to come away with a blueprint, but more a set of guidelines our architects, Mary and Laura could use to design the building that is to be the centerpiece of our community.

The workshop went very well, with the group deciding what rooms we wanted and what rooms we either couldn't afford or just didn't have a strong need for. Part of the challenge was it appears our site will not allow a basement due to ledge very close to the surface, so that really limits the amount of 'extra space' we'll have. We had that information for the workshop, and it helped us guide our processes.

As always, Mary and Laura did a great job working us through tricky questions of size, access, facilities, costs, and priorities. I believe the design we came up with in the end was a fantastic example of the consensus process in action, as we worked through each challenge. We made a lot of important decisions during those two days, and we're all looking forward to the sets of designs that Mary and Laura come back to us with.

Posted by dbs at 2:42 AM

June 11, 2005

Some decisions we've made.

A few weeks ago I posted about an eco-design workshop we did with Marc Rosenbaum. I thought it might be good to let folks know some of the decisions we made during this very helpful workshop.

Planning

This is one of the first times we've made actual planning "this is how things will look" decisions, on the order of physical elements of our future home. We have made agreements, plans, and procedures for many things, but many times people come to us with an approach of "Wow, you're doing cohousing, huh? So, what are your units going to look like?"

Frankly, we don't know yet. Some people are boggled at this. "You've been at this 5 years, and you don't know what your units will be like?"

It's hard for someone not in the process to understand that we are a community looking for a home. The community exists outside of the physical structures (since there aren't any structures yet :).

But, having said that, we really do need a place to live, so the details about how we're going to build, what we're going to build, and how the physical side of things will work is starting to take shape.

Previous decisions

I'm going to focus primarily on the ecological based decisions we've finished. We have tons of other things worked out, but lets just talk about this topic at the moment.

We've already done some of the 'macro design' things. Elements that don't require a specific site in mind to design. We're doing clustered housing (which means more than one 'unit' per physical building. Think townhouses). Clustering like this brings the building costs down (shared walls), while increasing efficiency (fewer walls facing the elements).

We're also shooting for as small a footprint as possible. In all our designs, for the various properties we've looked at, we've never actually disturbed more than 4 acres, regardless of the size of the property. In the case of our Berlin Property, even though we own almost 60 acres of land, we're still only going to build on less than 4 acres of it. (NB: We are sharing this property with another cohousing group, so there is other land use, but they are as interested in land conservation as we are). We expect to still leave 80% or more of this undisturbed, with at least 50% of the total designated conservation land.

These land use decisions were made quite a while ago, long before our current parcel was aquired. Now we start getting into more detail on how we shall design our housing.

Heating systems

Marc was very helpful working with us on the options. One of the big decisions was how we were going to do heating, cooling, and domestic hot water. Options were available from dramatic (pure solar) to traditional (oil-fired furnaces) to fascinating (ground-loop geothermal). In the end, we decided on a compromise between cost, complexity, eco-friendliness, and site-specific constraints. We plan on clustering our units into larger 'plexes' (4-6 units), and each of these 'plexes' will be served by a pellet furnace, with hot water circulated through the units for heating and domestic hot water (via a heat exchanger in the units). This is generally termed 'district heating', and provides a number of advantages.

The first is we're using a renewable, clean, and plentiful energy source - wood pellets. These are generally made from wood scraps from generalized construction and woodworking systems - compressed and shaped into pellets, and then stored in a silo on site. A mechanical auger feeds the pellets into the furnace to burn it.

Second is we're NOT using any fossil based fuels on site. These can get very messy and toxic very easily. We're still debating what we're going to be using for cooking heat, but that will be a seperate question.

Third is we gain the advantage of a centralized heating system. One large furnace is always more efficient than several smaller furnaces. Since we're sharing one furnace among 6 or so units, we gain more efficiency this way.

Home Envelope
An efficient home is a tight home. For some this is counter-intuitive. When faced with the concept of an 'air tight home', the natural reaction is to think of something stuffy and unclean.

In fact, homes that are not stuffy are generally that way because their insulation methods are failing dramatically. Air is getting in and out of the house via doors, windows, walls, and heating / cooling systems, rather than in a controlled fashion. This leads to inefficient heating and cooling processes. If you can control the airflow in and out of the house, you can ventilate it with fresh clean air in a controlled fashion - through your heating system - without having the heat you've already generated simply slip out under your front door.

We're going to shoot for as tight a house design as possible. We'll be using a forced-air method for circulating air (and in the winter, heated air) throughout the house via ducts (this design decision had to be made very early in the unit process, since the architects needed to make room for the ductwork). The duct system allows controlled airflow without relying on leaky doors and windows for fresh air.

The duct system is required for the district heating system as described above, since the heat coming from the furnace needs to be dissipated in the house, and using baseboard heaters is a poor way to do it.

The parts of a good house envelope consist partly of VERY good windows, doors, insulation, and heating systems. But many of hte problems that crop up in non-sealed houses aren't due to bad parts, they're due to bad installations. Marc said this is one of hte few times that the last house built has the best installations, because by then the builders know how to install that particualr window, or door, or vent.

We'll be working with suppliers to try and get the best windows and other pieces we can (triple glazed, perhaps single-hung windows), and then we need to make sure the builders install them right. One misplaced sash or flashing on a window install, and you let water in, and it goes bye bye from there.

Fini

I'll be gathering up some other information as we get more details together. It's a great start, and we're starting to get an idea of what things will look like.

Posted by dbs at 3:20 AM | Comments (1)

June 2, 2005

A milestone for us

Today we secured ownership of the land in Berlin, MA. This is a huge milestone for our project. It's taken over 5 years for us to reach this point, and it's a huge relief to everyone to finally be past it.

I can't say enough for our legal and financial teams, and the boardmembers who went above and beyond the call of duty to get this done. The combined efforts of both Mosaic's and Camelot's people made it all possible. It was a horrendously complex deal, involving many many lawyers and several banks, but now we're past it, and can concentrate on the next phase(s) of our development.

I think we're all a little numb right now. It'll sink in over the next few days, but for now we're tired, worn, stunned, and elated, all at once.

Posted by dbs at 11:36 PM | TrackBack

May 27, 2005

Well drilling paused due to rain.

It's been MIGHTY RAINY up here in Boston, so the drilling folks have had to slow up their work for fear of getting the rig stuck up in the woods. This weekend is looking a little better, so hopefully the ground will firm up and they can get started again.

In the meantime, the property is blooming! We've only seen it in the winter, so seeing all the greenery and flowers and plants coming up really makes it feel like it's coming alive. Yay!

Posted by dbs at 10:00 AM

May 23, 2005

Well drilling commences

Today was the first day the drill rig was able to get up into the property for our well drilling. We'll need a fairly decent water feed, so the well is pretty important. There's plans to do 2 full drillings, assuming we hit water. There's plenty of room, it's just a matter of time (and expense!) looking around.

Something I personally didn't know (or did know, but never really thought about it) - most well drilling is through solid rock. There's only a few feet of dirt up top, and from there on it's just drilling through bedrock. The hole is about 9" in diameter, the size needed for the well pump. They're looking for a fracture line in the bedrock where water is running. Fascinating.

The full picture gallery is online.

Posted by dbs at 3:44 PM

May 22, 2005

Eco Design Workshop

Today we had a day long Eco Design Workshop with our architects (Mary and Laura of Kraus Fitch Architects and Marc Rosenbaum of Energy Smiths.

It was an extremely informative workshop, and we made a lot of very important decisions regarding the project. Marc was a fantastic presenter who is obviously very knowledgable on the topics, and he was able to lay out the issues regarding decisions in building materials, mechanical systems, and design so that we could make intelligent decisions as to where we wanted to go.

These decisions were primarily guidelines to the architects to give them ideas about what we wanted, were it to be feasible. Of course much of it comes down to money, since many of the choices regarding 'green' building also end up costing more money, but there are huge wins in the end, both financially and ecologically.

Posted by dbs at 8:14 PM