Parcel Survey and Tentative Site Plan

We have a survey of our new home site and you can read the shape of the place – the big wash on the left side is about 4 feet deep. The SE corner is about 40’ higher than the NW corner. The featured red rock views are just about straight north; views to Mingus Mountain are just north of west. You see all the major Juniper trees and only some of the forest of Crucifixion Thorns. Yesterday we saw what we think is the only Pinion tree on the property – along the south boundary. It’s not in the map.

You can also see our first attempt at laying out our uses. We like the idea of separating uses partly because we can and because it creates combinations of indoor and outdoor spaces in an environment where the weather is generally good. In the layout we’ve posted, the primary “public” space is an outdoor plaza between the house and the guest house. The kitchen and living room in the house face the plaza. Denise’s office is separated to give her the sense of going to and coming from work so she doesn’t work all the time and gets out of the house a little. Even in three buildings, our total square footage of living space is less than 2000sf. The garage will have a shop setup and being that far from the house will keep the noise to a minimum. We’ll fit the septic system in toward the north portion of the site somewhere and probably store water underground between the house and the driveway.

Now we start looking at the legal requirements. We have a 1-acre parcel in a 2-acre minimum zone. We’re not the only ones – probably hundreds of parcels in this failed subdivision (no water, no power, no road maintenance) are less than 2 acres, all zoned the same. In looking at the permitted uses, it doesn’t appear as though our preferred layout will be accepted – the office is probably not a permitted use (in a separate structure) in this zone. We’ll go talk to the county about all this next week. Since they allow separate buildings for livestock, if we move some chickens or a cow in with Denise, we’re probably OK. :-)

So we’re starting to think of layouts that might be accepted – ways to connect the still separate buildings in ways that will meet the legal definition of “attached”. The first effort at doing that seems to work pretty well – creates even more opportunities for courtyards and gardens between the buildings.

The garage, driveway, septic, and water storage will probably stay largely as we’ve drawn it, until something else comes along to change our minds. We’ve looked into re-use of greywater, which is permitted in this county. We heard about a case in Colorado where water harvesting was challenged in court (by folks “downstream”) but the water harvesters won. It’s apparently not an issue under Arizona law.

In the meantime, the weather in Phoenix is becoming bearable again. We bought some trees for the yard recently and will be able to plant them pretty soon – they are sitting in the shade waiting for a little cooler weather. Our house there is a 1931 Spanish-revival spec house that was neglected in recent years. We bought it because it’s only a ten-minute walk from my office. We have half the kitchen torn out and are about to start putting new cabinets in. We’ve started re-painting the living room and dining room. An electrician will start re-wiring the place by the end of the month. That will let us put gobs of insulation in the attic (after he’s done replacing the wires up there) and maybe the AC will only run half the time next summer instead of ALL the time. We’ll be applying for a grant from the city’s Historic Preservation program to rehab and/or replace the windows, do something with the stucco, and put a tile roof back on the front part of the house. If we’re successful, we’ll spend some of next year re-doing the bathroom and the second bedroom (which have been badly renovated over time) because new windows will require it. While we get ready to build our Rimrock house, we won’t be without a project. We’ll throw in a few pictures of that project on occasion.