This link was sent to me. Thought I would share it. Maybe after I hit the lottery, I can build something like it. If I was building 10k sq ft, this is the way I’d like to do it (rather than a bland mcmansion).
http://www.busboomcastle.com/busboom.htm
jt8
“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.” — Erica Mann Jong
Replies
Where's the moat?
Actually, there is SUPPOSED to be one there somewhere. But heck if I can see it anywhere.
jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
just a lot of pretty brick veneer! But that would be a little creepy to get lost and stumble up that drive!
Shoot, I'd want to take it one step further and make the tower/wall tops more functional. Like a patio area. Folks can kick back and have the grill up there, etc. :)
I've been through a couple real castles. The biggest two things I had against them: too many steps & poor insulation. So an elevator and proper insulation would be a plus (I think he has both in this one). And the red neck in me thinks that a proper moat could make a nice fishing pond. ..but far enough out that I don't have moisture issues in the basement...aheh, I mean 'dungeon'.
Put a home theater setup in the basement (where you don't need windows). On the main level, have a 'great hall', but more modest scale kitchen and living areas. And you need a smattering of secret passageways and such.
I've got plenty of ideas. All I need is $$ :)
jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
Shoot, I'd want to take it one step further and make the tower/wall tops more functional. Like a patio area. Folks can kick back and have the grill up there, etc.
One of my designs being built right now in Ohio has that. A battlement, with crenels and merlons and everything. Even had to orient the stairs to match the olden ways--clockwise up to favor a right-handed archer. The well (the flat, top part) will be a patio area. They're shotcreting it probably as we speak.
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A friend built a variation on one
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I'm planning mine right now, I have the land and am going to the UK to get details for the plans in 2 weeks. I'm making the walls from R39 12" Rastra Block (IFC), R40 SIP for the roof, timber framed great hall, deck on top of the towers, off the grid solar + generator, the works. I want to leave a place for an elevator but not put it in yet, too much $.
see details on my site: http://darklingcastle.com
help and advice appreciated!
-Jedon
Here in the midwest, you're probably better off using square towers instead of round. Put round ones on there, and you're likely to have some yahoo drive up and ask ya why you got grain silos attached to your house.
jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
That's nicely carried out. The scale is good, too.
That's an important feature to get right, too. "Proper" crenelations are really much taller, with much narrower "front" gaps more widely spaced(you really want a 5-6' tall wall with an 18" firing step; the slots should be angled but not much more than 18" wide).
The corbeling on the tower was well done, too. "Real life" defensive corbeling being designed to drop projectiles and/or objectionable fluids through. That's what gives a lot of the character to say, Florentine architecture--that story-tall, and almost half a "room" projection makes a column capital of sorts for the building. Scaling this to more mundane structures requires great finesse.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
in me thinks that a proper moat could make a nice fishing pond. ..but far enough out that I don't have moisture issues in the basement
Well, in days of old (of 'bailey and keep') you chose your location near running water. The baileyilt by excavaing a redoubt and putting the cut material on the "inside" edge of that redoubt. You will have planned your two entry points in advance, and circled around to each. The Keep, you then raise on the highest point inside the bailey. When the keep is done, you build stone walls upon the bailey, which has compacted.
After that, it was optional whether you diverted water into your redoubt and formed a moat. You want some change in the water, some flow, or it dries up and smells pretty bad. You could also build tunnels from the nearby stream or the like to feed not only a seige-resisting cistern, but also to flood the redoubt after abandoning it as a defensive position.
About 1600 or so, you groom the edge of the redoubt so it angles about 15º to form a glacis, which will bounce cannon shot over (and not in to) your bailey walls.
Having a moat is moot, if you have chosen a good, solid, rocky peak to build your castle upon. You still want a redoubt (or two), to keep besiegers as far away as possible--they are just less likley to be water filled. (Though I want to remember that some Nor'umbrian Keep emptied the cesspools into one of their redoubts during some sort of siege--alligators & stagnant water might be preferable to that . . . )Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Having a moat is moot, if you have chosen a good, solid, rocky peak to build your castle upon.
Like so?
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Gonna have a He11 of a time fishing off THOSE walls!
jt8
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edited 3/6/2006 4:01 pm by JohnT8
Like so?
Precisely (even if I was more thinking of Dunvegan on Skye).
As to the fishing, it depends on what a person is fishing for, I mean, looks good for wrens, robins, swallows (migratory or not) . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
I don't want to be teh worker carrying the stone up that hill.
Didn't I read somewhere that you've done cove lighting? If so, let me direct you to my cove question:
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=70679.1jt8
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I was watching some program on the Discovery Times Channel about Russian real estate. They said that all the "new money" in Russia were building houses in the suburbs, most of them were gaudy castles, or miniature Disney World. That picture reminds me of the show.
Disney world was modeled after this one:
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jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
Edited 3/3/2006 5:38 pm by JohnT8
I can just see the MLS: Brand new castle, full moat w/alligators, jester's room, large dungeon, small torture chamber, his & hers bed chambers, many unmentionable chambers. R 0.5 walls, 4 towers, crenellated roofs. For more info, send emissary.
DG/Builder
Isn't small torture chamber and bedroom chambers redundant?When we were in France last summer we went to a couple of Chateau, including this one that was on the edge of Vichy controlled France. The river was the boarder, and the bridge ended on the Vichy side.I don't have the name handy, but it was used in an episode of Combat! as a German headquarters that lt. Handley escaped from.Large file warning. Sorry, I'm too distracted by a cat
I believe you're thinking of the Chateu in Chenonceau. Seehttp://www.a-castle-for-rent.com/castles/chenonceau.htm
This one?
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jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
Edited 3/6/2006 11:56 am by JohnT8
Yup, she's a looker.
Can't help but think they gotta have moisture issues in the basement :)
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jt8
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." -- Erica Mann Jong
Edited 3/6/2006 12:03 pm by JohnT8
they gotta have moisture issues in the basement
I'm not sure about that specific one, but I remember that there are ones from similar areas that do.
IIRC, that one was built on a rock outcropping which was used for the foundation, and then the surrounding lake formed around that. The ideal is to flood around an existing rock which makes for no (or fewer) leaks.
Now, using a 15-18' thick foundation of rubble & compacted soil between two rows of 24-30" cut or fit stone will cut down on 'minor' leaks a bit, too. This before tactical considerations like having a flooded sub-basement as a water supply are factored in, as well.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Now, using a 15-18' thick foundation of rubble & compacted soil between two rows of 24-30" cut or fit stone will cut down on 'minor' leaks a bit, too. This before tactical considerations like having a flooded sub-basement as a water supply are factored in, as well.
Store all the water you like, you still won't be able to eat the rock. And when you run out of dogs/horses, you're really going to test your friendships :)
jt8
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
you still won't be able to eat the rock. And when you run out of dogs/horses, you're really going to test your friendships
Well, that is the trick of it, in owning castles. There's that pesky business of having a bailey big enough to house all of one's revolting pheasants, too . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Well, that is the trick of it, in owning castles. There's that pesky business of having a bailey big enough to house all of one's revolting pheasants, too . . .
pheasants or peasants? One is socially more acceptable to eat than the other ;)
jt8
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One is socially more acceptable to eat than the other ;)
Dunno, once you get to "revolting" there's not a lot of difference <g> . . . Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Very cool. The best of all possible worlds. You lay in bed, fish out the window and stay in your skivvies. Doesn't get much better than that.
Re:"Isn't small torture chamber and bedroom chambers redundant?"Both seem redundant. Feeling both tortured and screwed will be the automatic and natural result of simply opening the heating bill. An exquisite bit of suffering that is repeated every month.The horror. The horror.
Been there, done that - too drafty for my taste, but nicer than Versailles - that is one GAUDY place ( and when built had no latrine facilities installed)1 - measure the board twice, 2 - cut it once, 3 - measure the space where it is supposed to go 4 - get a new board and go back to step 1
Wow...what a cool place for a Halloween party! Anyone for Trick of Treat?
Seems in this case, a man's second home is his castle<G> We were putting around the out islands in the Bahamas, and came upon this place...all on it's own little island...the ultimate in moating.
Sorry dial-uppers, but folks who put out for speed get a bonus: check out the place's name.
Hi, John. I've noticed that my website has gotten a lot of hits from this forum, so I had to check it out. Thank you for the nice compliments. You should know you don't have to hit the lottery to build one. I'm an average guy with an average job, and scrimped and saved and bought material on sale, made my own windows and trim, etc. and did 95% of the work myself. I had to pare it down considerably from my original design. It cost only $34/sq. ft. (1995)! Of course, it's not quite finished yet (are they ever?). And I like your reference to grain silos...round towers also cost about 4 times more than square, octagonal about 3 times more.
I love to see folks who march to the beat of their own drum. It's inspirational that you don't have to settle for cookie-cutter. You should start a thread about your castle (here on this forum). I'm sure other folks would like to read about it. And you're likely to get a different set of questions from these construction folks than you typically get.
I had to pare it down considerably from my original design.
Well you were still able to maintain the scale of the place. I can't imagine how big the initial plan must have been! I think the biggest reason most castles don't work is that they look like a regular house with a castle-element (usually a tower or battlement). Your castle looks like a castle. It has a castle's scale. And you've got a good setting for it (it wouldn't look nearly as good in the middle of a subdivision) ;)
I'm an average guy with an average job, and scrimped and saved and bought material on sale, made my own windows and trim, etc. and did 95% of the work myself.
With all the tornadoes we've been getting so far this spring, I often wish I was living in a concrete/block structure :) You must have had a lot of storage space if you were able to stockpile that much stuff for years ahead of time.
Where's the moat?!
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"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music." -- Angela Moný
I have my moat now (or 'motte'), now that the kids are grown and we don't have to worry about them drowning. It's a shallow moat, about 2 feet deep, that extends between the towers, all the way across the front of the house. A real moat would have been a little ridiculous and hard to live with. What with the creek on the north, the slough on the west, the moat on the east and all the 'enchanted forest' (read: hawthornes and honey locusts), we have pretty good defenses.
The gargoyles are about 30' up and spit down into the moat, making wonderful white noise in stereo. The moat is not in operation during the freezing months, but it t is running now (about a month early) because HGTV insisted on doing a story on it last Friday.
I am so lucky. If I had been living anywhere else, and had any other occupation, I probably wouldn't have been able to pull this off. Dang.
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No caption?
jt8
"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music." -- Angela Moný
Want one?OK. Homeowner admiring view from her newly-shotcreted battlement! :)
Want one?
HO or the battlement?
Is that from one of the exterior house pics you posted earlier in the thread?
Seems like I can remember visiting a glass block site that made different colors and possibly different shapes. A colored (non square) glass block would have gone nicely in those battlement holes.jt8
"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music." -- Angela Moný
Homeowner's spoken for. :)House is the first of the pix I posted earlier.
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thats cool Cloud, one of yours?
Any more pics of it?
Doug
It is a design of mine. The castle was one of the up-front requirements. I pretty much had to create a residence around it. Cool client, so it made the project worthwhile, even though I wouldn't usually be so thematic on my own. The rest of the design--a hub and three spoke arrangement--has worked out well be/c they wanted privacy for the spaces in each spoke...master wing, guest wing, garage/utility. Builder has been superb to work with. More pix as stuff is finished.
They're working hard on the interior, and the pix are getting real fun to see. I love pix, whether in one of mine or any other house, of the lines and shadows created by intersecting walls. This one's from the front door looking beyond the round kitchen and toward a molded window seat in the shell. Can't wait to see it cleaned up. BTW, they're using a combination of wood trim and a stainable flex trim with matching profile for the moulding for the curved-top window. If it were me, I'd have a crescent-shaped cushion made out of a crushed red velvet for the window seat. Perfect spot for a cat, or a catnap. We'll see what they end up doing.
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...made out of a crushed red velvet for the window seat...
Well it'd certainly add some color to the place!
Thanks for the pix and keep em coming.
Doug
Hey CloudHidden,
That's just way too cool. I love the smooth look to that house.
How is it framed up and what are the details on the castle "turret "?
What is the R and U value of the house? What are the interior wall and ceiling details (plum, square and straight, or smooooth and round?
What type of system or hardware did you design it on and how long did the design phase take?
You've got us interested with the pic so how bout some info to go with it.
Looking forward to hearing the scoop on this one.
Cork in Chicago
Edited 6/4/2006 11:41 pm ET by Cork in Chicago
The house is "air formed"...a fabric is inflated and polyurethane foam and concrete are sprayed inside that, about 3" each. Exterior is coated with polyurea. The base of the turret is set on the structure and formed with luan ply and shotcrete. Plywood is used for forming the well and the sides, with the well (the castle floor) poured and the sides with the crenels and merlons sprayed. (I think I have the castle terms right). All the concrete is tied together with rebar. Interestingly, all the tower concrete is supported by the house shell, without a separate footing.Interior walls (steel stud) are mostly straight and plumb. Well, they're all plumb and largely planar...better way to say it. The kitchen occupies the center, just inside the glass doors in the picture, and is 16'D round. The canopy along the front is to shade the south-facing glazing and for shadow lines (in the same way that eaves give shadows to rectilinear houses).I use R-35 for walls/ceiling and .25 ACH in the HVAC software to get the load calcs that we know empirically work well, though the local contractor is free to override. We generally size heat/ac at 2/3 ton/thousand sf. The house scored 94 on a HERS test.Construction has been about 6 months to this point. Design spread over about a year, partly be/c after it was all done, all radiuses were increased by 1' and I sorta had to start the drawings all over. I use Vectorworks. Designing curved spaces is about 5 times the work of flat ones. I have to do everything from scratch using nurbs surfaces rather than using the automatic wall and roof tools.Thanks for asking.
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Edited 6/5/2006 10:06 am ET by CloudHidden
Hey Cloudhidden,
That's just way too cool. Thanks a bunch for filling me in on all the specifics of your project.
Doing "cookie cutter", plum, square, and level buildings can get real old and it's always nice to see some original work and even better to be in on one. Sometimes "original" type buildings can be a real nightmare from Hades but the ones that go together nicely, make up for it all, and you remember them the rest of your life, where as all the "cookie cutters" just seem to all "blend together" with no real lasting memory of them.
With such a different style of building did you have any permit issues, and how did the bidding and framing aspects go. It would seem as though uncle sammy would put something like this building under a microscope and you sure better pick out a top notch framer. Last but not least, how well does the polyurea on concrete work. Some types of surfaces look great on paper but the slightest blemish or damage to the surface during construction and you are looking at a real nightmare scenario trying to blend any patch work into the rest of the surface. In the pictures all the exterior looks great and I was wondering how hard it was for the contractor to get that nice of a look.
Thanks for all the info. Your work makes for nice "eye candy".
Cork in Chicago
PS
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crenel - a notch or open space between two merlons in a crenelated battlement
crenelle
battlement, crenelation, crenellation - a rampart built around the top of a castle with regular gaps for firing arrows or guns. :0)
Permitting has been easy be/c these structures follow IBC/IRC completely with no exceptions or engineering evaluation reports required. And we've found inspectors to be like you...interested in seeing something they might not have seen before, interested in quality buildings in general, and interested in learning something new (despite the stories here about bad inspectors).Contractors...harder to find than for a conventional house be/c so many prefer to stay with that they've done before. Can't argue with that. What's fun is to find a contractor who's jazzed about stepping out a bit with something new to them. Mostly we work with a handful of exceptional and experienced contractors from this genre. They travel around the country and have built a reputation for themselves within this community. Still, I wish the community would expand to include more contractors...it'd help balance the supply and demand, and it'd give the contractors a chance to show their skills in new forums.
Cloud,
It's funny. I love it.
Ron