Our House

We're building our house in Snowflake, Arizona. We chose this place because it is relatively safe from all of the things which can make Kathy sick. It is in a semi-arid area so mold is less of a problem. It is in a fairly isolated area away from agriculture (source of pesticide) and industry. Our property is about 8 miles outside of town and is among a small community of E.I. (environmentally ill) people.

Now that we have purchased 80 acres in a reasonably pristine environment, we need to build the ultimate safe house where Kathy can live, prosper, and return to good health. We have detailed specifications for minimizing electrical and chemical pollution in the house.

We are living on the property during construction so that we can oversee every detail and make sure that nothing harmful to Kathy is used in construction. We own a small E.I. safe trailer with a porcelain metal interior. This trailer does not have a kitchen or laundry facilities so we built a small shed to be the kitchen and laundry. After the house is built, the kitchen and laundry stuff will move into the house and the shed will become storage.

Our plan is in these major stages:

Planning

We did planning, designing, choosing materials, getting permits for septic, well, and power, and lined up an architect, general contractor, well installer, septic tank installer, etc.

Preparing the site for occupation

Before we could live on the site, we had to make the following preparations:

1. Have a well dug
2. Have a septic tank and leach field built
3. Have power brought in (underground)
4. Build a shed with a water compression tank, water heater, laundry facilities, and kitchen stuff
5. Build a foundation and cover for the trailer
6. Move the trailer to the site and hook it up to the water, power, and septic
7. Purchase and install a TV satellite system (there is no Cable TV nor broadcast TV there)

Taking up residence

We then moved our trailer to the property and started construction.

Construction

Construction took about 17 months, with us living in the house during the last 4 months of construction.