Palomar Mountain Home Construction Project

Jim Hamerly, owner-builder and grower of trees

It has always been our dream to build a home in the woods at an altitude above 5,000 feet, where we could experience the four seasons in a semi-remote location full of wildlife (deer, wild turkeys, etc.). We've developed and recently completed (November 2006) a home high atop Palomar Mountain, California. Using the latest construction materials, the home is an off-grid, all solar powered home. We tap the subterranean basement to cool the home in summer via a whole house fan. Of course, we have wireless LAN's as well as CAT6 1000Base-TX (Gigabit Ethernet, and ready for 10 Gbit LAN) throughout. Novel applications include the use of Structural Insulated Panels ("SIPs") and triple-junction, amorphous silicon photovoltaic laminates ("solar cells").

I've always been interested in solar energy conversion: I did early fabrication of crystalline solar cells at MIT in the late 1960's, polycrystalline silicon at UC Berkeley in the early 70's, musing while other solid state physicists laughed at Stanford Ovshinsky for his research into amorphous silicon. He got the last laugh, and my cells today are made with his amorphous materials. He is also the inventor of nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries, among many other things.

Numerous people have asked me to chronicle some of the pitfalls that I have encountered as a first-time owner/builder. You can read about some of them here.

Caution: This home is at 5415 feet above sea level, which means your wristwatch will run approximately 0.000000015 seconds (15 ns) faster per day than at sea level according to Einsteins' General Relativity. Light travels about 15 feet in that period of time, if that helps. Air pressure is about 82% of that at sea level, and water boils at a lower temperature (94.6 degrees Celsius instead of 100 degrees Celsius). Students of Operations Management take note: Spaghetti takes longer to cook!

Check the Energy Guide at right from Hamerly Electric, sole proprietor, for our all solar, off-grid home.

And check out our carbon footprint, below:

New! You can now buy carbon credits directly from us! Click here.

July 14, 2004: Following two summers of significant tree clearing and wood splitting, and lots of measurements to position windows and such, the main construction area is staked out. Thanks to neighbor Bill McKinley for help provided, and to professional logger John Hodge who taught me how to drop trees safely. I listened and watched very carefully.

I took out mostly black oaks ("widow makers"), some as large as six feet in diameter, and gave away about 100 large truckloads of wood in the process. I am now raising and planting Colorado Blue Spruce and Giant Sequoias (very difficult!) to augment our thousand or so of cedar, pine, fir trees and California Oaks. See here.

I developed an immense appreciation of how difficult it must have been to clear land in the18th and 19th century without power assists. It is inconceivable to me how rugged those folks must have been.

Architect: Roger Duguid
Builder: Alan Serry, Dream Builders

November 14, 2004: Following lots of arm wrestling with the county:

• "A basement??? We don't build basements in California. If you insist on building that basement, we can only permit one light bulb in there; take all the others out"
• "Your garage roof is too strong, weaken it". [I'm not kidding]
• "Solar what??? Where is your electricity? You've got to budget at least 3 watts of electricity per square foot. And you must put fluorescent bulbs in your kitchen to meet electrical efficiency specs. I don't know about LED's, CFL's, your other energy savings efforts, and don't care."
• You must add arc-suppressing circuit breakers to your bedrooms. We can't explain to you what they do or why, they're still in our experimental stage". I then ask, can you add LED light bulbs to your experimental list? "No."
• "We don't have specs for that, but when we write one, we'll let you know and you can proceed."

a building permit is issued. Within 48 hours, Don Mendenhall pours the concrete foundations (140,000 pounds) using one cool pumper with a wireless joystick to direct the concrete. Extra kudos to Alan Serry for extra careful "sequencing".

February 4, 2005: Finished garage floor. This will house two cars, a workshop, bathroom, all of the the solar system electronics, a 32 megawatt 64 channel sound system :-), and other "experimental" electronic systems.

In the rear is the home foundation. View is facing west, with ocean in view, but 5,415 feet down.

May 17, 2005: The first walls go up in the garage, Dale Primus gracing the photo with his air conditioned "T-shirt-hat".

The SIP panels are typically 8 feet wide and up to 22 feet in length. SIPs are a structural composite, with the three components (outer OSB, a foam core, typically expanded polystyrene, and inner OSB) working together for optimal strength, reduced air leakage, superior thermal insulation, and improved sound dampening.

May 26, 2005: Doug Lande (top center) setting timber with excellent assistance from Jay Whyte (top right), Mark Thompson (bottom left), and Alan Serry (bottom center, check out that Hawaiian shirt!). This team rocks!

I ably assist by staying out of their way and instead work on wiring the garage. I am well trained in moving coulombs of electrons around, but not normally this many! I am more comfortable with nanoseconds and milliamps than hours and amps.

December 3, 2005: We're surprised by a 24 foot tall tree inside our 24 foot tall home! A gift from the construction crew, Alan Serry presiding. From left: Peggy Hamerly, Chris Serry, and Alan Serry, the ring leader.

At left: bottom 12 or so feet; at right: top 12 or so feet.

November 28, 2006: The Department of Planning and Land Use approves a "Certificate of Occupancy". We thought it would never happen....read more about it here.

I am now able to move furniture into the home. To the right, a very large custom farm house table and bench that I made for the home, with antique chairs that we refinished. My younger son Tim helped me drag the table in, I estimate it weighs about 350 pounds or more.