Urban, Suburban or small town?

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Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by Tero » Tue Nov 18, 2014 11:22 pm

Retired Boomer - WI on 11.16.14 at 7:20 pm
145 Galley Ave.

Renovated antique hovel. Skinny lot, no parking, polluted air, and nosey neighbors.

everything city living brings! Sure buy it, you who know no better.

As for me, give me the small towns where costs are but a third, and incomes still 90%. See who gets to freedom faster.
http://www.greaterfool.ca/2014/11/16/the-urge/
Add to that, human nature. The expectation that values will continue to rise, regardless of a stumpy economy or the certainty of higher mortgage rates in years ahead, makes people like Jim and Margie able to justify a bad financial decision. Time, they’re sure, will wipe away any mistake and justify an immediate emotional want.

After all, if prices have gone up for the past five years, will they not go up forever?

Youth is so cute.

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by MrJonno » Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:09 pm

Not quite sure what a 'small town' is to be honest.

There are cities (where most people live) which extend to less dense parts of the suburbs and their is rural.

When you see horror movies about US 'small towns' I'm not sure it would really work in the UK because those sorts of places don't really exist here
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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by cronus » Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:21 pm

America is modern and transitory everywhere on Google maps. England is very very old in comparison.
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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by laklak » Wed Nov 19, 2014 9:06 pm

Eight hundred thousand fucking dollars? Jesus Christ in an iron lung.

Honestly, for that amount of money down here you could buy a gorgeous home plus enough income producing properties that you'll never work another day in your life. Spend your time fishing and collecting rent. Jesus Christ, people are fucking idiots.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by piscator » Wed Nov 19, 2014 10:54 pm

In 2004 I bought a 10.5ac remote parcel on Kodiak, between Karluk and Larsen Bay, sight unseen. I almost shit myself when I saw its approximate location on a topo map, because it commands a natural harbor and straddles the only reasonable beach access inland for miles either direction.
The first time I visited the place, I recovered the original 1899 US Survey marks from under the Katmai ashfall of 1912, which effectively doubled or trebled the value of the property, originally patented (Homesteaded) as a beach seine site by the Alaska Packing Co because millions of sockeye and coho and chinook swim right by the place in knee-deep water on their way to the Karluk and Ayakulik Rivers every year, and all you have to do is scoop them up. (The Karluk River was the world's largest producer of salmon at that time (late 19th cen), before the Bristol Bay sockeye fisheries were pioneered.)

I haven't done anything with it, as I've been busy (and the Kodiak Borough are a pack of thieves who prey on absentee landlords), but that's changing somewhat. I'm thinking shipping containers on Sonotubes might be a way forward:

Image

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by laklak » Thu Nov 20, 2014 2:45 am

I've seen some really cool shit done with shipping containers. I've been looking at sonotube forms for an elevated beach house on Dog Island up in the Panhandle. Floor has to be 13 feet above mean high water by code, most people use wooden poles, but I want to do reinforced concrete pillars on a buried floating foundation. Now, shipping containers on top would be great, but the nature conservancy that owns the island won't allow any sort of manufactured or modular housing, has to be site built. If I manage to pick up the land I'm looking at (about 5 acres, with frontage on both the Gulf and Apalachicola Bay) I'll see if I can talk them into it.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by MrJonno » Thu Nov 20, 2014 8:25 pm

It's generally not the actually house that costs much but the land (and planning permission)
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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by piscator » Fri Nov 21, 2014 12:42 am

laklak wrote:I've seen some really cool shit done with shipping containers. I've been looking at sonotube forms for an elevated beach house on Dog Island up in the Panhandle. Floor has to be 13 feet above mean high water by code, most people use wooden poles, but I want to do reinforced concrete pillars on a buried floating foundation. Now, shipping containers on top would be great, but the nature conservancy that owns the island won't allow any sort of manufactured or modular housing, has to be site built. If I manage to pick up the land I'm looking at (about 5 acres, with frontage on both the Gulf and Apalachicola Bay) I'll see if I can talk them into it.

I want to be responsible about it. Repurposed containers are low E and are earthquake resistant, and can be easily shipped, erected and removed. Conversion into anything I would spend a season in can get spendy. Still not sure about codes and taxes, but I'm not going to be inspected, so I can submit standard drawings.

I've also considered yurts on decks. For $50K, I could erect a nice yurt compound for an extended family fish camp with a commercial beach seine to defray everyone's airfare. Wood stoves, composting crappers, showerhouse with big wood stove to itself, or with attached banya.
Another $10K would buy galvanized metal decking that would allow light to penetrate to the ground and literally reduce our footprint, and some decent solar electric. Only thing that would stay over winter would be the banya and the platforms, which would be safe for wild animals left unattended. Big benefit to this is the lot of it could fit on a reasonable boat.

Of course, some sort of landing craft will make things come together real nice...


Just arriving one day and setting up camp is tantamount to moving into the Koniag Corporation village of Karluk unannounced, obviously the polite things to do are A. not be a stranger and B. declare my intentions beforehand. I don't foresee problems that I would in other Villages. :lay:


Getting to Kodiak is no big deal. Getting to Larsen Bay is no big deal, with scheduled flights. Then, it's 23 or so miles by boat out of Uyak Bay and around Cape Uyak, which holds king salmon, king crab, and spot shrimp year round.
Karluk is a charter flight, and LB is the hub of the whole Westside. I could fly to Karluk or Larsen Bay, but I'm getting to where I don't want to do that shit on anything like a regular basis.

I may just park this little puffin next to the landing craft in Larsen Bay, park a 20' connex there for yurt storage, and be done with it. :biggrin:

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by piscator » Fri Nov 21, 2014 1:20 am

Got fish?



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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by laklak » Fri Nov 21, 2014 4:21 pm

We looked into a geodesic dome on stilts, basically a solid yurt. Several nice things about geodesics; they're relatively hurricane proof, they have a shitload of internal space for their surface area, and like a yurt, you get nice ventilation with an opening at the top and around the bottom. Dog Island has no bridge access, but there's a WWII landing craft you can rent for $500 one way to the mainland. It's only about 5 miles offshore, but that's about as isolated as you can get on the Gulf Coast. Actually, with my party barge thing I could carry most of the materials for a dome myself and just use the landing craft for the bigger pieces. Getting shipping containers there would be a bit of a problem, I don't know if they'd fit on the landing craft and moving them into position would be a major headache without access to much in the way of heavy equipment.

That boat is da bomb, piscator. Bit more than I need but damn I'd like one like that.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by piscator » Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:40 pm

laklak wrote:We looked into a geodesic dome on stilts, basically a solid yurt. Several nice things about geodesics; they're relatively hurricane proof, they have a shitload of internal space for their surface area, and like a yurt, you get nice ventilation with an opening at the top and around the bottom. Dog Island has no bridge access, but there's a WWII landing craft you can rent for $500 one way to the mainland. It's only about 5 miles offshore, but that's about as isolated as you can get on the Gulf Coast. Actually, with my party barge thing I could carry most of the materials for a dome myself and just use the landing craft for the bigger pieces. Getting shipping containers there would be a bit of a problem, I don't know if they'd fit on the landing craft and moving them into position would be a major headache without access to much in the way of heavy equipment.

That boat is da bomb, piscator. Bit more than I need but damn I'd like one like that.
That shippy little Monk with the longline reel? She'll only go sailboat speed, but she's clean. Shelikoff Strait has a southerly set of about 1/2 knot. This current can stand up the face of the waves and make for a short steep sea when the wind is out of the North half of the compass. This means that a 30-odd foot boat heading north up the Strait can make heavy weather out of a 4' sea, :banghead: while a southbound boat of similar build can be deep frying chicken in her little galley. :dance:
The shape of that 60s vintage Monk will make craft work of a headsea in the Strait, her flopperstoppers allow her to haul back gear in the trough, and her cut of the water should keep her from surfing bad enough to slew in anything I'd expect to encounter in the summer on the leeward side of Kodiak.

That LC burns gasoline which is, like, $5-$6 gallon in LB. So figure $100/hr to run the little fucker, if you stay out of the throttle. For $30K, I can stretch an aluminum seine skiff that already has a 5.9 Cummins and a Hamilton jet. Cost less than 1/2 to fuel it, comparatively. I could add fish bins.
I also need a setting skiff and a packing skiff to have a paying beach seine operation. The setting skiff doesn't have to be much, but the packing skiff has to (ostensibly) make a 50-mile turn to Larsen Bay in jig time, loaded with ice and fish.
A site like I have could produce 30-50,000 lbs of sockeye in a season, and a significant part of that could come over a weekend. Yee haa. Without a tender vessel with refrigerated sea water, the best option is to pack fish on ice to the processor for top $$. At 20knts, it's a little over an hour each way to sell the fish. I'd like to be able to sell $4-$5000 worth of fish at a wack, and only use the 8-knot Monk to tender loads on the bigger days.



Some things, like a crane and landing barge, you may just have to smile and pay the man what he asks, because it's the cheapest way at the end of the day. :biggrin:
Somewhere in another thread I think you mentioned having surveyed in your past. If you have a level and level rod, you can find the FEMA benches in your area online and run a good tight loop or two through your lot so you know you'll be clear of the flood zone. It won't be legal if you're not registered of course, but You can use it, and if a railroad spike gets hammered in a power pole or hackberry tree out in front of your place, it might be real convenient to have an unofficial FEMA elevation on it. :pirate1:

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by laklak » Sat Nov 22, 2014 12:19 am

Surveyed for about 10 years before I got tired of being sunburned and bug bit, but was never registered. Just an hourly party chief, but I could still run a dead balls level loop, particularly on a flat island. I don't think any of Dog is out of the flood plain, though, hence the 13 foot pilings. Funnily enough, you can still get grandfathered federal flood insurance if the previous property owner kept up on the premiums, but zero chance of pulling a new policy. Any place on Dog has to be viewed as a throw-away, one good Cat 4 and the entire island will disappear.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by piscator » Sat Nov 22, 2014 4:55 am

I don't really have a hurricane problem, per se...

http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/HB/ ... d/Alaska//



Both the old image and the vid have you in Karluk, looking N toward Cape Uyak, that rocky cape you see around 0:40, 5-7 miles distant. Cape Uyak and Pafco Point, that big fucking cliff you see in the video, make Northeast Harbor, so named because it's the best place to hole up in a NE blow. You can't even see it from Karluk. :smug:

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by piscator » Sat Nov 22, 2014 5:19 am

laklak wrote:We looked into a geodesic dome on stilts, basically a solid yurt. Several nice things about geodesics; they're relatively hurricane proof, they have a shitload of internal space for their surface area, and like a yurt, you get nice ventilation with an opening at the top and around the bottom....
Kinda going for minimum visual impact. A Doppler radome glowing like a beacon against the stark headlands might start more shit than I want to stir... :fp:
I know a guy who has built himself a concrete dome mansion in Big Lake. Essentially geodesic pattern rebar with a shotcrete coating. Super cheap to heat, given the amazing volume of air inside. Not for me really, but may be feasible for a lot of other people who want a house that'll stay put in a cupfull of wind... :yes: But you may have to import fill material to build a pad...and shotcrete and steel cost big... :ask:

Having to be so high above the sand, you may be sorta stuck with a doublewide on piles...

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Re: Urban, Suburban or small town?

Post by rainbow » Sat Nov 22, 2014 10:17 am

piscator wrote:In 2004 I bought a 10.5ac remote parcel on Kodiak, between Karluk and Larsen Bay, sight unseen. I almost shit myself when I saw its approximate location on a topo map, because it commands a natural harbor and straddles the only reasonable beach access inland for miles either direction.
The first time I visited the place, I recovered the original 1899 US Survey marks from under the Katmai ashfall of 1912, which effectively doubled or trebled the value of the property, originally patented (Homesteaded) as a beach seine site by the Alaska Packing Co because millions of sockeye and coho and chinook swim right by the place in knee-deep water on their way to the Karluk and Ayakulik Rivers every year, and all you have to do is scoop them up. (The Karluk River was the world's largest producer of salmon at that time (late 19th cen), before the Bristol Bay sockeye fisheries were pioneered.)

I haven't done anything with it, as I've been busy (and the Kodiak Borough are a pack of thieves who prey on absentee landlords), but that's changing somewhat. I'm thinking shipping containers on Sonotubes might be a way forward:
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