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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2983 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Homeowners of The Motte -- what would you differently if you could do it all over again?

I plan on building a house in the next 12 months on a lot about an hour away from the Gulf of Mexico America. It's going to be a two-story 5BR house with porches on the front and the back, built in a traditional Southern style.

I'm a bit overwhelmed as I don't even know what I don't know about building, and I want to avoid making costly mistakes that I'll have to pay to renovate later (or worse, be unable to fix at all). Happy to hear both from people who built and people who bought.

Things I'd want when building my home;

Storm shutters you can lock from inside. You'll have to deal with both Hurricanes and severe weather. Thank me later. They can also act as a way to block out direct sunlight and cut down on heat reaching your interiors.

Propane generator wired into your electrical system.

Extensive foam insulation to save on cooling and heating.

If you want any sound-deadening put into interior walls, think about it now.

Personal preference, but I'd be installing wainscoting on the interior walls to help with potential issues with flooding(you have checked the flood maps before hand, right?), and they look neat.

Be very critical when picking your kitchen sink and outlet. Make sure you pick one with minimal back-splash, or just say 'fuck it' and get one that looks more apt in an industrial kitchen. (A friend of mine has a family that did catering and they did this. It's wonderful.)

Consider putting up wood/plywood on walls that may have drainage and/or seweage pipes for easy, later access as needed, rather than having to rip down sheetrock.

If you want any sound-deadening put into interior walls, think about it now.

IRC appendix BG (Sound Transmission)

The Architectural Graphic Standards have a really nice multi-page table listing a bunch of different interior-wall cross sections, including their sound transmission class.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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