Kat Zeeberg

Wilmer Smith wrote:Thermal mass will continue to radiate heat all night when the outside median temp is over 100F. ... Should you build in such heat, you should document the results and share, because there's not many talking about it. Most mud research and literature comes from people working in the New Mexico highlands and Colorado--- quite different from the extreme heat of the Sonoran Desert, the city, and like environments.

Yes, exactly this!!!

I live in the Tucson area and from what I've read it seems strawbale is actually the best for insulation. Rammed earth, etc. creates thermal mass that will just keep your house hot all night long in the summer. I'm not sure non-Arizonans understand what we mean when we say "hot".

Unfortunately I don't have much info to add here, I just wanted to chime in and say I'm very interested in this topic and hope more hot-climate experts can share what they've learned!

Thanks.

Hi, thanks for this very promising thread. I like that you have expanded the climate zones. However, I'm not sure your expansion works for extremely hot-summer areas of the southwest, such as Southern Arizona and Nevada. We have weeks of 100+ F in the summer. Plants that can grow in other USDA zone 9a dry places will often not stand our summer sun.

Southern Arizona is - Winter Zone 9a (USDA) - Summer Zone 10 (AHS Heat Zone) - Sunset Zone 12.
USDA zones are about winter cold-proof, but in southern Arizona we need to be concerned about summer heat-proof too. This blog post explains it perfectly:
http://thetransplantedgardener.com/index.php/2018/06/01/portland-ore-shares-our-low-desert-zone/
And here's the Sunset zone: https://www.sunset.com/garden/climate-zones/sunset-climate-zones-arizona


And my Koppen-Geiger Climate Zone is: BSh - Hot Semi-Arid Climate (from https://www.plantmaps.com)

Your classification is "How cold is the winter?" and "How much rainfall?" but you need another question: "How brutal is the summer heat and sun?"

I had some of an idea but I had to look up weeping tile and the wikipedia article says it is named such since it used to be made of terracotta tile. So that goes along with my idea, which is to make some kind of olla pipe.

Ok thanks Roberto!

Is there an "off grid" forum? That's what I was actually looking for, I'm particularly interested in the off-grid and portable part -- which makes it a tiny home, but that's not the most important feature to me. So I found the homesteaders forum when I searched for "off grid" had most of the off-grid posts.

I just saw this and think it is so inspiring I wanted to share:
https://navigationnowhere.com/category/bus-renovation/

It is a guy who has renovated a bus to be an off-grid tiny home.

This is kind of my dream...

Me too! I'm just getting started. I live in southern Arizona and have a septic tank and would love to keep my garden green with grey water.

Any updates on your garden? I'm in the Tucson area and getting started on my own home garden, trying to work with the desert. The food forest video posted just above was inspiring.

Kim Goodwin wrote:I like pee-ing outside, but when I got in my later 20's, I had some changes to my physical anatomy due to an autoimmune disease.  This caused the "stream" to suddenly pull to one side.  So if squatting to pee, suddenly it would go down my leg into my shoe!  There is no way to change angle and make it work consistently - I've tried over and over and over. This autoimmune condition rare in young women, but affects a good proportion of women over 40, and can reshape (the term I prefer to "deform") the genitalia a bit.  Causing odd effects like angled pee-streams.  Later, I got sick in my adulthood, and for many years couldn't hold a crouch, but that's another issue, really.

This can be an issue for me too. I haven't been diagnosed with anything, but I'll look into it. There's no way to aim and I don't know why I started going sideways recently. I used to "hover" at public toilets (I always wipe up the sprinkle) but once the stream went sideways and ran down my leg it was so embarrassing. Now I wipe the seat, lay down toilet paper and sit. Thanks for sharing your experience Kim! I haven't been camping since this started happening to me but even before, it was always a sprinkly mess, so I only consider outdoor pee-ing to be a camping activity, and would just put up with feeling un-clean.

If it's every-day life, I will take the indoors option. It actually saves water if I don't have to shower and launder after pee-ing.

Peter and Daniel - thanks for the info. I will look into those options. I just want to make something out of dirt because that is the natural building material I have on my land - but it doesn't have to be rammed earth specifically - so your ideas sound good too. I just thought rammed earth would be easier to build myself than adobe - but earth bags are a good alternative.

I'm considering making garden beds from rammed Earth. I'm basically a newbie - I've done some basic frame stucco construction, but with an organized group, not on my own before. I know that water proofing the walls can be an issue, especially if they're going to be constantly wet (the inside walls) from soil and moisture. Does anyone have experience with this? Thanks.