Natural building is an area where people tend to forget to " observe nature" and emulate what you learn, nowhere in nature do you find a sealed ecosystem or organism......
Fore fathers living in the way I describe actually had very small carbon footprints, as I am speaking of pre industrial revolution living.....just a correction.
We did not do any paper under the compost (no till) but we did put down 32 tones of compost from a distributor, and did it after the grass had gone dormant, in hopes that it didn't get sun or air all winter and dies without the use of paper or cardboard......the worms are all in it now so we will see! I did do a small 12" border of plastic to keep the grass from migrating in from the sides as easy.
So this is my first go around and I chose garlic as I have many deer here, and it will allow me to spread the sales over a longer period after harvest.
If I get the 31 acres this 1-10th acre will plant out an acre there, as seed, if not they will be sold!
100lbs planted out the 1-10th with the poor cloves not used, and we planted 10,000 plants by math, might be off by one or two!! Oh, it's Bogatyr garlic....nice and spicy!
I think the toughest will be vapor barrier, because there is no need for this in nature on a household scale, it may be hard to find a natural alternative that has a lifespan that compares with plastic.
Nature just does not seal off areas, therefore hard to find.....
I was it in any way judging, in fact most times technology allows far more efficiency in this space, heating incoming air etc. you can create a lot of redundancy using machines and tech systems in houses.
It's just me that's all, I have a sneaky suspicion that our fore fathers had more correct than we give them credit for. They had airy houses and grew organic food by the sweat of their brow.......I worry that we might be overlooking the reason for that. My theory is that your health will be much improved by "the old ways" and that is my intention when I close on my 31 acres.
I will add that my family got very sick in the church house we lived in that was full of mold and fungus, my wife had fungal infections in her ears it was so bad, I left my position at the church it was so bad.
So it may also be that I lived it, and know how poor you can feel living in toxic sludge.
I've no experience with dual system heating. I too prefer electricity for water heating.
I did learn one thing from Paul, if your water is set under 140 you can breed legionella in your water heater. That can cause pneumonia, so it could be a real issue in the making. You may know that already but thought it might be helpful.
Very true, so then it seems to be more about ones theology.....does one trust man made machine and the electric system or tried and true nature to handle the task of ventilation.
So I guess my preference lands on the side that doesn't require a machine that can break wear or not get the fuel it needs.
For me anytime nature will do the task, it requires less work or electric bill for me, I'm all for letting the earth handle that for me. Classic permaculture!
That may require living with the summer heat and heating in winter, but that has been done for all of our existence so.....
Although the issue may be complex the solution is embarrassingly simple......
No living mamal remains alive or healthy when sealed in a chamber, if the chamber is large the timeline lengthens but it does not change the reality that that air breathing animal is in a sealed in a chamber with no suplimentary air.
Simplicity is good design, you can spend a ton on over engineered design but the Amish here just build theirs in basements like a small shed underground with a roof that is a foot above grade......let nature insulate.....
Use an excavator to dig a ramp into a drilling area that is 5-6 foot below grade, then build the walls around it and backfill.
550 Amish families here can't be wrong, it works in -15........we are zone 5b
So your well head and vessels all are housed underground in an 8x8 or so basement, no freeze, no worries! If you had to worry you could burn a 100w lightbulb to warm the room in terrible weather.
In all you might be talking an additional $1500 in materials if purchased from box stores.
I have started making a spinning wheel, based on an antique, but have never spun before so it's all a learning curve!
I have garden tarp style fabric under my straw, so in the summer I just pull up the corners and haul out the " bag" when it needs done. Slightly more work after a winter of deep bedding!
These goats are like dogs I have trained them to do a trick or two each.....so.....
Ok so I built this barn three year years ago, with natural systems for animal waste as a priority!
So the whole barn sits on a hand squared barn stone ring that is on a gravel base. ( squared the stone myself with hand tools)
Then the barn can be built in timber, lumber or any method, mine was scrap lumber that I misered away for a while!
Then the whole barn is off the ground by 12-14" so the barn has a "hole"in it, this I filled with pea gravel as a draining floor, if left alone poo, and bedding would clog the gravel and it would not drain, so I use a garden tarp style black mulch fabric as a poo strainer, then straw bedding over that.
This way urine can flow down 12" below the foot surface, and the bedding stays very dry, if you treat the floor with compost tea the biota will breakdown the urine too and the urine and biota will balance out an ecosystem in the flooring material. Because of this you will not have the ammonia build up from the urea and you don't have to treat with lime to solve it. Occasionally I flood the floor to flush out the buildup ( after winter when biota are docile) and the water flows out below the barn in streams and seeps.
This is three years in and this spring cleaning had no smell, and the bedding on bottom is from November 22nd! Go biota! I wanted to wait to see the theory I had in action before I suggested it, but for me the jury is in after cleanup! And no matter how much rain I get it all flows below the barn passively without ever wetting the barn floor.
And barn mucking day, after last year I tried deep bedding manure lac for extra heat, the barn without deep bedding stays ten degrees warmer than outside, with deep bedding 15-18 with all the adjustable vents wide open!
Six and a half 8 cu. ft. wheel barrows later it's all clean!
So today was shearing day for Alice, Sofie, and Oliver, Sofie went first and we got pictures but it's such a task that we forgot the other two's pictures!
Punk rock was a movement as was the hippy movement, a movement against corporate music, racism, the 1% before it was the 1%. As we have aged we have held close ranks closing in on many issues that most would consider more hippie type endeavors.
As with most movements that are based on the youth, vises tend to be the slipping point, hippies had lsd and pot, punks had violence and heavy drugs, this is just the way that youth in transitional roles self implode. That does not mean the movement was not just.
