Ioana Petroni

Hi Maggie,
It's a lovely stage you're at, dreaming up spaces and figuring out what you want to do:) I know polish weather and I'm an architect. I'm not sure cob has the insulating capacity to withstand the kind of winters you get. Once it heats up, the thermal mass makes for a nice enough inside temperature, but you still need to keep the stove running all day.. Adding outside insulation to an earthbag dome.. can be tricky.
Cob has been used as a traditional material in Eastern Europe for ages, BUT people where cold. (I am writing this from my 16 Celsius living room in a traditional stone house in France, so...well, you get used to it :))..)

If pointy corners is what you want to avoid, you can render the walls with a thick lime render that rounds up everything.
How about a hexagonal (or more, or any shape) wooden structure with heavily insulated infill (like hempcrete) and a thick render on both inside and outside to round up everything? Plus a cool reciprocal roof above the whole thing.

On round-shaped plan layouts: they can get hard to furnish. I'm not saying don't go for it, but be aware of that. You usually get triangular rooms with a lot of lost space that you heat up but don't use.

Rocket Mass Heaters are a fantastic idea for your weather and for your style! You can get really cozy and warm in an organically shaped nest .. heaven :)

Earthen floors (with optional floor heating) are a lovely add-on, though I'm not sure you can find that in Poland.

Also, think about bio-climatics. Where is the sun passing? Where is the winter wind blowing? Rain direction, the best view, the noise, the neighbor, the garden, these things can guide you in your first steps. The land tells you what to build.

I change the thumbnail to one I thought looked better.

Hi Anne,
Thanks for the quick reply. I don't see a change unfortunately.. Maybe it's because it's a transparent png? Here is the same but jpeg.
https://ik.imagekit.io/noohwpj86wi/assets-general/5-people-leaf.jpg
I've tinkered with it until i got blocked :)

Hi guys, I just posted a thread presenting my new permarchitecture website in "Introductions". The image the post chose as it's thumbnail picture needs to be changed, and it doesn't seem to want to.. How does it choose the post thumbnail picture? Thanks:)

How would you search for online advice on bioclimatic homes?

Hi I'm Joanna. I've been a permie for about six years and I do online home design consulting for permaculture buffs.

I started out walking in my father's footsteps as an architect with an architectural office and architecture projects like banks and office buildings. I profoundly hated it. And so I emotionally strayed away from architecture and onto permaculture my heart went. We've all been there: enthusiastically reading Holmgren, Hemenway and the Mollison Bible, gathering organic matter for weeks to make your 1st hot compost, fighting slugs in your 1st mulched garden season and of course planting - and canning - too many tomatoes. I met a lot of people who like the same stuff and visited a lot homes, farms, homesteads and failed eco villages. My architect instincts came rushing back at some point and I started working on what I know best with my new people.

Today I'm doing permies homes on a daily basis, mostly online, and recently I've launched a website that I have been eager to show off here on the forum:

Permarchitecture - the Website


The consulting and design work focuses on natural building design, bioclimatics and Zone 0 layout. While you could say I'm proficient in permaculture, I am not a garden expert  - there are a lot of people here who know so much more about plants than me. What I can help with is Zone placement, earthworks design, materials and, of course, house plans, whether it be for that eco village in Costa Rica, or the tiny bug-out cabin in the woods. Simple, online, via screen-sharing, no strings attached, and with a money back guarantee on the first session.

This was my pitch to you, the tribe. If you have a friend or a social media group (or other permies threads) that you feel could benefit the info, it helps the mighty algorithm a whole lot to see there's people visiting my website from places like that.

Also, if you have ideas or questions,  I'm considering this thread an "Ask me anything " session on Permarchitecture. Though technically impossible for me to integrate coupon codes now, I am thinking of solutions for a permies exclusive offer.



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Honestly I think Florida might be too wet for an Earthship. You need air flow and getting yourself raised from the ground in wet tropics.

I once talked to a sociologist who made an ecovillage in France and had visited a lot of places in Europe to ask them for advice. Her ecovillage was empty when we visited. She was selling.

The main reason for failure, she said, was decision making. People not agreeing on even the simplest of things, arguing endlessly with a tenacity worthy of nobler causes...

I sounds silly, like "we can avoid that, no problem". Yet it seems to be happening quite often in intentional communities.

I want high ceilings in the summer and low ceilings in the winter.  

I agree, high ceilings with cross-ventilation are the best for hot summers. I like high ceilings, but I understand why some people prefer to go for standard, especially in tightly insulated homes.

Hi,
If you're dug into the hill, you can use geothermal cooling, dig pipes into the ground to use earth's stable temperature of 13-14 C. As for the breeze pipes, they should be smaller, to cool the air down as it passes through. Bigger pipes and windows would just ventilate the space, but the air temp would still be outside temp.