Hello!
My husband and I are possibly entering into a transition of a farm in Northern MN of over 100 acres. The owners will stay on the land till they can't anymore in their own current home. We will need to build a home for our two toddlers and ourselves.
The land is very flat. It has mostly sandy soil, with patches of pure sand. The water table is fairly high but no flooding that I know of--just a bog nearby. There are quite a few trees, including oak and pine. There are sawmills nearby.
There is a manufactured home on a lot adjacent but it has bad mold issues and we are sensitive to mold so it's not a long term solution. Thinking we will stay in it over summer with air purifiers and/or windows open. Then hopefully move into our new home ASAP.
We are currently thinking to build a small home that can be expanded upon. Perhaps a 15x25foot or so. Would love to add bedrooms for all, a sunroom/seed starting room, large pantry, mud room, etc. Ideally, I'd love to just encase it in a greenhouse basically to allow us to have plenty of room midwinter and if course save on energy costs.
We just built a conventional house over the last three years so I'm confident we have the skills.... it's just time and labor that's a limiting factor.
Any advice welcome.
So my question is: site specific setbacks aside, what is the fastest method of natural building? In thinking possibly rammed earth but i know very little about it, and I'm also thinking sandy soil is not a good option.
