Scale Model for Earthbag Spiral House

During our first 3 months on our new property, we cleared trees, started a livestock enclosure, started a light straw-clay cabin, planted a living fence of bitter orange, and planned the house.

I wanted a Spiral, but really had no idea how to mark it out in real life. So....I decided to make a scale model from mud. I'm SO glad I did.  I got the marking method figured out and we changed where the door will go as well as switching some rooms and interior doors around.

The house will be partially buried in the hill. The north wall will have an additional layer of straw bales (thats what the little stub walls on the right side are for). We ran to Florida for the winter, but I'm planning on modeling the RMH, interior walls, and kitchen fixtures when we get back.  

Oh Sherry,

That looks amazing!  It will offer much protection from the elements and be super cozy with the rocket mass heater.  You could even use mirrors to extend the light from the front windows into the back of the house...like they did back in Egypt.

Tina Wolf wrote:Oh Sherry,

That looks amazing!  It will offer much protection from the elements and be super cozy with the rocket mass heater.  You could even use mirrors to extend the light from the front windows into the back of the house...like they did back in Egypt.

Thank you! What an awesome idea with the mirrors. I know mirrors can make a small room seem bigger,  but I never thought of using the directly for light.

I THINK we will have enough above ground level to put in small windows on the hill side, but I won't know until we actually excavate this spring.  

I know building a simple circle would be much easier, but I love the interest the spiral shape provides.  

Wonderful model! That is such a great idea to truly be able to take a thought and turn it into a vision. I'm a "hands-on" type of learner and I am going to have to try making scale models of projects I want to work on.

Timothy Norton wrote:Wonderful model! That is such a great idea to truly be able to take a thought and turn it into a vision. I'm a "hands-on" type of learner and I am going to have to try making scale models of projects I want to work on.

Thank you!  I'm so glad I took the time to do it.  We would have made mistakes that would have either cost us time to redo things or left us with a less than desirable situation.  Working with the model also inspired ideas we probably never would have had otherwise.

For example:  The large retaining wall will have a door to a root cellar dug into the hill.  The straw bale wall idea happened while we were building the model.  We decided to put the door to the bathroom through the bedroom so we could have more wall space in the great room area.  We know exactly how long our roof beams need to be, so we went to a friend who has a huge cedar lot and marked out the trees we want for it.  We were going to make the interior wall earthbag, but decided it would take up too much space.

I'm sure there will be more as I start messing with the inside.