posted 15 years ago
Background: OK i like the theorizing and the wonderment and the subtle planning of my own home...the one-day-i'll-get-to-that-project project. The WOFATI home is intriguing.
I live in Western Washington, about 40" of rain over mostly 6 winter months. A ton of sun in the summer-1800 growing degree days-so not hot, averaging 65F in the summer. some grapes, hardy kiwi, tree fruits for cider and such and lots of happy berries. 7.5 acres, gentle<1/2% slope North and west-but one sweet steep slope to the north that overlooks the land and valley below-this is the WOFATI spot, and root cellar slope too; a quarter acre pond that drains 2-3 acres, 3 feet of silty clay loam on top of 8' of harder clay over 100 feet of coarse sand, where the well hole went to 120 feet. Mostly open pasture- 2dozen 12 year old cedar, fir and a dozen older decaying alders. As well, but not suitable for home building: 3300 apple trees-90 varieties, 1900 blueberries and 400 grapes. all the other berries are being propagated with no counts yet:-o.
home building - ON A NORTH SLOPE- with dug-in greenhouse on the south side and down hill sloped roof all covered with soil. quite a bit of excavating to be done but what do you think? I don't have many trees, but I have sources. My other thought was to just excavate the clay base and start packing it into walls, adobe-like. I'm a plant guy so this construction stuff is really foreign to me for the most part, but I'm practical and using the resources at hand is just that. I've got about a cubic yard of cobblestones per 1000 sf too-if I picked 'em all that would add up to 5 arable acres x 43.5K/ac=217 cubic yards of cobblestone fist-size and larger. hmmm well there's that resource too. but I like the loggy feel, warmth, tradition. WOFATI might be the home for me.
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