WOFATI. Home Building

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.

If you were to add an island of bamboo to your pond, I wonder how long it would be before it added to your lumber supply significantly?  I guess you'd want a cold-hardy variety, like Japanese timber bamboo, if you decided that was a resource worth cultivating.

great suggestion. The pond is small and gets low in the summer so the rhizomes...well. Can't bamboo just be mowed around-by the teeth of some animal?

WOFATI building-Bamboo? I suppose one could bundle canes to achieve load supporting members

When you say "ON A NORTH SLOPE" do you mean a "north facing slope"?

Dug-in greenhouse:  an Oehler design?  Pics?

Do you have any land pics?

I think that if you can get the wood for free, and based on what little you have shared so far, then, yes, a wofati would probably work well there.

paul, I replyed to your question w/ a photo and answers. What happened?

gillium wrote:
paul, I replyed to your question w/ a photo and answers. What happened?

I dunno.  Did you hit the "preview" button instead of the "post" button?

North facing slope. about 15' rise over 75 feet to the North

this is facing almost due N-slightly NE toward the pond and at the upper part of 7 ac.

I think a wofati would be excellent there.