The goal of this post is for me to have viable, more natural solutions to consider for a given scenario.
It is not for you to tell me exactly what you would build, but rather for you to suggest what materials or techniques would best serve my needs.
Hopefully, you will offer some explanation as to why you favor one solution more so than another.
Also, it is not my intent to adhere strictly to the various
permaculture mantras if other means allow for a sufficiently close approximation in the primary context of trying building more naturally, more sustain-ably.
See my comments about the shell of the home well below.
Having read several threads here on permies.com, including many from J.C.White Cloud, I find that I am now severely challenged with respect to the home designs that I have been working on. (Obviously, I am new around these parts).
I had wanted to design my home and then find the
land to place it on.
However, thinking of the culture I am starting to embrace (sheepishly), I see that there are too many symbiotic relationships that I ought to keep at the forefront of my designs.
And yet - I want what I want.
I would like a home north of Mora, New Mexico.
It would be about 8,000 ft. or so in altitude, being south east of Taos, in the mountains south of the Angel Fire ski resort area.
I've been told that this high desert mountainous valley sits on an aquifer.
There seems to be a lot of hunting with several signs of hunters antics in the
local area.
There is (or was) lots of wild life, especially many humongous prairie dogs in the area.
I want a home that won't easily be comprised by a stray bullet or three, at least at the more popular calibers.
It is also an arid and cold place.
But I’d like a year-round food supply, eventually.
My current vision is a four story hexagonal tower with one below-grade floor, the ground level, an upstairs room with secured, but unencumbered roof access and the roof itself a living space.
There
should be an insulted closet for
solar batteries.
I'll also need a septic tank, separate black and grey
water plumbing and a couple of cisterns.
I'd like to build most of this myself with professional help where I need it, such as a structural engineer to sign off on my implementation of his design requirements or electricians to complete their parts as required.
I have plans and intentions on materials and the building’s style; I have the majority of the design worked out.
But are my designs the best solutions, how incomplete or short-sighted am I being?
So my challenges are probably many more than I am currently aware of and some plans I know will require some form of a work-around or significant compromise.
Although I know a little about the geographical area that I'd like the land to be, the exact spot has yet to be purchased - and the locality's terrain varies greatly.
I don't know how deep the soil is generally in that area, but I'd be buying in or near heavily wooded areas.
Well, the area seemed at least moderately dense similar to where I lived in Rheinland-Pfalz (sp?), Germany, near Erbeskopf.
I am also told that this is an area where my kind are not welcome and to expect that
my stuff will be stolen.
Potentially, I could be sabotaged or attacked.
The sentiments expressed to me about the neighbors may be outdated, but not confirmed (yet).
So it's a bad neighborhood in my vision of a paradise - I may or may not reconsider it as being my current favorite.
Those are some of the reasons that I wanted to build my house based on the systems needed regardless of location and also to apply certain modularity to the build.
If I can get a basement completed during one build season and live well within it for the winter and then be able to start on the first floor the next season and so on, I could get the house completed within about five years perhaps.
Regardless if I do decide to plow through the potential issues of several disgruntled neighbors and purchase there anyway - my future home would still need to meet some additional criteria anyway, however, some considerations much sooner than others.
Things I wanted to consider for this thought experiment (in an effort to bring to fruition some form of a build, eventually, somewhere) are security considerations and easily repeatable and repairable low tech solutions.
I would need to secure the perimeter from the get-go.
And then create secure zones where I would store materials and tools.
Perhaps I would need to camp-out on the property to accommodate a quick turnaround time.
If I live on site in a camper I could spend most of my day implementing solutions.
Once sufficient security measures are in place, then I can begin on the infrastructure.
Among some of the first items to install would be a well-sized septic tank and adjoining accommodations and prepare an elevated location to install a cistern or two.
I'd need some temporary plumbing as well.
Then I'd need to get digging holes, primarily for the basement and its foundations.
One thought was to use Durisol insulted structural blocks on very hefty footers.
I'd like to use TeraTiles or some other durable earthy materials for the floor, for this will end up being the
root cellar and a quarter of it will be laundry and perhaps a butchering area.
If feasible, I'd like a sort of dumb-waiter for large game and space to butcher the meat.
But it will need to be a warm, secure, and dry living quarters for nearly a year, perhaps more.
The first floor, hopefully at grade level, will have the inhospitable front door on the north face of the Hex-House.
Fully
solar aware, using passive design and solar mass, which doubles as a
rocket mass heater in the winter.
The north-eastern side of the room sports the stairs up, near the entrance way, and the downstairs, closer to the southern wall.
The south-western wall presents the kitchen area, but the southern half of the hex is a great room.
The north-western quarter is the bathroom and "sweat lodge" or south-western sauna.
The wall separating the kitchen and the bathroom is the rocket masonry heater on the kitchen side and a
rocket mass heater with bench on the bathroom side.
Naturally there will need to be a very hefty wall in the basement to handle all that mass.
It could be filled with rammed earth encased in non-insulated Durisol block with rebar enforcement all on an extra-heavy-duty footer.
The great room of the first floor should have a Murphy bed, couch and chairs and the dining area table.
The ceiling height should be 9’ for the first floor.
For the stairs to the second floor, I'd like to use 22, 62 inch long, 10 inch wide, half-logs for the stairs built into the walls on either side.
The stairs are 50" wide with a 7" rise and 10" run for 22 steps, floor-to-floor.
The first five steps are on one wall face with a small landing making a 60 degree turn along the other wall.
The second floor should have a worthy door, like that of the front door.
It is the master bedroom, with a smaller bathroom in the north-western corner and a small open office area in the north-eastern corner (behind one of the stairwell walls also on the north-eastern side).
The ceiling height for the second floor could be 8’ high rather than 9’, making temperature control easier.
The roof access stairs are primarily on the north-western wall, but start from the south-western wall of the bedroom.
The bed is on the eastern side of the stairwell facing the 9am sun.
There should be a southern-side balcony to help shade the first floor during summer.
I think solar panels could hang from the balconies' walls and perhaps adjust vertically, if not a little horizontally.
The roof must be formidable in every way.
I'd like to have lots of planters of some sort, perhaps a water feature, another southern-side balcony to shade the bedroom in summer, and a shed for solar batteries to stay temperature controlled and well ventilated.
The outer walls are castle-like and undulate between 5' & 7' high and about 48" wide each.
If practicable, I would like to have heated floors except in the basement, which should be Keller Cool.
Aside from my desire to adhere to
permaculture recommendations, I believe that the above-grade portion of the shell should be a stone-faced structural
concrete, insulated sandwich wall. In other words, the above-grade shell consists of slip-formed walls with 6" - 9" of insulation in the center of the three northern walls.
I’d use less or no insulation on the three southern facing walls.
One reason for these massive walls is that a wall fully 24" thick with two rock faces is fairly bullet resistant, it's a modular build method, and quite likely, I myself could build it.
Albeit, lugging materials would be an increasingly difficult task as I transition to each floor higher.
The floors and ceilings will defiantly have to meet some well-designed engineering specifications, I would imagine.
I think that I should be able to use all the inside walls to help support the horizontal surfaces.
I'd also like to utilize some additional space between the ceilings and floors as storage in the crawl space.
That added space might be advantageous for creating the requisite strength each floor will need.
What other things should I consider and reconsider in order to accomplish these goals?
What should I do about the basement if I run in to bedrock?
Relocate or re-engineer?
The septic system has a whole host of considerations alone.
Should I ensure solar-assist to keep that tank hot?
This will be as DIY as I can muster and the cost needs to be as low as would be feasible and still be a
project of lasting quality.
Volunteers or interns at some bargain cost like room and board and some chump change would be very well received indeed, especially if they come from way far away (strictly for future security reasons).
Please for the love of anything whatsoever do not suggest straw-bale.
Even with proprietary big name spray-on truck bed liner, there's a
BB gun capable of penetrating it.
Thank you in advance for your most constructive suggestions only (questions welcomed, even silly ones).