One is a mass rocket heater sofa? I think it could be done fairly quickly and inexpensively? Something similar to this http://store.redhen.pl/en/product/sofa-inside-corner-bench

Another is a rubble trench foundation that instead of pouring a concrete beam footing or building a stone footing use gabions on top of the trench?
Also a kitchen island or bar with a gabion box as the base with a wooden or poured concrete top. I've actually seen several pictures of outdoor tables done this way.
Last would be a green house or hoop house. Gabion base with pipes installed to insert your hoops into. You could do a gabion mass heater inside as well for winter use?
So what do you all think? Are these ideas feasible ? I'm just day dreaming and brain storming?
Progress not perfection. Consist progress compounded over time will lead to perfection.
Not trying to rain on your idea, just pointing out for most of us that sort of added cost lowers the practicality of the concept.
Cost aside, I like the concept. And it might be a way to market RMHs in the future to rich folks. As it would be an easy to install sort of system. As well as easy to prefab a bunch of set styles that customers to pick from.
"Where will you drive your own picket stake? Where will you choose to make your stand? Give me a threshold, a specific point at which you will finally stop running, at which you will finally fight back." (Derrick Jensen)
Maybe I'm way off base? Thanks for the input!
Progress not perfection. Consist progress compounded over time will lead to perfection.
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Devin Lavign wrote:Gabions seem like an expensive way to do things.
Permies, a diy hangout where we can talk about doing things without quoting industry MSRP. We aren't the military, with a military budget, with those expensive hesco gabion baskets.
$20 cattle panels, from farm and ranch stores, 6 guage steel covered in class 1 galvy. 16' by 4'4". If you want clean bends hinge two pieces of scrap 2x4 or angle iron and fab yourself a (sheet metal style) brake. Add a bolt cutter and decent hog rings for the win. Aesthetic and overkill points for tack welding them (hey you said furniture). I brake bend those panels and lath for ferrocement all the time.
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I don't consider This pillar or column a gabion, not the right shape or method. Since this one never got finished, you can see up top that It is just 10 guage woven knot deer fence. Typically I filled the inside with smaller stuff that would have fallen out of the openings of this (leftover) deer fence. The small stuff backfills the larger outside stuff that can't fall out. But the one in this picture was the last column that I filled and I ran out of bigger stone. You can see how everything is locked behind a wire. Doesn't take much more time, and you would be hard pressed to pull many from out the side. They are locked in and very stout. I have a number of these. One has a couple barrels secretly stashed in the middle. This one is 3' diameter, 7' high when I finish to the top.
To the earthship cat: I'd line the inside with stucco netting, then you can dump front end loaders into your baskets. Then plaster. I guess an interior wall left as exposed gabion is fine, if you mind the aesthetic busying up the room, but I'd plaster those exterior walls. Vermin, bugs, something to deal with interior moisture, air sealing...
Chain link fence stretches too much due to the zig zag bends in the wire.
What a popular topic. I did bend panels into baskets on my homemade brake. It's very quick, easy, stout and cheap. I recommend making one to test for y'all's aggregate size, or you can stage fill it like i did, or line it, or determine if you should go up to a pricier smaller opening panel.
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I have collected a few thousand rocks this year for smaller water-slowing/erosion-repairing projects, & it is indeed very hard work.
Permaculturist in Battambang (Cambodia) & Victoria (Australia).
A personal wishful idea is to combine rocks and cobb in gabbions as a wall construction technique. It could be different types of building rubble in place of rocks if they were more available. This is a variation on a technique used in northern Pakistan an there abouts where they use basic timber framing with rocks and cobb to make walls. These have proved to be very earthquake resistant. https://permies.com/t/47813/easy-stone-construction-Dhajji-Dewari. Withe mud render on the outside it would look good.
I've also wondered about rocks on the outside and earthbags on the inside to take up space.
maybe mix and match?
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The most difficult is part is just starting, once you lay into a stone project they actually move along pretty nicely. I think the key is to find a method of moving rocks that is not so small it seems you spend more time traveling back and forth versus working on the project, and one so big you seem to spend all your time loading the thing up. For instance the bucket of my 25 hp farm tractor is kind of small...I don't make much forward progress per bucketful of rock, but my big trailer is much too big to load. A small trailer I have is a nice middle ground.
As for gabions; I don't care for them. I just don't like the look of steel, to me I would feel like I cheated if I used them. I say that because learning to lay up dry laid stone LOOKS more daunting then it is. You could easily dry lay that couch if you wanted too. This would reduce the cost of building it to almost zero if you don't include value for your time. Not that it would take long, maybe 3 days of construction? Then there is the permanent aspect of it. That steel though treated, will eventually rust and rot out. When that happens, the steel that retains its shape will be lost and along with the hard work. Rock is about as forever as you can get. Rock walls built in 1830 are still standing tall and straight on my farm, something steel shaped rock could never do. I see why people use gabions, but my goal here is not to knock them down, but rather to encourage others that dry laid stone is nothing to be intimidated of.
When all is said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground; the farmer was the richest man of all.

I've glad you've seen it work. I can't afford 4" pickets (they're about $5 each, & you ned 30 for every baffle) so given that I have a good supply of rocks, gabions sound worth a shot.
Travis's point below, about the steel eventually rusting out, is a good one. But in a creek baffle by the time that had happened the gabion would be buried in silt & sand - i.e. it would have got the creek to create a new bank.
Permaculturist in Battambang (Cambodia) & Victoria (Australia).
I'm sure there was a youtube video by geoff lawton describing this. The nearest I could find was this
If you're from oz then the accent shouldn't worry you on this one
This requires significant earth moving for both the swales and dams so may be out of the question.
I have noticed that parks Victoria are replacing fallen trees into creeks. This reduces flow in peak times and also provides fish habitat. Might be worth a thought.
"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself." FDR
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Einstein
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Alan Loy wrote:This requires significant earth moving for both the swales and dams so may be out of the question.
The first pond I built was by hand. It was astonishing to me what could be accomplished by 15 minutes worth of labor, day after day after day.
http://erdakroft.com/Erdakroftfarm/Blogs/Blogs.html - Click on Urbanite! at the top of the page.
https://vimeo.com/122486226 - A short video about urbanite.
"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself." FDR
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Einstein
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My Gabion dream is fencing. 5 1/2 acres of it. I was quoted over $1200 to 3 rail fence about 150' because of my soil (um, rock) condition! Replacing rotten wood posts with more wood posts just seems like a bad idea to me, so I have done some "digging".
My ground is almost 80% rock. I dug a small 2'W x 3'L x 1' deep plot to plant some raspberry bushes in and only had about a gallon of dirt sifted from it to throw back in the hole! I had to get soil from someplace else! So, I have been trying to figure out how I can afford to replace the rotten wood fencing on my 5 1/2 acres, not go broke AND not have to dig post holes in darn near solid rock. I have decided that Gabion posts with cattle panels in between is the way to go for me.
My plan: A cattle panel is 16' long x 4' high and goes for $20. If you cut four 4' sections and round them into a Gabion (2' diameter), you can make a fence section 56' long for $100 (since I don't have to buy rock). That my friends is a bargain. Also considering I won't have to dig 3' down to the frost line and lose 3' of post height to do it. I will simply dig a footer about 2 or 3" deep, tamp down solid and level and set the Gabion in place. "Just in case" I could pound a piece of rebar down the middle of the Gabion, if I can get it into the ground. With the cut cattle panels I can push the spikes left from cutting the panel into sections and push those into the ground to anchor it. Then use hog rings to connect the full length cattle panel to the Gabion, and keep on rockin'. Here is an image as close to my idea as I could find but they are using fence rails instead of cattle panels.
I have sheep and livestock guardians so want to go with cattle panels to keep my dogs in. If I want the fence higher, then I can leave rebar sticking up through the middle of the Gabions and use wire or whatever to extend the height of the fence.
Someone mentioned the size of rock: If your rocks are small, use cheap chicken wire to line the inside of your Gabion. The Cattle panel cage makes it much stronger, so I would NOT just use chicken wire for the cage. The smaller rock will settle into the cage and make it even more solid as time goes on. Gabions settle, and actually become more stable over time.
I have 2 'antique' Gabions built in the 1800's on either side of the creek on my place that I imagine were bridge supports at one time long ago. They were built with timbers with rocks in the middle, and they are still there. I will try to get a picture of them and post them here in the next few days (it's dark out right now). One is failing only because the creek bank is starting to cut under it from a change in the stream.

Hope this helps!
I found this image that has metal panels between the Gabion cages. This is what I am shooting for without the cost of going to a commercial supplier.

Bernhard Haussler wrote:I go with your idea of Gabion posts. Very important to their long term stability is that steel rod in the centre - I would go with 32mm [1 1/4"] 1.8 - 2.4 long. For a 2' diameter cage you need a little more than 6' of cattle grid. Rock is OK but make sure you get a good amount of pebble into the voids otherwise the rock itself will cause tilting as it settles.
And a little quickcrete at the bottom won't hurt!
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Mission Creek Farm - The Melt Is On
Miles Flansburg wrote:Danette I went ahead and embedded that video here. Hope that is OK?
What a beautiful stream by the way, any fish in there?
Sure! Yes, Mission Creek is awesome, but now I am pondering a bridge, because once the melt comes, it tends to stay for most of the summer, and that is when I really need to get back on the other side of the creek where about 4 of my 5 1/2 acres are! You can see that the "3 Acre Wood' needs serious chainsaw attention! Several dead standing and fallen trees to clean up etc.
As for fish, they say there are, but I haven't had the time to fish... and it looks like a nice fly fishin' stream to me, but I've not seen a single trout in the 4 years I have been on the place.
Alan Loy wrote:Just a thought, from your video it seemed that the undercutting was on the outside of a bend. If so I would think this will continue even with no debris in the creek.
Perhaps you could use modern gabions on the undercut to protect that side and keep the old gabion.
Well, we have a governmental agency here in the US called the EPA, and they make any changes to a bank nearly impossible, even if you own the land outright like I do. They really give you grief if you put any 'structure' in or near the water. I can use rip rap, but it is very expensive and in that area, would be very hard to haul in. I can use gabions 2 to 4' from the edge of the bank for my bridge abutments though.
I wish I was there to help you with it; my chainsaw works! (I do a lot of logging here). We could clean up that other side in no time, build a bridge, get some micro-hydro power in there...oh the possibilities are endless.
I wish you the best of luck with your place. Beautiful!
When all is said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground; the farmer was the richest man of all.
Travis Johnson wrote:Danette, what a beautiful stream and a nice piece of property! I live on top of a hill so all the water in two watersheds starts on my farm and leaves it...no real streams. And while I know the secret to life is being content with what a person has...oh my, can I ever say I am coveting your stream.
I wish I was there to help you with it; my chainsaw works! (I do a lot of logging here). We could clean up that other side in no time, build a bridge, get some micro-hydro power in there...oh the possibilities are endless.
I wish you the best of luck with your place. Beautiful!
Thanks Travis! I am blessed that is for sure. When I was looking for land, my priorities were (1) live, year round stream (2) live, year round stream (3) room for sheep!! But now that I have been here for about 4 years, have my gardens in, got my sheep, got livestock guardians, built a sheep shed, have a hay shed, fenced the lower pasture and few other things, well, it's time to move to projects on the other side of the creek!
If someone were to ask me for a list of top items (equipment etc) to get before you start out, it would be a small tractor with some basic implements (depending on your layout) and a good 30" Stihl chainsaw. Had the tractor (1954 Ford NAA) and a cheesy chainsaw, and still need some implements.... time for a 'real' chainsaw, and a bush hog that doesn't think it's a plow!
Once I get a bridge in, I want the water wheel under the bridge to protect it from 'stuff' and ice. Here in NW Montana, it does get a bit chilly!
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Never by a chainsaw by the bar length, always by the number of CC's. For instance I have a 76 cc chainsaw; a Stihl MS461 which is a pretty big chainsaw. I only run a 18 inch bar on it because:
1) The bar and chain costs less to buy, and I buy a lot of them
2) I can cut a 36 inch tree with a 18" bar and that is a pretty big tree. Even I seldom cut bigger trees than that.
3) I get a lot more power out of my saw since it is not powering as much chain
4) There is a lot less fatigue in running a shorter bar
But this is me, and I cut wood all day, almost every day so I need to get as much dome as quickly as I can. I understand too that MT might be different than ME. Definitely go with a Stihl though. The saws have 2 piston rings instead of only 1 like the other saws and last much longer. I got 22 years out of my last 046 Stihl and yet cannot get much past 9 months with Husky saws before they dynamite on me.
As for your property, I can visualize what you are suggesting and hope you can do what you want. Myself, I have a few streams that are sadly only seasonal, but with a bit of earthwork, I hope to increase the flow. Here forest has no value any more, so I am clearing land for more sheep. With the terrain here, and some shaping, I am hoping to get the water to drain better thus improving my streams.
When all is said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground; the farmer was the richest man of all.
My bank is roughly 8' high over 8-12' (it's steeper at one end than the other) and currently divided into 3 terraces but could have done with 4.... they're gonna be narrow aren't they... do any of you have any info on just how narrow gabions you can get away with?? I do NOT want to be doing all this again

Stuff that is well galvanized, would be suitable for reinforcing the edge of a pond. When filled with suitable aggregate it can work as a biofilter. Many aquatic plants will gladly take root in a submerged gabion.
This winery is in South Africa.
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Description: [Thumbnail for Project-R-The-Rubble-House.png]](/t/61616/a/52469/Project-R-The-Rubble-House.png)
https://permies.com/t/39351/permaculture-projects/rock-jack
"Your thoughts are seeds, and the harvest you reap will depend on the seeds you plant." - Rhonda Byrne
The pole in the photo is on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. Newfoundlanders often refer to their home as The Rock. I lived there for a year and did some rock climbing.
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Not so fast naughty spawn! I want you to know about
Binge on 17 Seasons of Permaculture Design Monkeys!
http://permaculture-design-course.com
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