wofati 0.8 - cooper cabin

Last time I visited Wheaton Labs (Summer of 2017), I took measurements of the wofati.

I am curious, or interested to know. How is this Wofati going right now? And what are the future plans for it?

Cooper Cabin is slated to be a top priority next summer.  

Right now, one of the pod people is a diesel mechanic and he is shuffling his life to pop out for a few days and get the millennium falcon running - so we can move more subsoil to the site for fully covering the umbrella when it is in place.

All of our projects are deeply rooted in how many people are in the bootcamp and coin.   The more boots and coin, the sooner we can wrap up projects.   There have been a few times we had the coin to hire professionals, but the pros were booked for more than a year out.  One time we did find a pro and hired him, only he turned out to not be a pro.

Frankly, I think it all comes down to the bootcamp.   With lots of boots, our projects move forward.  

https://permies.com/wiki/bootcamp

For folks that wanna see an improved forward velocity with the bootcamp, I would like to suggest supporting the BRK with coin or a care package:

https://permies.com/wiki/114138/permaculture-projects/special-BRK-permaculture-bootcamp

I understand, Paul. The boots are very important people! Good boots do a lot of work. When they show their work on photos / video we all can see the improvements made possible by their work. That's why there is the BRK, so we can offer them rewards.

I also think that when the boots have been here for a year, their overall forward velocity is three times more than somebody that has been here for just a few weeks.

paul wheaton wrote:I also think that when the boots have been here for a year, their overall forward velocity is three times more than somebody that has been here for just a few weeks.

This is so true. I have seen this with a lot of missionary work in foreign countries. In the shorter 2 week programs what I have noticed is that the missionaries really do not do much work, but rather take in a new world. That has merit for sure. It is great that American's can see the way second and third world countries live. But the real work gets done on the 3 month or longer missionary trips.

I am so sure this is the same way with your boot camp. None of it is bad, just longer tenure being more productive.

As for professionals, I can attest to that. I was a certified welder so I saw that all the time. I have realized, the more people talk about what they can do, the less skilled they are. This is especially true in the blue collar trades because I can brag all I want about welding, plumbing, or carpentry, but just as soon as I start working, it is going to be apparent on whether or not I can really do all I say. In welding, the best welders were pretty quiet.

Test me on this. If you need to pay for a professional, hire one that does not boast about their skills, or possibly one that does, and see which one ends up doing a better job.

Note too that I am saying that gender-neutral. In welding women are far better welders than men...even better than me...because their dexterity skills are so much better. I tend to hire women for my contracted work, and I have always been rewarded with some of the best in their field because of it. My forester is a perfect example...an excellent, excellent forester.

Can the Wofati incorporate rammed earth blocks: CEBs and earthen floors & wall plasters? Also, does there have to be a synthetic moisture barrier on the sides and even the roof? What if there was gravel or small stones pushed up against the outside of the building and buried.  The little rocks would then allow the droplets to migrate downward and away from the building maybe? I'm not a builder.

Jen Tuuli posted this great picture of Cooper Cabin in her Bootcamp journal!



And I just found some posted by Cocoa a while ago.

This is from the $50 Underground Home which is post and beam and has the same back patio as well. The guy who wrote that book lives in Northern Idaho. Now Bounter County is starting the building code enforcement harassment. Which means they have the Globalist Agenda's going on. They don't let you build these homes and the author of that book was made to move out of that home. It's still there but more as a museum type building to show how viable it is to live in these cheap structures. Your Wofati is a much more spacious looking structure than his but it works being underground.

I have a idea. You can take curragated plastic which is double walled and weld 4' x 8' sheets of it together with a heat gun or even parchment paper and a iron will weld it together. You could use it around the posts and under the floor and on the outside of the walls. You could use it completely waterproof the underground building including the posts and even rap it up and over the roof beams and shething to make it moisture damage proof. You can salvage those 4' x 8'  curragated plastic from election signs. I got 8 of them from the 2020 election. If you buy them in bulk you can probably get them for pretty cheap if you want them brand new. You got people making foldable boats and kayaks out of these. They even show you how to weld them together. If you completely inclose the underground home including the posts and make it water tight and cover the plastic with dirt. The sun can't deteriorate the plastic. Your building is going to last as long as the plastic does. They say these plastics take 500 years to deteriorate. Have air circulation on the inside come from large tubes or plastic pipes from the back also welded to the curragated lining like they do in earthship homes. And like the earthship homes you have at least one wall not covered in dirt. With windows and etc. Who needs it facing the south. You can grow food on the back patio area and use mirrors to get light to those windows. That's what the author of the $50 Underground home did. One thing I would do is make the post and beam roof super solid, strong probably using a thick layer of hempcrete at least 8" thick then a hemp-mortar about at least 2" thick over that then put about 3.5' of river rock then sand then soil. Have the roof gently sloop for water catchment and drainage. Why Hempcrete? It fossilizes with time becoming solid hard rock. You would have about 10" thick layer of stone over it and if you incasedbthe whole house in that then used the curragated plastic wrap? That house would last forever the wood would never get wet and rot.  Think about it? The most energy efficient home that can last for at least thousands of years incased in solid fossilized rock? It could withstand any weather conditions including flooding because it can be built high on a slope or into the side of a steep hill or mountain? It can handle any climate.

Joe Hawk wrote:This is from the $50 Underground Home which is post and beam and has the same back patio as well. The guy who wrote that book lives in Northern Idaho. Now Bounter County is starting the building code enforcement harassment. Which means they have the Globalist Agenda's going on. They don't let you build these homes and the author of that book was made to move out of that home. It's still there but more as a museum type building to show how viable it is to live in these cheap structures. Your Wofati is a much more spacious looking structure than his but it works being underground.

The Cooper Cabin and the other "WOFATIs" are actually inspired on Mike Oehler's design. The word "Wofati" is actually an acronym, standing for:

Woodland. The word "forest" suggests "forestry" which embraces a lot of things I don't care for. The word "woodland" reminds me of Ben Law's excellent books The Woodland Way: A Permaculture Approach to Sustainable Woodland Management and The Woodland Year. A forest is .... used. A woodland is .... something that you are part of. Well, the key to making this word the highest priority is that this whole design would be silly if not built on, or very near, a woodland.

Mike Oehler. 80% of my design is standing on the rather brilliant shoulders of Mike Oehler.

Freaky-cheap. There are lots of easy ways to design a house that is even more costly than Oehler's original design. In fact, Oehler is moving in that direction. He has been called on to design several houses and his designs have evolved into replacing some polyethylene with the more expensive EPDM (pond liner). He has also introduced the use of some commercial insulation. I, on the other hand, have come up with things that meet the same concerns that end up costing even less. I've run these ideas by Mike and he agrees that they are sound! (Yeah baby!)

Annualized Thermal Inertia. John Hait's book is called "Passive Annual Heat Storage" - but what the title leaves out is that this design also brings a great deal of cooling in the summer. I think the phrase "Annualized Thermal Inertia" is more accurate.

So .... W.O.F.A.T.I. .... but even though it is an acronym, I prefer "wofati". Ahhhhh .... the joys of making stuff up as you go ....

Paul visited Mike Oehler quite a few times, and the Earth Sheltered Greenhouse was actually based on lots of discussions between Paul and Mike Oehler.

And, Mike's books/videos are for sale here on permies!

Mike Oehler's Low-Cost Underground House Workshop & Survival Shelter Seminar - 3 DVD+2 Books Deal
The Earth Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book by Mike Oehler (full ebook)
Sample chapters from The Earth Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book by Mike Oehler

I was reading through Jen ("Nine")'s Bootcamp Experience (BRK), and it looks like a bathroom is getting planned! She'd like input about the design!

Jen Tuuli wrote:Worked on the design for the Cooper Cabin bathroom this morning. It's coming along. Can probably start rounding up materials to build the wall + toilet/sink cabinets next week. I think I'll be helping out with the Dock lighting in the Library first as well as the lighting in the classroom.

If ya'll see anything crazy with the design, lemme know. The missing walls already exist, which is why I don't have them in the design. The bathroom door opens out. The toilet enclosure (the big box) opens toward you when you're coming into the room. I think I'm gonna build removable steps to get up to the toilet seat. Seems like the easiest way to handle so many constraints in here. The little box is the sink cabinet, which will have a foot pump and 5 gallon bucket for water. There's an existing gray water pipe in the floor under it to let that go outside. The pipe under the window in the toilet enclosure is for the urine diverter; the pipe exists already.

Jen Tuuli posted some great pictures of the bathroom on here Bootcamp thread. There's a lot more details on her thread!

before

after

Look at that nice new wall they're building! (Thanks Jen Tuuli for the pictures!)

Updates on Cooper Pooper (okay, no one's naming that. It's just what came out of my head right now. This is probably why I shouldn't be typing at 1:00am :rolling:. But I'm just so excited to see a bathroom inside a wofati. I feel like this is a huge step toward convincing people that wofatis are a great home option!)

Erica Egge and Jen Tuuli have been working on a sink stand! Here it is thus far:

sink cabinet frame. Click to visit Jen's thread for more pictures!

I'm loving the door Jen has made...using paint stir sticks! (Check out her thread here)

paint stir sticks?! I never would have though to use those!

look how nice the door is from this side! Can't even tell it's stir sticks!

Nicole Alderman wrote:..."paint stir sticks?! I never would have though to use those!" ...

That's a smart idea! I only knew to put paint stir sticks near plants, with the name written on it (in permanent marker)

I love, love, LOVE the sink cabinets that Erica has been making (Check out her thread for more pictures!)

Dishwashing station! I love how nice and long it is to allow for easy dishwashing

This handwashing sink cabinet is so cute!

Look at that awesome roundwood towel rack!

And another sink cabinet is in the process of being made for the bathroom!

Framing is done on the Cooper Cabin bathroom! Big thanks to Jen Tuuli for posting pictures--and for doing so much work on this project (check out her thread here!)

I love Erica's sinks, which is why I asked her to make just one more for the Cooper cabin bathroom project. Her skills increase every day and she brings such lovely elements to everything she works on. 😊

You are all doing an amazing job! I'm totally impressed with how you went from just a frame, to the wall half paneled!

(I'm so impressed that I'm totally stealing your pictures to post here!)



Aaaand



You all rock!

So much siding work has been done on the bathroom! The ceiling is all done (man, that must have been arm-tiring!)



And the doorway wall has been finished, too!



Thank you, Jen, for doing so much work on this, and posting so many great update pictures!

Lots of beautiful work was done today on the bathroom. Jen installed the awesome cabinet that Erica made, and also got a lot of work done on the toilet enclosure. (Check out her thread for more pictures and descriptions!)

Look at that amazing sink! I love the wooden facade that accents the wood's knot and grain!

Kyle also came over and started work on building the door! (More info about the door's construction on Kyle's thread)

The door is on it's side. I love the style!

The door is on!  Check out Jen and Kyle's threads for more pictures!

lovely wooden door!

The bathroom is looking so good!!!

From Jen's thread:


And from Kyle's thread:

The innards of the first indoor Willow Feeder! (Pictures and captions thanks to Jen)

Urine separator with extraction hose

A look into the abyss

Door! Now with magnets!

More door eye-candy from Kyle's thread

I just watched this video, from 6 or so years ago:  

I may well have missed it, but is there an update? Was the house finished? Did you find tenants to test the inertial heating / cooling?

We are not looking for somebody to test cooper cabin.  Currently, we have two residents in allerton abbey.  If they choose to run away before the test is complete, we will ask boots from the bootcamp to fill in.  

Allerton Abbey is in pretty good shape now - all ready for the ATI.  More info https://permies.com/t/350/26205/wofati-allerton-abbey-version#1013824

More about the bootcamp here.

Magdalene posted some nice pictures of Cooper Cabin recently. Here's the exterior:



And the interior!

In this short video and later in the full length movie, you can see the finished indoor willow feeder at the Cooper Cabin, among many other experiments at the Labs.

To pre-order the full movie, go here.

I find snow pictures just the most beautiful pictures, so when I spotted Jeff's new Bootcamp thread had a picture of Cooper Cabin in the snow, I couldn't help but post it here!

So, how many "rooms" are currently in Cooper Cabin?  I stayed there in 2019, but I was pretty much only there at nighttime with people sleeping, and I can't quite picture it clearly.  

I know there is:

the main room
the "bed room"
another sort of storage room, with the small port door over the rmh mass
the other kind of supply room
and now also the bathroom.  

How many of these rooms might be considered "private?"

Trying to figure out how to explain it in common terms to potential guests.

The storage areas are off limits. The bathroom is the only private space.

Briella's new video shows a lovely current view of Cooper Cabin:

Ol' Coopie Coop in the first snow of the season, courtesy of Caleb's BRK thread.

Cassie Langstraat wrote:Maddie was recently at Wheaton Labs and tooks a bunch of great pictures. You can see them all here. But here are a few good ones of wofati 0.8.

I love the wood floors.... Hoping that this year I'll get my own Wofati started - been waiting too long already!
Any chance a bit of detail on floor installation could be shared? What's under there: vapor barrier, beams, etc.?