Desiree Fleck

We have a tipi up the hill that my partner, me, and our son have lived in before but my partner really would rather have a house that is more warm and comfortable and we also have an infant baby to care for. So the tipi is out of the question for now. We have been having some talks and throwing ideas around here. We want to do it passive solar to the extent that we understand. Any good links for passive solar made simple? For the north wall, we are talking about doing it with straw bales. I know that cob can have problems when applying it in the winter because of the freezing and thawing temps so we are talking about putting metal siding on the outside of the straw bale and doing a lime cob mix for the inside wall. The rest of the walls we will probably do more conventionally and side with wood, because we need to finish the job quickly.

I know we can get a pretty standard constuction tiny house built in that small amount of time.. but can we do it using some natural elements? Can we nix the joint compound, drywall, fiberglass, and goops? And still get it done in 2-3 weeks? Its going to be about 150 square feet or so.

Our community is growing and with winter coming, people need to move indoors. For all of us at the commune to have a warm space soon, we need to erect a tiny house for my family to move into very quickly. As in....sometime during the next month. We live in the Ozarks which means we have four seasons varying from hot in summer to cold in winter, and it is very wet and humid here. We are going to raise the house up on a block foundation (we acquired concrete blocks from a demolition site we helped with) and the frame is going to be post and beam using 2x4s or 2x6s which we also procured doing some demolition work. We have enough wood to put a floor in.  The roof will be tin, we have loads of it. My main concerns are with standard industrial walling - drywall, plastic housewrap, silicone goop, insulation, joint compound, and paint. Im not cool with any of that stuff, but I do know how to use it all and I know it gets the work done quickly. I live in a consensus community and I have been very accomodating to the needs of others, but at the same time I dont want to continue our reliance on the industry. Im not sure if there are options that will get this house up before winter really sets in. I hear its coming by the end of the week.... Yikes! Any suggestions?

Okay, we will consider making the berm a foot away from the house. And we will begin a trench upslope. The serious issue lies directly in front of our home where the water just pools. It comes off the hill and our stone walkway and lands on soliid bedrock,.

This is how we have responded the problems so far...
We ordered a dehumidifier which will arrive this week, a pretty high capacity one, and we may get some small ones for the bedrooms. We got damprid for now, to help slightly. We took out all the carpets and extra fabrics, because even our couches are collecting lots of moisture. We keep the windows and doors (with screens) open all the time for air circulation. We are going to make more screens for the rest of the windows. We have a fan blowing all the time. I took out all the overgrowth in front of the house so I could see what we are working with, it's about 2 inches of soil and then bedrck for several feet in front of the house, and then there begins the hillside incline which is full of rock rock and more rock. We are going to get some concrete and put it up against the house so the surface water doesn't get underneath the hous e as easily. We are going to install two sliding glass doors on the north uphill side with screens, this is the most open side of the house, very wooded on the other three sides. We also have a attic turbine fan we will be installing soon. And we are in the middle stages of developing a plan to landscape the uphill landscape to divert the water before it gets here. We are still unsure of exactly how to do that.

Great advice here already, probably not much left to say. We recently did a cob oven build using a sand form with cinder block and brick core for the dome shape. It worked beautifully. We have our ovens under a roof for protection. One of ours has a stovepipe and the other does not. The one without holds heat much better, but it's also much bigger. The one with a stovepipe, we are able to close the flu to hold in heat, but it's so small that we have to keep stoking the fire during use. That's one reason we built a larger1 one. Good luck to you and enjoy!!

Terry you really seem to know what you are talking about and I thank you so much for taking the time to help out. To be honest, I'm having difficulty understanding some of what you are saying, but we have a friend, engineer-minded guy helping us tackle some issues, so I'm going to have him read your advice and decipher it for me.

Here at our community we have a well that either runs by windpower with our windmill, or when it's not windy (most of the Summer) we pump by hand. We use rainwater for most things including our bathing needs. Thankfully we have a beautiful creek that runs through the property so many of us use that to bathe in the warm months. We also have a 5 gallon shower bag setup in a makeshift tipi near our main communal building. Generally at least two people get showers out of 5 gallons of water, sometimes three. Once it gets cold out, we'll probably be using the wetting a rag and using a washtub indoors method because most people will not want to stand outside naked no matter how warm the water is. We have discussed adding a shower room onto our communal house, not sure if we will get to it this year.

Such vast knowledge here, thank you all so much!! So here's a plan we have come up with and talked about in the past that we think it makes good sense to act on. In front of the building, the uphill north side, is the slab rock where water pools. We don't want to attempt making trenches in it as it doesn't really work anyways. Our idea is to build a patio on the slab rock with rocks from our creek and pour some concrete in the cracks and a concrete berm in the front of that (uphill) to move the water around the building and down the hill past the house. We spoke to a friend who had similar problems at his house, and he put a simple concrete berm in front of the house that diverted the water down the hill. It's been working for years. Seems like a simple fix, and we would have a lovely patio. We have attempted to build trenches in the hillside that does divert some of the water, but it seems like to be the most effective, we need to divert right in front of the house because this is where it pools. After diverting the water, we will need to assess how and when we can gut and replace whatever is inside these walls and ceilings.

Should we put a sealer on the concrete or do you think that would just seal in the funk and make matters worse eventually? My dad and husband (who both live in the house with me and my son) both think it's a great idea to seal the concrete floor.

Fun topic! I have lots of hobbies that change with the seasons and the direction of the wind. For some years I've been really into collecting herbs and making tinctures, oils, and tea blends (generally a spring and summer time hobby) and I love to crochet so I've recently started spinning yarn and look forward to using natural dyes to do that part of the process too (my fall and winter hobby). I also organize volunteers to do work parties in the area and for our local co-op. Camping and hiking are some year round hobbies, always into learning more from nature. I've recently started practicing with a bow and arrow, hope to get into hunting when I'm better at it. I also love to write songs, sing, play drums, ukulele, and learn the banjo. Building with cob, making hugel beds, swimming in creeks, collecting rocks, writing a blog, and watching the fireflies and stars at night...