Tim Ineichen

S. Bengi,  the cabin in your reply wouldn't be useful for us. The 2 extra bedrooms wouldn't be useful, and as we have a dry cabin the bathroom would be a complete waste. If we had children living with us it might be worth figuring a way to heat all the bedrooms, but I think I'd rather just add a loft. It's easier to heat as hot air rises, it reduces the cost of the foundation and the roof area, which are a large portion of the expense in building and it makes maintenance easier.

Our current cabin is a simple frame built 16x20 with a 5 ft front porch,  it's completely open in the interior, the kitchen area takes 8 feet on 2 walls, the bed is along a third wall and the living area takes up the remainder of the floorspace. The foundation is packed gravel in a hole dug to below the frost line.

There are many things I'll do differently for the house. I'll use a rubble trench foundation for the perimeter of the house and post in footings to support the floor inside the perimeter.  The exterior walls will be cordwood 24" wide made from aspen logs. With the addition of water storage in the house I'll have a bathroom. There will be two interior walls separating the bedroom from the kitchen/living area, and a wall separating the bath from the bedroom. Primary heat will still be wood, using propane at night. I'll add a entry on the front and a vestibule on the back door. The interior walls will be 2x4  frame. The attic will be floored but unfinished for storage of non temperature sensitive items, the basement will be heated for more sensitive items to be stored. I think I can get roughly 340 to 400 feet of basement maintaining a distance of 10 feet from the foundation trench. That should be sufficient keep the foundation intact even with the weight of the walls on it.

That is exactly the type of basement I was considering. Using roughly half the size of the available space inside the foundation footprint. Frost line up here is 4 1/2 ft, I was thinking of a foundation depth of 5ft, a basement depth of 6 1/2 ft, that would give a headspace of 7-7 1/2 feet. More than enough for wiring and plumbing. Yet dug 10 feet from the interior wall of the foundation trench.

Thanks for your response! I will have to do more research on maintaining back pressure against the rubble trench. As the house exterior walls would be 24" thick, the trench would be 48" wide at the bottom and 36" at the top. The inside wall deminsions are approximately 28'x30'. I was thinking that if I limited the basement to half of the exterior footprint or about 400 Sq ft, that would give enough room for the water storage yet maintain sufficient  structural support for the foundation.

Prevention of the water freezing is indeed a problem. The Tanana river isn't far from here, it has depths close to 20 ft in places and is several hundred yards wide, yet in January it will freeze solid enough to drive a D7 bulldozer across, as fresh potible water is 85 miles away in the winter storing 500 gals (3-4 months) of water would be very nice! Other than a basement the only thing that comes to mind would be a underground tank, which is difficult to maintain, or a separate heated building which is expensive to build and heat through the  winter.  

Remember that this homestead is of grid, and December sunlight is limited to about 4 hours a day, electrical heating is not an option.

I would be cautious in the size of your planned house. 1800 Sq ft would be impossible to heat where we are without a significant modern heater and on grid power. While I acknowledge that winters in upstate NY are much less severe than the interior of Alaska, they are cold enough to make heating a structure of that size complicated and demanding. In any case I wish you the best in your efforts.

I live on 4 acres of land completely covered with quacking Aspen in the interior of Alaska. We have lived in our off grid cabin for 10 years. I am currently clearing the area for a 820 Sq foot house. I'll build using the cordwood method utilizing the trees I am clearing, and a rubble trench foundation. Our cabin is dry (no running water), and a well is much to expensive, $20,000, so I am considering a semi dry house. Storing large quantities of hauled water on site, but winter temperature is an issue. We have seen -63f. Keeping 500 gal of water from freezing is a consideration.  I am considering a basement, the soil is well drained, the gravel removed would fill the rubble ditch, heat from the house with limited augmenting should keep the water from freezing, and the basement would be a great place to store vegetables from the garden. My question is would a basement weaken the support for the backside of the rubble trench sufficiently that the foundation would fail? How far from the trench would be advisable to begin the walls of the basement? Any suggestions, or direction would be appreciated.