I do so so so so damn many things every day that the shear volume of them all keeps me from blogging as regularly as I'd like to. However I will once again attempt to cherry pick various events and activities to share. A little over a week ago we went off to Alabama again to do the post raising of the natural building we began work on about a month ago. During our last trip to the house in Alabama we stripped the bark off the trees we cut down so that we could use them for posts, beams and the like in the overall structure of the house. We now had to raise them so that they could have concrete poured around their base to keep them in place.
It is worth noting here that each post is around 14 feet long and weighs over 450 pounds. We had to put up over twenty five of them in a few days. They all to be at exact angles and around a third of them were not vertical posts but had to be at 45 degree angles.
The picture you see here is taken before many of the angled posts, or y braces, had been put in. It is hard to balance 450 pound trees at various angles all in a small space, but we did it and I learned quite a bit in the process. We had to make individual braces for each and every post and make sure that they were braced exactly right so that when the concrete was poured it was all kosher.
The house it self is sort of a mix between a natural building and a conventional one, noting that concrete is not usually considered a natural material. October marks my transition into the natural building apprenticeship although I have been spending time with the builders unofficially already. However this new status of officialness has led me to reading quite a bit not only about the practical how to of the natural building practice, but also the history and theory of it as well. Natural building is interesting in that it is obviously nothing new, it is a rediscovery of techniques have been used since humans began housing themselves. Only within the last couple hundred years have we started swaying from intelligent design methods.
It seems funny to think of indigenous folks or old villages around the world as having more intelligent design then our contemporary buildings, but when you compare the two, that seemingly is the reality. That is not to say that we are not currently capable of intelligent design....it's just to say it is usually not used and almost never used in new residential homes. We don't build considering how to use such things as our house's orientation to the sun to our advantage. We park houses whenever we think they should be and spend a ton of energy and money to heat them up and cool them down.
The good news is that you can heat and cool your house in almost all cases without using any electrical energy. You just have to take advantage of the natural landscape in order to achieve such a result. Indigenous folks have been doing it for thousands of years. In fact a lot of American architecture used to consider the site location and intelligent design principles before the rush to house all the folks that needed houses post world war two. It also should be noted that houses that take advantage of the natural landscape are usually much more beautiful then the conventional houses that have been built over the last half century.
Anyhoo there are tons of resources for learning more about natural building and you can start with this super basic wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_building
In addition to all the natural building I have been doing a bit of gardening as well. Most recently we experimented with a German method of making wonderful loamy soil called Hugelkulture. Hugelkulture is basically layering material to create an in place compost pile you can plant on. The recipe is sort of like baking a cake. You start by stripping the area you want to use of it's top soil (to be replaced later). You then break up the soil with a digging fork. Following that break up you place down tree branches, logs or other woody material. On top of that layer you place less woody material that has more nitrogen content. We used spent Jerusalem artichoke flowers which have the consistency of sunflowers. On top of that you place a much higher nitrogen plant source. We used all the plants that had been on top of the soil we stripped off. Following that layer you place on a layer of compost and then, finally the top soil you removed earlier.
Why in the hell would you do all this you ask...I'm wondering that as I write this and realize that I am giving way to damn much detail, but alas we are already knee deep in this shit and if you haven't clicked over to the comedy central website in order to watch the daily show then you are likely to stick with me the rest of the way. So woodier materials are higher in carbon and need nitrogen materials to decompose and make the organic matter that is important for plant growth. In addition the woodier material an hold a lot of water below ground and make it available to whatever you plant on top of the pile. Berries, squash or any water loving plants really flourish using this method. The best part is that when the pile breaks down you have created over a foot of beautiful new soil.
So ok.....that was a big post and despite my best intentions laden with a ton of shit that may or may not be interesting to read when you are at work....I'll try and post more often with smaller entries....but I can't make any promises.
Word....Ja boy
Word....Ja boy
