bob the builder 4

BOB THE BUILDER 4

Another alternative to hand digging your pit, or at least most of it if money is tight, is to just dig to four feet.  My first digging project ever was, obviously, dubbed The Test Pit, and as I was ignorantly using the wrong pick ( thin and light rather than the heavy and broad Maddox ) I couldn’t get past four feet deep.  Everyone says go down ten to twelve feet to get the stable year round temperatures, but if you can’t afford the supports for feet worth of dirt on the roof this does not apply.  If you are just using the Advanced Redneck Building Underground Technique ( AR-BUT ) which is an insulated roof over a pit, rather than a buried structure, what you are looking at is very stable temperatures in a low range rather than a year round temperature of 55 degrees.  Say, 40 when it is zero outside and 75 when it is 100 outside.  Four feet, or six or probably even eight feet deep, you are looking at using the earth as a temperature battery, evening out fluctuations.  My advice is that if money is tight now, the pit is four feet deep.  Then, when you save more, get the backhoe back out there and dig a trench ten foot deep and fifty to a hundred foot long and install an air well to stabilize the pits dwelling by drawing in the deeper year round temperatures.

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( An air well is deeply buried pipe, sewer pipe to get the needed diameter-don’t be a dumbass like me and use too narrow of pipe which does not draw air-which is in the shape of a U.  At the far end the pipe is at the surface [protect from rain as you don’t want moisture getting in and forming mold], plunges down ten feet to the horizontal pipe, runs to your structure location, then straight up.  Draw the air through by having a 12v car or computer fan [the little inch or two fans, cost like ten bucks each.  Have a lot of spares and you can draw directly from the solar panel if the battery dies.  At least you’ll warm or cool while the sun is out verses not at all] on the inside pipe opening, not the one away from the structure ).

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My point is that my four foot deep pit and my six foot deep one both stayed about the same temperature.  You aren’t necessarily sacrificing performance by not digging as deep.  If you keep the structure walls at six foot high, and extend the roof over to the berm of earth on the edge of the pit, you are looking at a mounded structure which you can just cover with plastic sheeting and your inch of dirt, the pitch being slight enough to allow rain to drain off but not enough to take the dirt with it ( again, this is desert building.  We have gully washers but as the dirt is dry rather than previously saturated, I don’t lose roof dirt in heavy rains ).  Herein lies my second improvement, after machine over human digging.  More insulation.  My only insulation now is the roof and exposed wall around the doorway.  In my more luxurious building, the floor and walls get insulated in the dwelling, plus I double the roof insulation ( the usual is stick and fiberglass bats.  I’d cover over that with rigid board, having wood, then plastic sheeting, then rigid board, another sheet of plastic, then the dirt ).  This only adds a few hundred dollars to a 200 square foot dwelling, along with the guesstimated $1,000 for the backhoe for the pit and another say, $500 for the trench and pipe.  Most likely two grand total for pit, trench and added insulation.

More Next Time-END

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