article 2 of 2 today
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Simple Shelter options 3
“The Soddy”
Since my last update,
I’ve had the chance to read up on sod houses a little more. I’ve found little
information overall on constructing these homes, and was a little unclear on
one element of the construction. That being that when you get to the third row,
you should flip the sod bricks 90º perpendicular to the first two rows for stability,
and that you should do this every third row. The PDF link below
makes this clear, and in order to do this properly, you need sod strips
that when placed side by side, the two are the same length as they
are wide. In other words, let’s say 1’ wide by 2’ long. Lay the strips
side by side on the 1’ section, for a total of 2’ wide. Then when you place the
third row perpendicular to these two, it fits across them perfectly. But
the PDF link below will bring it into perspective if this does not make sense .
From my research, it
appears that most sod homes had a relatively short lifespan of perhaps 5
years or so, before needing major repairs, or a complete rebuild. Yet,
there are sod homes still standing that were built in the 19th century.
I don’t see any reason why a sod home built with the addition of inexpensive
modern materials (such as polyethylene plastic
sheeting) would not last for many years, if not decades, while being
water tight at the same time.
Sod homes, with their
two foot thick walls, were very warm in winter, and quite cool in the
summer. Many of the early plains homesteaders that lived in sod
homes, survived the first few winters comfortably, while many that did
not, perished. If I were to build a sod home, I would build it as a
dugout in order to take even greater advantage of the thermal properties of the
earth.
Here’s an example of
what I had in mind:
Probably the two best links
that I’ve found on sod home building:
As a final note, I’ll
add that when I started to write this post, I was rather enthused at the
prospect of building a sod house. As I type this out however, I’m
thinking that there are far better and more
practical ways to go. Obviously, the easiest way to go
about earth sheltered is to find an existing structure (i.e. an old
automobile, a large reinforced shipping crate, etc) and
partially bury, then cover over the remaining exposed
portion with straw flakes, and then lightly with
earth. Earth bag or tire structures also offer up a less costly option.
But at the time of this writing, I have little knowledge on tire
homes, and only slightly more on earth bag construction. So I have
some research ahead of me to learn the fundamentals, and can’t really comment
any further on these procedures at this point in time.
The perpendicular sod bricks "lock" the system together so as to keep it from tipping over. In this regard, diversity is your friend. Running bonding the bricks longitudinally, where the center of the brick above is located over the head joint of the bricks below, does the same thing. Instances where stacked bond is preferred a durawall structural wire product is installed between every other course. I suppose thing tree limbs with short extensions of branches from the sides could do the same sort of thing in a sod application.
ReplyDeleteFor making the sod last longer and stucco material can be applied to both interior and exterior surfaces. Clay is preferred because it is very dense and hard when properly dried or cured. Think, adobe. If possible, the clay stucco can be painted with several layers exterior grade latex paint to further the longevity.
If by polyethylene plastic sheeting, you mean construction grade visqueen, it is UV intolerant, as it is meant to be place under poured concrete and thus not susceptible yo UV, and will deteriorate in less than a year in direct sunlight.
Regarding interior temperatures. Materials themselves do not create heat or cold. The temperature of interior will be the same as the exterior in the absence of some sort of method to create heat or cold. There's a lot of misinformation, and warped assumptions, out there about this stuff.
There's a reason building designers go to school and then apprentice for some years, because constructing worthwhile buildings that are long term economical, structurally sound, physically comfortable, and meet the needs of the owner are not products of whim but rather a coordination of sciences, mathematics, history, and of course education and experience.
People that think they can arrogantly short-cut the process usually end up losing time, money, and effort, and maybe their lives. Building materials are heavy, if they collapse they can kill. I have designed and/or built more than 7,000 projects over a period of 46 years costing from about $500.00 to over $100,000,000.00.
"So I have some research ahead of me to learn the fundamentals, and can’t really comment any further on these procedures at this point in time."
ReplyDeleteI have to ask, "What is your goal"?
There are 4 points to consider.
1) Cost
2) Effort
3) Size
4) Location
See, you can't get to B until after you've passed A, and A are the 4 points above. Remember, your ultimate goal is Z, living in your new domicile, and you have to go through all of the steps to get there. What are steps C through Y? For each person they are different and you have to define them yourself. I can assist, but I won't be living in the end result, so therefore my suggestions may not suit you. Regardless, the amount of money and effort you spend are directly related to the results you will eventually live with, or not.
I've spent a good portion of my time over the past 10 years studying the idea of the most efficient way to create a place to live for 1 or 2 people and I have briefly described the results of my study, here, in the past. There is no cheap lunch. There is only degrees of unhappiness. By thinking it through in great detail you can lessen the amount of unhappiness increase the amount of value from your product choices and methods of expended effort.
Thanks for the helpful replies, much appreciated.
DeleteThe overall goal is to build something as simple and as effective as possible, that a poor (Say, borderline homeless) person can build for practically nothing. I’m no longer in this situation at the time of this writing, but I was, and can never forget how terrible it was. It’s my hope that I can be of help to others out there, or perhaps even myself, if (god forbid) I’m ever in such a situation again.
Duly noted on the potential for collapse, and I did leave this detail out, but the sod homes were also tapered inward as they rose in height, decreasing the wall thickness, in order to prevent this from happening. In my case, I had planned on short walls, as sort of a safety measure.
“If by polyethylene plastic sheeting, you mean construction grade visqueen, it is UV intolerant, as it is meant to be place under poured concrete and thus not susceptible yo UV, and will deteriorate in less than a year in direct sunlight.”
Yes, I am aware of its vulnerabilities. To be honest, I was struggling to figure out how I would incorporate the sheeting into the design. I still don’t have it figured out, but as I mentioned at the end of the article, this is not something that I will likely pursue, but won’t necessarily rule out either.
Good points by GS. If the economy or society is functional even at depression levels, then access to materials, helping hands, and ability to work unmolested is possible. Post collapse and then best laid plans won't happen (consider cave living) one must use advanced materials or designs as available as it is an improvement in many regards over low tech and old school ways. Just look at all the third world hodge podge construction wiped out in disasters or incidents with higher loss probabilities and body counts.
ReplyDeleteI love how Rawles opined how if only those ignorant savages over in the middle east used rebar, their mud brick houses wouldn't collapse in an earthquake. Because we are way smarter to pay for our houses for thirty years, whereas theirs are literally free.
DeleteSpeaking of being way smarter, if you run out an entire 30 year loan, that is, pay all 360 payments like good little boiz and gurlz you will have paid around 2.5 to 3 times as much as the selling price of the home. Some slick real estate people back in the 80's put out the idea that by making payments every 2 weeks rather than monthly will reduce the amount of debt faster and therefore lessen the duration of the loan, which is true. But try to find a lender that will let you do that. After all, they gotta have them hookers and blow, ya know.
DeleteBut little good that would do anyway because it's been said the average home in the US changes hands every 7 years.
Then there's that inflation thing where, if you do pay on your house for 30 years, it will be worth 3 times what the original selling price was. But thats only because your dollars are now worth 1/3 what they were 30 years prior.
Then compound that with the fact the assessed value of your 30 year old home will be 3 times what it was when you bought it, and the mileage rate of the property taxes will have been raised several times too, so it's questionable over all as to whether that old method is even valid any more.
I remember when a pack of smokes was a quarter, and last week in a conv store I heard some folks complaining that the price went up again recently and they now cost more than $6 a pack. Do the arithmetic, from a quarter to 6 bux in 40 years. I jokingly told them to think on the bright side, cause in 40 more years smokes will cost more than $100 a pack. They didn't think it was funny. Nicotine nullifies the funny bone.
Don't you mean, "in forty years a pack will cost 100 Yuan"? :)
DeleteIn 1964 the minimum wage was about $1.25 per hour. Today, a 1964 90% "junk" silver quarter is worth about 11-12x face value (roughly $3.00), making the minimum wage back then roughly equivalent to the $15/hour minimum wage that so many people are yammering about today.
DeleteWe really need is to get rid of the central bankers and return to an honest money system (I know, I know - keep dreaming...).
Thank you for the guest article, I appreciate it! Both it and ghostsniper's excellent comments provided much food for thought.
Delete10:31-please include a return of Unions, a gold standard, 99% less lawyers, the end of women's/immigrants/other color rights, and what the hell, peace on earth.
DeleteI'd just like to see at least 80% less of everything gov't. My favorite daydream is life before the 16th amendment, when there was still the semblance of freedom in this country.
DeleteCareful! Government workers and welfare are almost all employment/paychecks now. And the resources are all stripped. So, then, what economy could we enjoy freedom in? Don't answer, I know this is all theoretical and wishful. Just saying, freedom will go along with poverty.
DeleteIf you can find a steep hill top that would allow you to hollow out the inside and use the fill for the front wall, that could work. Some would even build it as a garage of sorts, then move a travel trailer inside it for a more finished feel.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest regret was not waiting a week or two after I got my buddy to tow the little RV to my lot, where I would have dug a ramp down to my pit. Underground RV's are da bomb.
DeleteDidn't Garlington do something like that? (Rancho Costa Nada) - bury a camper, and watch all the creepy crawlies through the windows?!!
DeleteHis buddy down the road did that, and he wrote on that in said book.
DeleteThanks for the article! Something to consider as you explore options for free or nearly free domicile construction - We see many alternative construction options like earth bag, cob, straw bale, rammed earth, adobe, chord wood, wattle and daub, dry stack stone, and log. However, these are all primarily wall construction options. Walls are important of course, but I've come to see that the roof is the critical element of a house. After all, without a roof you are basically living in a corral... Unless you live in or near a forest where wood products are available for the picking, inexpensive or "free" roof options are very limited. I've spent a lot of time researching the subject and so far have come up wanting. I live in a heavily forested area so wood is plentiful, but if you plan on escaping to desert or prairie regions wood can be pretty scarce. I'd love to find a roof technology that uses free materials without recourse to wooden beams.
ReplyDeleteBest I have come up with is to minimize the amount of wood needed, but not eliminate it. In this respect I favor building an alternative wall structure and cover it with a light shallow geodesic dome roof made of stick wood. Being geodesic, the struts can be light and yet they provide a lot of strength. Cover the strut frame with salvaged steel roofs from junk cars. I visited a dome built this way back in the late 60s. It leaked like a sieve but was very sturdy and could take a lot of abuse. In another community similar domes were built, but the builders were much more construction savvy. They sealed the metal pieces by carefully folding and crimping the adjoining edges. These were very dry inside. They were pretty colorful though due to the mix of automobile pieces used, so investing in a couple gallons of paint to camouflage it would probably be a good idea!
Only other option I've seen is adobe or earth bag domes, covered with plastic sheet and then a protective layer of sod. This could be the dirt cheap option I seek, but I'm a little concerned about collapse (ghostsniper is right to remind us of the perils), as well as getting the covering sod to stay put on the necessarily steep dome walls.
Not a complete solution, but a partial one-don't forget ferrocement for that roof.
DeleteEverybody is channeled to think a certain way but sometimes those ways just won't work for any given situation.
DeleteMost people think walls look like thi | and roofs look like this -, or this / so what happens if you combine the 2. Call them woofs if you like, or ralls.
The term to use in your search is "corbelling" of corbel.
It is where each higher member is offset slightly to one side lending to the appearance of a cantilever of sorts. It has limits though. You can only suspend science so far.
Take a piece of your building material of choice, the heavier the better, say 24" x 24" x 24" thick and sit it on the ground. Take another identical piece and sit it on top of the first one but slide it to one side by about 2". Do the same with the next one on top of that one. You are creating a set of stairs. You can only go so far though for when the rear most part of the top one exceeds the forward most part of the bottom one it will tip over. This is called "angle of repose", the angle at which any given thing can no longer support itself.
A clever person can find work arounds to this tipping problem if they put a mind to it. For example, just before the angle of repose is met, stack some more vertical pieces inside to prevent it from tipping, then start the process over again verbatim until you reach the desired height. The outside would like the Egyptian pyramids that you could use for terraced gardening, or fill the stair steps in with soil of some other material. There's something to be said about plant roots diving into the soil and providing some anti-erosion, if the building material is soil.
BTW, living on a desert makes you a target from a long way off. No place to hide.
Living in the desert gives you a HUGE moat few will cross without adequate transportation. Living in the woods gives your enemy an ambush point really friggin close to you. I'm glad so few appreciate the finer points of the desert. Keeps the neighbors to a minimum.
DeleteThanks to everyone for the replies!
ReplyDelete@10:32 AM. Thank you for the kind words! My goal is to provide housing ideas that can be incorporated by those on a very limited budget, myself included.
@10:43 AM. It’s my understanding that many pioneer families started out by digging a depression in the side of a hill, and then adding a roof to form a dugout. I would think that over time though, that it would be a good idea to shore up the sides to prevent erosion. Earth bags might be useful in such a situation.
@Nicus. I was thinking that for a roof, if you could cut some small redwoods, you could lay them across the top, and set them them right next to one another. You could then lay plastic sheeting over the top, and cover lightly with sod, or dirt and grass seed. The biggest problem is access to them. If you were lucky, you might have enough of them to spare on your own property. Otherwise, you might be able to get a permit to take them off of public land, but this is something that I am unsure of.
@Jim. I do recall that the hobo fellow from rancho costa nada, buried a camper, and had a periscope to see out with.
Yeah, the buried trailer guy was the only smart one, no more freight train wind worries, no A/C worries. And hell, probably no drone attack worries.
DeleteStarplate geodome kit(about $110) with light weight 2x4's for a 140 sq ft floor space. Cover with almost anything that is on hand and apply a concrete cover; I.E. just spread or pour over your covering.
ReplyDeleteIn colder areas you would insulate the inside as needed.
Some folks soak the blanket in watery concrete, then lay over frame. Use as first concrete layer or as is if no other support needed.
DeleteTo: Guest Article writer
ReplyDeleteFor building with tires, I would recommend the 'EARTHSHIP' book series, showing how to build a hillside 'underground' house. Tires are used as 'bricks' with crushed aluminum cans as 'filler'.
Just beware you will be using a sledge like an old railroad Paddy.
DeleteThanks for the book suggestion F. Smith, I am checking it out now. But wow! That dude ain’t giving that book away!
DeleteIn response to GS’s comment about the desert not being a good place to hide, I get where he’s coming from. Most of the cheap desert land that I looked at was completely flat for as far as the eye could see, even in many areas of Nevada. Thankfully, Elko county isn’t typically like that. But some types of desert makes for a very good hiding place. The best example would be the desert in Apple Valley CA, where many of the early westerns where filmed; trees, brush, large rock formations, lots of hills and nooks and cranny’s to hide. Try to avoid purchasing plain, flat desert, if at all possible. Though with a few camo tricks, you can probably find ingenious ways to hide in plain site, even in this type of desert. Once again, I’ll mention that Great Hideout’s Of The West book, by Bill “We never went to the moon” Kaysing :D
He provided a lot of ideas on how to hide in plain site.
Try libraries for the books. Every one I've ever lived near had them-one of the first Gore Warming tree hugging construction books, so the Head Left Librarians love them. Also, watch all those YouTube vids on the technigue.
DeleteHere's an idea anyone can do starting right now. Over time, say a year or two, quite a bit of normally thrown away material can be transformed into useable building materials. Metal cans, food type, and others. Cut the bottom and top off, cut down the side, close to the seam, use a rubber mallet on a hard surface to make it flat. Stack them flat with a heavy weight on top to further flatten. Each, when lapped, can act as a shigle, which can be applied to a wall or roof. The inside of most food cans today have a very thin layer of plastic.
ReplyDeleteSame with plastic milk jugs. Cut the top and bottom off, split the side, stack flat with weight on them. Again, waterproof shingles.
Milk jugs can also be used to waterproof patch stuff. Few years ago I removed a propane tube that went through the white vinyl siding on our house leaving a hole all the way through. The hole was about 1-1/4" dia. I stuffed batt insulation in the hole, then smeared white silicone caulk in and around the hole, then put a 2" dia milk jug patch over the hole, smeared more white caulk all over it, smoothed it out nicely. Several years later it is hard to see that patch. I patched the drywall on the inside with drywall paste. In a standard size amazon packing box you can easily get a years worth of milk jug shingles which could cover 1 wall of a small self made domain. 1 gal a week equals 52 per year. Roughly 6" x 24" shingle per 1 gal milk jug x 52 gals = 52 square feet of material, not including lap space. 1" aluminum roofing nails are fairly inexpensive, get the ribbed ones as they hold forever. Remember, milk jugs UV deplete over time so you'll need to coat them with some black mammy or equiv.
Look around you, what do you already have, and may be throwing away, that can be repurposed?
I love all those big ass chunks of styrofoam that everything is shipped in now. Think if you can use it for insulation.
DeleteGreat suggestions GS. It reminded of when I went to the ghost town of Bodie CA. Someone had used a series of old tin cans to do just that, and had shingled the side of a building using them. The last residents moved out around 1939/40 so it had held up pretty well considering that the improvement was likely prior to this date.
DeleteThe state took over the town in the early 1960’s, and since then, it has been in a state of “arrested decay”. Meaning that they only improve something to prevent it from decaying worse, but basically they don’t improve anything. Some of those old homes are in good enough shape that the park personnel use them as seasonal homes. But homes in the 19th century were made of real wood, and used materials that were of a far cry better quality then modern homes.
The NOL's home is at the century mark. The only area not insulated is the new add on kitchen ( the house made into apartments ). Real wood, real materials.
DeleteStyrofoam chunks. Can get messy real quick. Save as is til ready to use - less mess that way. Cut to cavity size on a table saw for insulation between studs, etc.
DeleteAlso, cut into 1/2" wide strips on the table saw, then broken into small pieces by hand for infill insulation.
I've cut styrofoam on my table saw but it gets very messy immediately. The styro-dust goes everywhere (had my saw connected to a shop vac but it was still a mess) and static electricity is your worst enemy in that regard.
Regular gas will reduce styrofoam to a sticky gel like consistency. Home made napalm if mothball crystals are mixed in. The crystals are methane and it raises the octane 500% - very volatile. I made this when I was an early teen, not knowing any better, and smeared the concoction on a 1/2 sheet of plywood and stood it against the wall of the house in the backyard. I put a white tip match in the end of the barrel of a Crossman air rifle and shot the plywood from about 20' away and it instantly was engulfed in roaring flames. Had to get the hose to keep the house from catching fire. Years later, in demo school in the army, I learned about what I had done.
5 gal metal buckets with lids of that concoction, set up with some Estes model rocket engines and trash phone detonators hung from ropes in the trees on the compound perimeter.
"Come on baby light my fire."