We're Designing And Building Small "People cannot be genuinely comfortable and healthy in a house which is not theirs. All forms of rental - whether from private landlords or public housing agencies - work against the natural processes which allow people to form stable, self-healing communities." "Do everything possible to make the traditional forms of rental impossible, indeed, illegal. Give every household its own home; with space enough for a garden. Keep the emphasis in the definition of ownership on control, not on financial ownership, which give people control over their houses and gardens, but make financial speculation impossible, choose these forms above all others. In all cases give people the legal power, and the physical opportunity to modify and repair their own places. Build these houses in such a way that every individual home - even apartments - have a garden where vegetables will grow, and that in every situation, each family can build, and change, and add to their home as they wish." This pattern from Christopher Alexander's stunning 1977 book makes so much sense to us personally. Susan and I have taken several of Christopher's patterns and used them to design our own strawbale home in Ganmain. Not everyone agrees with Alexander's patterns but they make so much sense to us, building as we do, from strawbales. I started this series of articles in EG 119 with the heading 'low cost sustainable building', and that is what this is all about for me, with the emphasis on sustainable. If we choose to build a home today we are bombarded by choices. In every Saturday newspaper and on television and radio we are persuaded to build large two storey homes. These homes have 4 or 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, three eating areas, a minimum of two garages - always on the front (the car is king) - a rumpus room, library, study and so on. The latest trend is for a room especially for the home theatre and media. Madness. Why do we need 380 square metres when the average Australian family size is 2.4 people! If you want to build a house like the one described above then do not use strawbales because you will not be building a sustainable home no matter what materials you are using. It will cost you as much if not more than a conventional double brick home. Small is beautiful If you built a conventional home that is one-third the size (say 130 square metres) of the above-described madness, out of conventional unsustainable materials, your building will obviously be far more sustainable. However, if you now choose to build the 130 square metre home from rubble trench footing, earthen floors, strawbale walls rendered with clay, and a roof made from bamboo with recycled corrugated iron, now you are talking. Now if you decide to build several small pavilions and join them together with covered, and in some cases enclosed, walkways you will be able to use the low cost method of loadbearing strawbale walls. I would suggest that each pavilion is less than 50 square metres each. You now need to look at what you need from a home. Without the use of a designer or architect you can start to plan your own home without someone else influencing your dream. Once you have established your needs then use a draftsperson or architect to draw up your plans for council approval. First of all make a wish list as follows. Planning table Fill in the following table and alter it to suit your needs and then see which rooms you can live without. You will be surprised at the results and I hope it will either change your mind or confirm what you already know.
Pavilion style buildings From the above table you can add or delete the number of rooms that will form your home. Once you have established what suits you best then I would draw up the rooms as individual pavilions and amalgamate those rooms that have a dual function, like bathing and washing into one pavilion, then kitchen, eating and entertainment into another pavilion. Now I would cut out the individual pavilions and place the 'bubble' on a flat surface and orientate them to suit your block of land.
Our living room is facing north with enough glass windows to give good passive solar heating of the slate floor - this gives us good solar heating during the winter nights. It is in this room, which comprises our kitchen, dining and living room, where we spend most of our time awake. Therefore it makes sense to us to have a passive solar pavilion. The south wall will have a rainforest pergola and the north wall will have a deciduous pergola. We can bring in cool air through the south wall in summer and heating through the north wall in winter.
Jack's Flat (above) is a self-contained (no kitchen) cottage joined to the marriage room by an open walkway. Jack's Flat functions as a guest house for our children, grandchildren and friends when they visit us in Ganmain. These above four pavilions are joined in one way or the other and all the rooms are built with the load-bearing method. The fifth building is a stand alone round house (left), which will function as my sacred space (that means there will be a TV dedicated for my entertainment!).
Golden rules I reprint here a short plea from Jan Sturman published in edition number 30, Summer 2000, of The Last Straw, the wonderful US strawbale building magazine (visit www.strawhomes.com for subscription details). All I know about building
Huff 'n' Puff's Golden Rules for designing and building your strawbale home
Costs This is another article but we are mortgage-free and very happy! top | FAQ | Resources | Strawbale home | Back to EG |
Pavilion style building suits most of our climate types around Australia. We do not have snow for many months of the year nor do we have perma-frost! We should design to suit our climatic conditions, which for most of us is the ability to keep cool in summer. This thinking allows us to orientate each pavilion according to the desire for a cool pavilion in summer and a warm one in winter. Establish the number of hours you are in a particular room and when you are in that room (asleep or awake). We have orientated our 'marriage room' facing west and east. We like to wake up to the rising sun and as we always go to bed late - after 10:00 pm most nights - so we have no problem with a westerly aspect.
We have three other pavilions that make up our home. The bathhouse is situated next to the marriage room and is connected by an enclosed covered walkway. The bathhouse faces north and has a high north wall with windows along its full length. The bathhouse functions very well as we tend to bathe in the evening and in winter the sun beats down onto the earthen-rendered wall and this wall heats up during the day and releases its stored heat as soon as the temperature drops down.
Finally our dog, Jessica, now has the sixth pavilion: her kennel (right). I am told that we will be building a seventh small pavilion, which will be used by Susan as her studio for her inspirational furniture making.