A little over two years ago I joined a couple of friends on 12 acres of land outside of Carrboro NC. Our intention was to build a small rural commune. Like many idealist before us we wanted to create an ideal communty for ourselves to live in and work from. Utilizing permaculture design principles, we intended to buld a sustainable community influenced by the ecovillage ideal. The situation proved to be overwhelming. It was terribly hard to find sufficient income, develop the land, keep the whole group on task, and work out personal drama. These constant demands seemed to compound one another. The situation was further exasperated by the lack of reliable power and water, and the primitive nature of available shelter. So I have resigned from Zeckendorf.

I havn’t, however given up the idea of building a Minka (wikipedia article) based, sustainable, energy efficient, natural structure. I plan to continue to develop the idea and log the process here.

 

 

Timeline

December 2006:

I have left Zeckendorf and will continue designing a minka but revise it to suit a new set of needs and desires. It will be a single, small, rural, family house on the coastal plane of North Carolina in Jones County. It will initialy be drawn as a solar house with concrete slab foundation, waddle and daube walls, tin roof, and joined bedroom, bath, greenhouse.

September 2006:

Needing free labor to set the foundation I made very little progress on the Minka. I have called off the project as it exists currently, if not publicly.

July 2006:

The foundation is about half done. So far Bert, Drew, Darby, Ernie, and Ben have all helped. This project seems to be taking a long time. That’s OK there’s no need to hurry. I’m thinking of it as building a very large bed. I have plenty of other things to do and it’s hot, so I’m taking my time and being meticulous. Besides the plan has developed quite a bit. I’ll post drawings as soon as I can. I have incorperated a cold frame across the south side against the bottom of the south porch into the design. I’m working on incorperating a charcoal maker, water storage on the south side that holds sun heat, ventilation, a ceder tub built into the floor, and passive solar water purification. The purifyer will probobly come very late in the game because it will be a solar boiler (possibly involving a heating oil circuit) with a home made activated charcoal filter. The charcoal maker will provide some heat as well as charcoal for burning inside, metal working, and activated charcoal. The south and east walls will be open with half glassed shoji screens and wooden winter stow away sliding doors. The west wall will have a two foot round window into the forest, centered at two feet for viewing while sitting. The north wall will have a door with a short trelaced walkway to a second earthen floor 12 x 12 doma with the roof peak running east to west and hipped over an earthen patio on the east side. This orientation will allow cool air from the shadey doma to come through the south house (yukaue bubun).

Minka at Zeckendorf

Following is the writeup on the first house I drew and began to build.

Design process, practical considerations.

I’ve been looking at natural building techniques, permaculture, and folk craft for the past year or so. I’ve chosen a handful of building techniques which suit my vision for the ideal hous for myself at zeckendorf. This developing vision is based on aesthetic and even spiritual considerations as well as practical concerns such as climate, geography, projected use etc.

Since the primary utility of a house is to protect oneself from the elements it makes sense to begin by looking at climate concerns. Having lived in an all to intimate relationship to the elements and without power or running water for the past while, I feel pretty suited to weigh these concerns. In my experience heat and humidity are the least bearable aspect of the climate in my neck of the woods. For this reason I have chosen to build the house on stilts, above the ground. This will cause the temperature of air beneath the structure to be cooled by the ground. (although I’ve been considering building a movable hothouse on the south side that would heat air from beneath the house and tunnel it back into the floor while also incubating plants, during the winter) Zeckendorf is poorly drained land, even swampy in parts during the winter, so it makes sense to have the house above ground to prevent rot. This configuration also provides a storage area beneath the building which can be very handy. I had obtained a bunch of 2×10 pressure treated pine from my boss who was rebuilding his porch. So It makes sense to plane these and use them for the floor.

Having resolved to build the house above ground with a pine plank floor, the next consideration is walls. I’ve read about several natural building techniques, cob, cord wood, straw bale, slip straw, rammed earth, earth filled tires, sand bags, adobe. I decided waddle and daub made the most sense for me.

The structures of the indigenous people of my area were for the most part waddle wigwams. The Okaneechi were traders and so lived a mobile lifestyle. The Cherokee built some waddle and daub structures and since we do have a couple months of cold weather and I’m not going to be moving my house it makes sense to build a thicker wall than what the Okaneechi are said to have built. I am interested in building an Okaneechi style structure at some point, and there is a stick frame bark covered dwelling being built in our woods now. Some other considerations that led to my deciding on waddle and daub were; the availability of materials, weavable sticks (could be bamboo), clay, and straw, all of which I have in abundance. Another concern is humidity, which could make other techniques require more maintenance, and drainage would necessitate the more substantial foundation and drainage common to cob or straw-bale etc. The ease and speed with which waddle and daub can be built is another a big plus.

Inspiration in Edo period Japan

So I had pretty much decided to build a waddle and daub house on stilts. There are plenty of precedents for this. I’ve looked at some American, African, and South East Asian structures in books. Eventually I came across a book on Japanese vernacular building and saw how many techniques illustrated in it seemed very well suited for my situation. These beautiful wood framed waddle and daub houses or Minka were made with sophisticated techniques taking full advantage of materials that I have abundant access to, and mostly FOR FREE! Specifically the Nouka (farmhouses) have many characteristics I find well suited to my vision for an sustainable way of life. Go to the links page for links to articles on the inspiration that Edo period life-ways can hold for the future.

I also became interested in the potential to adapt a thatch roof, also common in Japanese vernacular building. Thatch being a natural material that could be obtained cheaply if not for free.

Thatching, Phragmitese

So began my quest for a free thatching material. It just so happens that the preferred thatching material in Japan as well as Northern Europe, and Australia, and used throughout the world is Phragmitese. Phragmitese is a ‘true grass’ like bamboo or wheat straw, it is lighter thinner and less rigid than bamboo and grows to about seven feet long. It just so happens that not only is Phragmites free in North Carolina but people desperately want to be rid of it. Phragmites is a nasty invasive non-native grass. If you’ve been to the beach you’ve seen it, it grows across all the marshes in NC, and it’s not supposed to be there, it destroys wildlife habitat. So a thatch roof it is, experimentally, if it doesn’t work I’ll try something else but I figure I have to give it a try. So I hooked up with a wetland rehabilitation project on the coast and they’re happy to have me remove their Phragmitese.

The foundation, Neishi

Looking at Minka I really got into the idea that the main posts for the frame of the house could be set atop boulders set into the ground, thereby replacing cement with a precisely cultivated relationship between the the building and the earth on-which it sits.

I held a work party on March 12th to set ne-ishi stones, or the foundation stones on which the main poles of the house will sit. Bert was early so we marked the area of the house with yellow string, held on rebar, driven into the ground. The house is approx. 12 x 24 plus porches, and we measured the right angles using tape measures and figuring 3,4,5 triangles. This was a little bit of a headache but we muddled through and it wasn’t too bad. Having our reference set, we marked positions for the stones with spray paint.

We installed the main stone of the house a 100 lb. rounded piece of granite from along the roadside about a mile north of the river. The Neishi I’m imitating are rounded on top so that the stilts can be curved to conform to their surface and thereby provide stability. Neishi sit inside a hole in the bottom of which is made a palette of smaller somewhat flat rounded river rocks tamped long-ways into the ground so that they are crammed snugly beside one another thus distributing pressure horizontally as well as vertically. I obtained my river rocks as they were removed from plantings and beds at work. A layer of sand is laid on top of these and the Neishi is pounded into the sand.

River rocks place into excavated area.

Tamper for river rocks.

Pouring sand over river rocks.

The Neishi is pounded into the sand using a tamper based on traditional Japanese/Chinese tamper made from large log and rope.

This type of tamper was used in building the Great Wall of China.