hobbit houses

[chelidon]

Dreaming about the future is something I have much less time for lately, but is conversely all that much more important. After the main house is "done" (for now), and the treehouse and yurts are built, I really want to build a hobbit house into one of the south-facing hills -- perhaps the one just downhill from the treehouse site. This design, a cob/strawbale/turf-roof hybrid, is really nifty.

Comments

[morrigandaughtr.livejournal.com]

That looks way cool.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, cozy little hobbit-hole. Looks like it wouldn't take much to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer, either.

[erskine.livejournal.com]

Interesting, but they lost me at "toilet(bucket)."

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

heh. I suspect these folks are...hands-on into humanure, as it were. I put our first composting toilet in this past year, up in the barn, but this coming year will be the first time we'll get a chance to really put some use into it. If done right, properly maintained and ventilated, etc, it's possible to make it pretty much odorless and not a very messy prospect....we'll see ;>

[swansister.livejournal.com]

Friends of mine have had a composting toilet for over 25 years. They actually use its by product in their commercial nursery and greenhouse. A few years ago a newspaper reporter got a hold of this as a story and it caused a bit of unecessary drama for them with the local community for about a month! Ergh....

[ravenedgewalker.livejournal.com]

cool! I've been oogling books on stawbale houses in the new tade catalogues - definatley on my list of things to build one day.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

mmm, yeah. There are a couple of places around here that offer week-long hands-on building and design courses in bale, cob, post and beam, etc (including these folks (http://www.yestermorrow.org/), *drool*), and I'm hoping to have a chance down the road to go learn from some people who have done it before. No substitute for hands-on experience! :> I'm thinking now that I may want to try to build several small shelters with different designs (cob, bale, yurt, timber cabin, in-ground, etc) to see what holds up best through a couple of seasons here. Down the line, I want to build a big ol' off-grid hall/class and dorm-space, but it's always better to build prototypes first before going whole hog into something, make small mistakes instead of large ones... ;>

Yay for Yurts

[swansister.livejournal.com]

One of my coven mates just ordered a yurt. She and her family are going to live in it while they build a straw bale house on their land. I must share this hobbit house design with them. They have over 85 acres of land!

After the straw bale house is finished, she plans to let the coven use the yurt as a homestead!

I love hearing about what ya'll are up to!!!1

Swan

PS: My partner and I are thinking of buying some land near our especially lovely local Greenbrier River. I have been considering the idea of a yurt rather than building a permanent structure which could be flooded.

Re: Yay for Yurts

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Very nifty that you're looking into land, I hope you find the perfect place together! I'd love to hear about it, and about your friend's progress with their place.

I love yurts (BTW, just as trivia, in Mongolian it is actually "ger," "yurt" is the Russian word for it) as temporary and permanent structures, one of the best low-impact designs humans have ever come up with. If you need or want to move it, it's a simple thing to fold it back up and move it somewhere else. I know the Park Service uses them for shelters in some places, and when the impact gets too great, they pack 'em and move 'em elsewhere.

We've been building them for almost 20 years now, improving the designs, etc -- come up for a visit some time and I'll give you a quick tutorial in yurt-building. You can build a good basic 3-season yurt, 18' diameter or so, for under $500, if you can sew the top yourself (have access to a heavy-duty sewing machine that can sew canvas). For 4-season living you need a permanent wood stove and more insulation, gets more expensive, but still very cheap for such a strong liveable structure. I've even seen a yurt with a sod roof, and you could always combine a yurt frame with cob or haybale construction, though once you do that you lose the portability, of course. And of course there are companies out there that build and sell them commercially, too, sounds like that's what your coven mate is doing. Yurts make great ritual space, I'm sure you'll love it!

Last year and this year have been about getting the main house up to where we want it -- wood-fired boiler, new room and storage cellar added onto the front, new standing-seam roof (lasts practically forever), replacing the carpet with hardwood floors, taking out a couple of walls to open up the space, redoing the bathrooms and kitchen, setting up wood storage, etc etc. I've also started on fitting out the horse barn as dorm/classroom space, put in the composting toilet, etc.

That's all getting in sight of being finished, then I'm going to concentrate on gardens and outbuildings -- treehouses, yurts and cabins, along with the microhydro project, and of course, maintaining what we've got. It's enough to keep me busy for a while, I figure ;>

Re: Yay for Yurts

[swansister.livejournal.com]

Wow, you are living my dream up there in NH! I'm happy for you.

Our coven is going to have a yurt raising for Liz in early May after we return from the feri camp at Diana's Grove! Another coven member lives in a log cabin and we are also going to have a work party at her house to make some general repairs to the house and road. She lives on top of a mountain and her road gets washed out every year.... We have got to help one another...

Swan

Re: Yay for Yurts

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Thanks! We're really happy here, I feel like we're very much in the right place at the right time, and putting down deep, deep roots.

Happy yurt-raising! Where did Liz buy her yurt from? I might have seen you in May, but given the recent happenings, I'll most likely be here. Perhaps our paths will cross again sometime soon!

Yep, we do have to help one another. In the days/months/years to come, that's the only way we're going to make it.

Re: Yay for Yurts

[swansister.livejournal.com]

She is getting it from the Colorado Yurt Co.

Swansister