New Project New Blog

December 3, 2018
Natural Building
I’ve started a new project. I’m planning to build a small cabin on a wooded lot. Here are some details:

  • Square footage will 384 square feet plus a 192 square foot loft.
  • The load bearing structure will be a hybrid timber frame construction consisting of rough sawn large dimension timbers (e.g. 8x8s, 8x12s) using a combination of mortise and tenon joinery and metal fasteners (e.g. screws).
  • The walls will be 12″ thick infilled with light clay straw. Light clay straw is straw coated with clay slip(watery clay) for binding. It has significantly more straw than the cob mixture we used for the T-Brick shed. The result is better insulative qualities. The R value of light clay straw is 1.5-2 per inch depending on how tightly it is packed.  
  • The timber framing components combined with a lattice work of small dimension lumber (e.g. 2x4s) will provide structure for the light clay straw infill.
  • The cabin will be mostly off grid incorporating the following elements:
    • Solar PV modules located on the south facing monoslope roof.
    • A battery bank to store excess energy
    • Rain water collection with sand filtration.
    • Composting toilet
    • A biodigester to provide supplemental gas for cooking and waste water pretreatment.
    • A constructed wetland for waste water treatment 
    • A gray water system for irrigation
    • A solar hot water heater
  • Some other neat ideas I would like to implement:
    • A bicycle power washing machine
    • A top opening refrigerator/freezer
    • A solar oven/dehydrator
    • Earth tubes
    • A portable rocket mass heater (pocket rocket)
    • Bottle Walls!
I started a new blog as a building journal to document the process. If you want to follow along, here’s the link. From the Jean and Aaron blog you can  get there by clicking on the menu button (it looks like a stack of three bars) in the upper left section of the screen.
Thanks for reading!