WAUTILLarium

{W} - WATER & WASTE INSPIRED

{A} - ARCH

{U} - UNLIMITED UNIVERSE 

{T} - TERRA & THERMAL 

{I} - INERCIA & INTEGRATION

{L} - LIVING & LIGHT

ARIUM - DENOTING A PLACE 

NautilUS - SACRED GEOMETRY DRIVEN

Welcome to Wautillarium training. AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE,  A ZOOM CALL RECORDING THAT DISCUSSES THE TEXT ON THIS PAGE. 

In this first part of my course my intent is to prompt you with a few questions that might inspire with some things that you have not considered till now. The quality of your life depends on the quality of questions that you ask. Good questions arise from bumping your head too many times. I am not able to stop you from experiencing what you have go to live through, however I do hope to mitigate some of the unnecessary losses and mistakes that I went through on my path.

Learning to build a home is an important task and just as important is to enjoy it which we are in a goos space inside. I will be referring to the word psychology through out my course. What I mean by that is a mix of: traumas as well as broken programs/social beliefs that we have accumulated through out our lives. Without a good state of inner being we’ll mess our lives up. I speak this from experience. 

In my course I hope to inspire you to build an awesome debt free home that you can enjoy, for many years to come. I do daily specific process workout allowed me to finally live without that burning sensation in my solar plexus/throat area. Living in a balanced state of being is also new to me and from this good space I am presenting this training to you.

The focus of this course is on building a passive permaculture home with a lush year around jungle garden in the large green house area. A home that keeps us comfortable and fed through out the year by utilising our waste, whilst harnessing the natural phenomena such as sun, wind and rain. We will roll through every bit of the construction covering theory and practice.

Each week I will release at least 1 edited video lesson, sticking more or less to below curriculum.

It is just as much of a journey for me as it is for you. This is a living training material and it will evolve over time. New research will be added and you will be notified of new lessons as they come out. I also want to you to be involved in brainstorming and researching different parts of Wautillarium as Together we Ever Achieve More ( T E A M ). In our telegram group we will split into teams and take on certain tasks such as mycelium powered  phosphorescent lighting,, mushroom production, aquaculture, climbing spaces etc. (all this work is voluntary) and will be used for educational basis.

This course focuses on DIYers and permaculturist with various levels of natural building experience.

Before we even start building there are a few things to consider: I have split these into the following main headings

WHAT what are we building and who for? What to focus on?

WHERE where should we build, land specifics, climate specifics

HOW methodology, materials, soil types, “nitty gritty”

HEART SPACE what space am I in? Psychology 

WHAT

Who are we building for: only myself / my family / rental / sale

Who we are building for question will drastically charge our thinking and design process. For example if I am building only for myself I could bring in a low cost temporary mobile home where I can live in whilst I build. I might be fine with one large studio space and a composting toilet  and shower outside.

I did try and live in a mobile home with my family but it got really cold, even in South Africa. This uncomfortable temperature resulted in loads of aggravation from my ex. I had to quickly install a fireplace in the tented part outside. 

If I am building for myself and my partner then this situation is also different as it is dependant not the comfort levels that we are both used to. A woman, might not be able to rough it as much as a man can and vice versa. Possibly then it could be better for one of the partners to get on the land first and sort out some basics.

In my case, back in 2011 I got on the land first and installed us a solar shower, water tank on a tower that I plumbed to a solar pump, a mobile home with a sand patch outside of it (so not to step in the mud), as well as the composting toilet with wood shavings (Read Humanure Handbook)

If you have lived together for a while with you partner, you both know and understand what you are getting yourselves into, then a mobile home could work if you can build your first room FAST.

If you have a whole family with you and you lived your whole life in the city then getting into a tent on the land could be a disaster, due to shock of loosing comforts!

If we are building a rental Airbnb then this will also charge our design. For example, it might neither need large cupboard space nor a large space for firewood storage.

If you are building a rental space, then it has got to look nice and finished.

My focus right now is to build a home for myself and my wife, which I will use to develop my Wautillarium Phase 2.0 video training.

Thus my process of construction will be precise and pedantic.

What is the purpose of the home you are building?

• Fear of a collapsing reality
• Bomb shelter hideout for a prepper
• Bringing the family together
• No money for conventional home
• Additional rental income 
• Additional accommodation for volunteers 
• Showoff to others to raise self worth
• Show piece for property or community development 
• Community centre

In my case I want to build a prototype of a first passive, comfortable and aesthetically beautiful living space. A good example of a home for future generations built in a dawn of erratic weather patterns and economic instability. 

My design aesthetics are inspired by years of my curvilinear design experience. In my stre5ch decor business as well as Gaudi inspired design. In the Wautillarium I will also be testing alternative eco technologies in practice. Once the new eco tech is tested I will include the step-by-step instructions in this course and my future Augmented reality supported book.

I recommend that you write down honestly why you need a home. What is the motive and intent behind it? 

• Are you driven by fear and wanting to build a safe space from any possible marauders? 
• Are you wanting to dodge the building code by building a stealth shelter  that is not seen by satellites? 
• Are you driven by creativity bursting out of your “DIY” mindset and itchy fingers? 

What ever the reason might be it is good to voice in out on paper.

The design of the Wautillarium healthy home is inspired by many practices and one of the key components is Bio-Geometry.

Here is an article from my teacher in Bio-Geometry, Imbrahim Karim: “Our skin is the first boundary. It is a protective and also complex exchange layer with the surrounding energy. The peripheral energy flow collects external information and brings it into the central energy of the body functions that is then brought into a perfect harmony with the environment. After the clothes, which have become part of the first layer the house is the second interaction layer with the environment. We need to design it to bring energy balancing qualities to our immune system, by transforming harmful earth radiation to a beneficial one… 

We use walls and ceilings to design the quality of space. Space which used to mean emptiness now means energy. It is the effect of this energy on our vitality, emotional and mental levels that we perceive as quality… (80 of cancer on 10% of the area) … The discovery of geometrical language that produced this ultimate balancing is the basic criteria of bio geometry.  Bio Geometry shapes are 2D and 3D shapes specifically designed to interact with the earth’s energy field to produce blanking effects on multiple levels on biological systems. 

Different levels of energy interact through resonance to produce harmony. Like the strings of a piano, if we strike one, then every eighth string will vibrate producing a sound, but our piano here extends in both directions to stand the whole universe from the smallest to the largest. During resonance, all the strings of the similar quality interact. The change on each string is exchange of information, sensed as quality.“

The goal is to create a balancing energy quality components of BG3 which is the higher Harmonic of gold, Higher harming of ultra violet and negative green (horizontal carrier wave). I do explain how to design using Bio-Geometry in more details in my Bio Architecture drawing course, here are the principles;

• Rotation - Rotation combined with shifting of shapes, is a way of creating a centre with BG3 properties.
• The interface - used in the upper extremity of walls, decorative patterns and labyrinths as well as in architectural composition.
• Shifting - shifting of shapes produces a transcendental axis, creating BG3 energy
• Transparency - similar to shifting, but it occurs int the background configuration of the design.
• Perspective - this parallels the bio-geometry concept of entering - creating a centre (real or virtual) in relation to object or space

Our homes should include at least some if not all of the design principles of bio-geometry whilst avoiding being built on the harmful underground water crossings (at least the spaces that we spend most time such as our beds and office chairs.

The Wautillarium design that I will teach you to build in this course is designed using Bio-Geometry and Sacred Geometrical Phi ratios.

One of the Bio-Architects, Michael Rice, noticed that by designing in sacred geometrical proportions, one ends up with less wastage of materials. Lengths just work out well

Designing in alignment with nature can start as easily as having width to length of the room in 1:1.618 proportions and can get as complex as building a cathedral.

It is a subject one should research. My take on it: don’t overload yourself on your first build, keep it practical, keep to the sacred geometrical proportions, keep the materials toxic free, and make sure you don’t build on a bad geopathic spot. (Will be shown in one of the lessons) 

What about a workshop/garage or a studio? What do I build first?

In Russia we build a sauna first as it is a space where one can wash themselves (yes we wash in the space outside of the sauna. 

I recommend a multifunctional space that you could grow from. This first vault that we will be building is designed as that. It has loads of hanging points so one could get stuff hung UP.  

The size of the first space should be at least 6 metres (18 foot) long because wood and other materials come in that size. Container is awesome as it is lockable and durable and as I said previously you can sell it after the build. Aircrete Harry placed a mobile home and two containers with a roof between them. 

Building a space that you could “grow” your home from is crucial.]

Is there a perfect piece of land? Should I buy a hectare, an acre or less

I’ve searched and found that perfect piece of land a few times in my life

To answer your question, the best is to go back to what you really love to do, how do you want to occupy your time?

If you are driven by romantic idea of a 5 hectare food forest garden, that you can enjoy with your family then you gotta really love planting and farming. 

I used to have a similar vision and then I got a 7 hectare land. I could barely develop 1/14th of it  with 2 full time labourers. the rest was just overgrowing with weeds, fire hazardous grass and Wattle (alien tree species that  is almost impossible to get out, once they seed)

• If you want to farm produce it is one vision - Richard Perkins or Geoff Lawton is a good example of that 
• If you want to open a permaculture school (which there are 100’s of in America alone) then it is a different situation
• Do you want to build rental homes and create a stunning location for them
• Do you want to have a homestead and just grow for you and your family whist being busy with something else you love, like in my case bio architecture?
• Do you want land that you do not see your neighbours?
• Do you want to open a farm to fork restaurant?
• Have you tried growing food?

What do you really love doing? If you had now an unlimited amount of money, what would you do with your time?

If I had an unlimited amount of money I would invest it all into a Wautillarium training centres surrounded by dome greenhouses (like in eden project) that are heated by clay baking kiln that produces bricks for our wautillarium vaulted roofs that are placed on 3D printed walls….that I could get property development communities to welcome people form all over the world into our beautiful homeland. 

Ok good to dream but lets come back to the question about size of land.

I can only speak about my own example. I love bio architecture, I want to be around people (community or city), I want to live next to the forest, I am 41 and after trying to build a community for the last 12 years I gave up. Waiting for one day when maybe 5 families finally join me is not what I want to do any longer. I have a bit of green fingers but don’t want to farm or grow a large food forest garden.  Zoya’s family in St Petersburg and that’s where she wants to be.

Well that forest garden with an awesome landscaping will be done one day as a public space around wautillarium training centre under a large scale dome (see eden project in England)

I love teaching and building. I don’t have my own eco home as the one I build in South Africa, I gave to the bank ( as it was on the bank’s land).

Taking all of the above into consideration together with Zoya we have chosen 1/3rd of an acre next to the forest (from the northern side) so we could build a wautillarium together. The land is 1.5 hours away from St Petersburg and it is freaking incredible.

If we want pristine nature, mountains and sea we can always travel to them, ONCE OUR HOME IS BUILT

Living in beautiful nature in the middle of nowhere is NOT what I want.

I don’t need a lot of land as I am not prepared to farm it. If you do not work the land it will overgrow.

Having the forest on one side solves a lot of important points for us. We get to look at pristine nature without owning it, it protects from cold northern winds whilst south is open for that sunlight that’s needed for our Solar passive home. 7 minute walk is a bus station and train station that we could catch a transport back to St Petersburg EVERY 15-25 minutes. This is an important one!!! That means even without a car or a taxi we have access to everything we want!!!

Sure we only have 1200 sq metres (1/8th of a hectare), however we are only 60 miles away from 2nd largest city in Russia and one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. We have all the awesome and interesting activities and people that a city can provide. We have our own debt free tiny plot next to a forest Thats all we can afford at the moment, and it was important for us not to buy land in credit as both of us burned our fingers with getting into debt for land. 

You don’t want to buy land on credit!!! Because you want to know that you have that stability and should shit ever hit the fan and you loose your income,  you can always rely on yourself. For that you need to have hands which will provide you food and shelter. Thats why I keep on speaking about choosing good land with  right soil for building and/or firewood and/or water and/or any other resources. For me it was people and my ability to start Wautillarium training centres/cafes as franchise. Kicking off a franchise from 2nd busies city in your country or kicking it off from middle of nowhere is two different stories. 

You story is also different and you gotta take time to take away all the romantic permaculture bullshit and get real to what you love and what you want to do with your time.  

Another 1200 sq m are being sold right next to us and hopefully we can save up for it and double our plot size to the same 2500 sq m - same as the one I had in Johannesburg.

Together with my wife we tried 5 locations just in the last 3 years. 

• We lived in an abandoned village where we rented a 5 bedroom loggen home
• We bought a piece of land in the same abandoned village as we rented with an old home. I went mad from loneliness 
• Now we are in a rental home an hour from our new land.

In my life I owned various sizes of lands and styled in different kinds of houses/flats and different density levels

• In 2011 I’ve bought the “perfect land” of 7 Hectares next to pristine forest,  that we paid off
• In 2007 we bought a home on  just over half an acre 2500 sq m loaned to the bank - biggest mistake I’ve ever done (to raise my self worth)
• In 2019 we lived in a gardening village (DACHA) where people only come for summer. We were surrounded by people and crazy noise all around us. Because people do’t live there all year they try and cram all their activities from drinking to chainsawing all in a short season.
• We lived in a village with 2 neighbours and one shot at us. We needed a car to get to the train station to get to the city
• In 2021 we bough 3000 sq m with a nicely renovated house (for 15000 USD) on the edge of a village with 2 neighbours only. One of them shot in my direction (we moved shortly after)
• In 2021 we bought a land of 2 Hectares with a house for 6000 USD. We still own that land. It is parked right now as it there are no like minded people in the area
• In 2021 we also bought another 1.1 Hectares with the really old house for 3000 USD. We are busy getting our gov to install electricity in this abandoned village to our plot (for 9 USD !!! To run 1500 feet / 300 metres worth of cable with concrete poles) Thats where we planted potatoes and I did the passive greenhouse which will be shown later. The reason that we bought this land is because we were renting a home and when you rent something you might fall involve with that’s near you especially if you can buy something for cheap and there are no neighbours at all.
• We stayed in a flat next our land (the one that’s in the abandon village, because the landlord kicked us out of his 5 bedroom home) and that’s also where I went crazy from all the city noises and ZERO like minded people that I could not have a conversation with (the main reason is because I did not do DAILY process work)
• Out of this flat I ran to Siberia and build a vault on someone's land, because my panic attacks were so severe

• Now at the end of 2022 we just bought our plot next to St Pietersburg. We are on the edge of a suburban type of environment and infant of us are 100’s of other plots. This is where we will be building the proper Wautillarium as taught in this course.

I am trust and know that only with DAILY inner process work I will be able to manifest our dreams and not fu*k up my life. In the last 2 decades, since the age of 20 I’ve made a lot of money and build a lot of homes yet now I have nothing to show for it. We are starting from scratch.

What can I tell you after all this experience. Size of the land does not matter. If you feel terrible you will not be able to live in a mansion in the middle of pristine forest. The 5 bedroom stunning log home, that we rented in the same abandoned village where we bought 1.1 Ha, is standing empty. The owner divorced and can not live there alone. 

It feels a little easier to survive anxiety and panic attacks if you are in the city, you still degrade but degradation is hidden (fancy clothes, fancier car, explode at someone in public transport or car rage etc):

• Wake up > 
• traffic >
• job > 
• traffic > 
• beer, wine / marijuana joint / theatre / friends /  bars / entertainment > 
• sleep > 
• REPEAT

If you are out in nature, you start to hear your inner voice (and if you have not worked through you traumas and self worth issues) that inner voice screams out so loud that unless you are doing specific inner work (psychology) you will go insane. Weed or alcohol or neuroleptics help for a while but then you crash much harder and still go mad or severely depressed. I am being harsh, but we can not wussy pussy “beat around the bush” any-longer.

Without inner work, where you truly work through you shit, you will not be able to enjoy your land or home no matter how small or big and no matter where on earth it is. If you don’t believe me, as yourself this question: How many people out there that are living:

• in an awesome equal relationship where no-one is buying or suppressing another
• are not on drugs including marijuana or alcohol
• are not on neuroleptics
• Working on a job they truly love
  

I am not bringing this up from a point of judgement as I ain’t perfect myself. Through daily work I break away small bits of my ego to become a better person.

I hear of a lot of people that want to buy large lands to start some centres or communities. I was one of them. The question to ask yourself is: “what is your intent? Why do you want a large land? Why do you want all those people?”

Possibly the hidden intend, that I did not want to speak out aloud, was that I was feeling lonely and terrible inside. I thought that by getting other “like minded people” around me, I was going to feel better. 

Isn’t it fun being around like minded friends??? Well with 95%  community failure rate and 90% divorce rate we gotta look truth in the eyes! Something here is not right!!!

Unless someone has done at least 1000 hours of SPECIFIC INNER WORK that rewires the neutrons by working through trauma and socially imprinted programs (not meditation) they will crash their relationship, their life in a community. 

I’ve even crashed my relationship and became bankrupt multiple times due to my overpowering ego.

There is nothing wrong with Meditation , what I am speaking about is analytical work combined with specific process work to look pain straight in the eye! And work through it through specific polarity processes. This will stop the terrible self perpetuating prophecies.

To get back to the land story. I would start small and without credit in a place that you know once you build something you could always sell!

Use the funds to move closer towards your dream. Having an experience of building something and working with your hands, be in small, will assist you to refine you path and your vision. Trying to envision your Vision without actually doing something with your hands is like visualising taking a shit when you really need to just go and do it. Sorry for analogy like that.

Inner work is #1 priority. Zoya and I are taking a group of 5 people to work with everyone. Write me in person t.me/aloshalynov 

HOW

How much money should I budget for it?

Recently I completed a large room (30 sq m or 333 sq feet) that I could already move into (to finish the floor , electrical and water) for 1500 USD in just 6 weeks. This is one of the methods I will teach you in this Wautillarium Video Course.

Building anything costs money and if you have little money to spend on your future home then you have got to be resourceful. Having a large van to get the resources to your building site will reduce your delivery costs. Building with earth from under your feel is the cheapest way to build (such as cob and SuperAdobe) but building with earth takes long especially if you are alone without equipment. (3-7 years) 

If you have larger funds to invest into your built then you can accelerate the construction, but you could also blow a lot of money unnecessary down the drain. 

If you have a plan of what you are going to build and you know how use the materials and you are resourceful with alternative/second hand materials then you do not need much money to get a home build.

In my latest construction in Siberia I was able to find new triple pane windows for the price of second hand ones for 150 USD. This covered my entire 15 foot wide wall. We installed them without frames with one tiny window that could open + cross draft was created using an opening on the opposite wall. 

By learning the methodology of natural / alternative building whilst having a few right tools and having a resourceful mindset you could spend as little as 200 USD to glaze your wall or you could get it installed by a professional for 20000 USD.

Live on the land whilst we build VS traveling back and forth

Travelling back and forth to the land can be very time consuming. If we are able to get a temporary dwelling on the land, it might save us A LOT OF TIME + MONEY. If we are able to get a rental next to our land, it could also work. Weigh up the options, paying others for rent VS getting a fast prebuilt space that you could use as a workshop or future rental? 

Also keep in mind that leaving tools and building materials on the land whilst you are working  elsewhere is not advisable. My friend welded his garage closed with all his tools in,  leaving no entrances or windows! His tools stayed safe, as any lock can be cut or any door/window can be broken. 

My wife Zoya had all her expensive tools stolen from her shed in winter. Others who buried their tools underground had them safe when they returned in summer.

If you bought land and not ready to build yet then you could slowly get the water and electrical sorted (pumps, storage tanks, plumbing, generator, solar etc) so when you move in, then those vital components are ready. On the other hand price of solar keeps going down so if you buy now and only use in 5 years time, then you could have gotten the same panels much cheaper.

If you do end up prepping some tools and your homesteading equipment, store them in a safe space, instead of leaving them in the middle of nowhere. Placing real/fake cameras with flashing red lights sometime work well in deterring unwanted guests.

This is what we have decided to do. Winter time is an amazing opportunity to get things like courses and books written. Therefore we are getting an external company to install a vaulted sauna for us (even if it is unfinished we can still finish it up inside)  Sure it would have been cheaper to do it ourselves but we weighed  up the the odds and I am really NOT in a mood for building in winter.  

MY MAIN RULE IN LIFE IS: Do what you love and love what you do. As I am sharing this manual with you I am excited and excitement attracts other people who want to share this lovely energy.

We are saving for the following necessities that will assist Zoya and myself to stop rental as from April 2023 and move onto our land to start building the Wautillarium.

• A well with a pump for the water - installed by an external co (2000 USD)
• A pre-built sauna of 200 sq ft - installed by an external co. It will be used as a temporary dwelling until we build the first central vault (5000 USD)
• A compost toilet operated on wooden shavings (negligible price as I’ll built it)
• A 36 foot long container to be used as a shed to store building materials, tools and all our stuff that will not fit into the sauna. I will use it as a workshop to work in. Container could be sold in future. We will position it close to the road in line with the sauna. Both, the sauna and container will double up as a wall to give us privacy from one side. We will place the container in a way that should it stay indefinitely into the future, it can be dressed up with greenhouse, plants or shade awning. One never knows how long will something temporary live on. It could be forever so plan for both options, so it can be accessed by a crane to be removed or stay indefinitely into the future.  

Considering that we already have electrical installed on our small plot, I’ll get an electrician to wire up our sauna and container from the street pole. Once we have a space with electricity and water as well as a container we could work and use for storage, it gives us immediate green light to live and build on our land! 

Travelling back and forth whilst renting will piss a lot of money down the drain.  

Do use your own discretion for your own situation. If you are a large family all used to comforts of the city,  moving to a sauna or a mobile home might wreck havoc, therefore it might work better for you to rent a cosy home next door. 

We choose to rather invest into our own demo dwelling with a container and relocate as fast as possible to our own land. We are both prepared to rough it. We do not have any restrictions or building codes thus we do not have to wait for any paper work to start living on our land. Every situation is different!

How complex of a method should you choose to build?

I would build something simple, small and COMPLETE IT VS choosing a complex hi tech method or large home that you might run out of cash and leave to rot indefinitely into the future.

It also depends on what building experience you have.

If you have never built anything before I highly recommend to construct a temporary home that could eventually be used as a shed / studio after you build your proper home.

Starting with a family home on a first time build might bring in certain unforeseen factors. Because your climatic conditions, soil type and ground water level are different to mine, you situation will be specific. I will explain how climate, soil type and underground & above ground water will influence your home and foundation design. However you do need to do your own research by studying what works in the area that you have chosen to build.

If you do really want to build your own home first time around, then go for it. I will do everything I can to prepare you for this. Believe in yourself! Ask questions in our telegram group and do your own research. You can do it, if you don’t rush. 

For the first time builder it is impossible to think of where to place the electrical , plumbing , air pies so therefore I would just place additional “sleeves” for plumbing,  air and electrical in a few extra places.  Even if you don’t end up using some of them in the end. It is better to have them, instead of bashing holes in walls later. I will explain all of this in practical part. nI also recommend doing our design course as you can build it in details on paper and in 3D program.

Understanding your area and soil type is crucial. For example what I build in Siberia on a mountain top is a submerged home with no foundations. It will last for at least 10+ years (Kolyq is living in his for 11 years with no sign of decay) . However the same home would rot in 1 year if I build it where I live now. This is because at 3 feet deep it is all water…

I teach 2 types of domes in my Dome Course and 2 types of vaults in this Wautillarium Course. To dome or not to dome is a good question. My recommendation is to go and stay in a dome for a night or two. 

A dome, by design is not what a Wautillarium EarthShip is. Because we want to welcome the sun into our rooms, vaults or rectangular rooms are better suited for that.

An aircrete dome also has a large window and can welcome in the sun, however the walls can not store the warmth in the same way as an EarthShip does because aircrete material by design is light weight and thus has a quality of INSULATION and not MASS.

For the sake of this course I am focusing on a very specific design. My Wautillarium design is inspired by an EarthShip Bio-Tecture as well as other Solar passive homes with large sun facing green houses.

If you have rectangular furniture that you love, obviously a vault will be better suited as it is just a rectangular room with a curved roof. 

To calculate a more or less costing for your first room, understand the predominant building material. I will provide an excel file for 5m aircrete with 3 m sandbag dome (as per my South African build) roughly 10000 USD with finishing touches as well as the vault (as per my Siberian build) - it roughly cost me 2000 USD without finishing touches

• 5 m diameter dome gaia dome uses 500-600 bricks (30x30x10 cm) 
• 30 sq m vault that I build in Siberia uses 3 cubic metres of  2.5x15 cm /1x6 inch board (6 m long) with 6 of 5metre logs (30 cm diameter) as well as a couple of vertical uprights. This is very general. Material costs vary country by country!

Finishing touches can be added afterwards. Get your warm and dry shell that you can move into and expand from there.

If I was the first time builder on a tight budget, with little strength, and all alone,  I would safely go with these two methods:

1. Aircrete dome with bought bricks (as per DomeGaia method which I teach in our dome home course www.bioveda.co/livingbiodome )  and foundation designed by Aircrete Harry www.aircreteharry.com  or 2 rows of sandbags Aircrete blocks are light weight and are placed one by one.
2. The vault is what I will teach you in this course made of wood (although a metal vault might also work well, all depends on you and what you feel comfortable with)      Wooden struts are light wight and are layered one by one. There is no heavy lifting (for except of placement of the arches in a wooden vault. 

There are other methods that you might enjoy, please study them. If you are not living in a very cold country then there are many more options that are available for you. Building in Bali would be vastly different to building in Canada.

So if you are an absolute newbie to construction, in a country with strict budding codes,  then I would safely start by making a simple vault that stays under the building code radar (under 200 sq ft) with a fake floor (dream catcher net) that you could use as sleeping quarters. This will give you a few advantages such as:

1. You have a 200 sq ft space with a 200 sq ft loft (thats not registered as that due to temp netting) = 400 sq ft home is a good starting point.
2. You get yourself under cover, dry, warm and rent free fast. Roof over your head on your land is #1 priority, everything else will follow

1. You get confidence in building 
2. You can always leave a few sleeves in the walls for future plumbing, air circulation, grey water removal etc. All of the tech does not have to be build straight away. Most of the people, in our country, who live in the rural villages don’t have plumping that is connected to their homes, Grey water is thrown out in buckets and fresh water is brought it from a well in buckets. You will survive.
3. Once you have a space to live, you are saving money on travelling costs as well as the rental. This allows you to build faster.
4. As your space is small you can stay under the building code radar and thus you might not need to wait for others to permit you to live on your land
5. Due to its rectangular shape, the vaults has a few advantage to a dome. It is better for storage of materials, placement of rectangular furniture, large window the size of an entire wall as the arch is self supporting.

When to build?

Knowing when your rainy seasons is important for your construction. Muddy roads are bad for deliveries. If you re getting delivered in rainy season on clayey soils you might need to consider spreading a thin layer of gravel prior. 

Large trucks do get stuck in wet clayey soils. 

Most of the builds in the past we worked throughout the rain and even snow.

If you know your stuff and you are desperate to move onto you land, you could build a wooden vault in 6 weeks, starting as late as middle of September and moving in with the snowfall.

Beautiful food and home all at once VS focus > speed & practicality 

We all love beautiful spaces that feel good, however if you are on your last budget paying rental fees and wanting to move in your own home on your own land, then focusing the beautifying decor and these secondary details is not a priority. Stay focused, get your shell that is dry and warm. Getting your first room on the land fast should be your #1 priority, unless you are focused on your day job and want to build slow, precise and very beautifully.

You have 3 choices and all of them have pro’s and cons

1. Renting nearby - PROs: comfort || CONs: costs, travel time, disconnection from your land, prolonged build,
2. Roughing on your land - PROs: Faster construction, lower expenses  || CON’s harder to work for $ , low or no comfort unless you are have a stunning RV
3. Family in a city & 1 partner building up the land - PRO’s family is not disrupted CON’s family might never end up on the land as they are not part of the journey.

Do not diversify your time too much. When I was on my land in 2011 I was taking too long to build my sand bag home, whist also making a large sacred geometrical vegetable mandala garden. I was prototyping and experimenting with new to me methods of building and gardening.

At the end, my son with my ex got robbed, in this mobile trailer, and I ran out of money as my business in the city bankrupted without me keeping my finger not he pulse. My garden did not produce enough food and all of my natural plaster fell down from my sandbag dome. This resulted in us abandoning our land and returning to the city.

We paid cash for those 7 hectares next to pristine forest. It could have all worked out but I messed up, by not being in a good headspace (psychology) and thus doing wrong things at the wrong time.

If I where to do it again I would rather build one room fast that is safe and lockable (using a rapid method of construction such as the vault I will teach in this training

As far as the garden goes, in one day I would get a small field ploughed by a neighbours’ tractor and quickly plant the potatoes and spread nitrogen fixing and soil improving seeds. 

The rest of the time I would focus on construction of that first space whilst knowing that I have potatoes that will prevent any possibilities of hunger. {I will show you the potato story later on in this training} Once I have a space that is safe and warm, I would start other slower methods of constructions such as the sand bag dome, experimenting and planting my fully fledged permaculture garden and food forest. (good to get the trees planted straight away as well, but these need to be planned for to avoid future rip outs - check out agroforestry course by Michael Crawford)

What strength / endurance level do you have?

Pounding tires at the age of 40, after I had 20% of my lungs eaten by COVID and tuberculosis, is hard work. Thus building an entire home from tires, is out of the question. 

There are not many workers that will do this task either. Employing 3rd world labourers that will pound tires for you is a completely different game. I will explain labour force later on as I have tremendous experience with various kinds of labour. Aircrete brick dome or a wooden vault is a good example of a home you can build alone in a fast manner.

I don’t think age matters too much, as recently I’ve seen a wife (of 59 y.o.) and a husband  (70 y.o.) work harder that anyone I’ve seen. It all depends if you love what you are doing and what head space you are in. Thus said they weren’t pounding tires but working with much lighter and easier materials.

The methods I have chosen come from a lot of practical experience 

I.e. I would not build all the walls from tires as it is just too hard, I would not build 6 foot / 2 metre hight walls from SuperAdobe, as we build in Brazil,  as it is just too hard and too long. 

My choice is to build fractally, meaning not to do a foundation for the entire home at once. Fractal construction means building 1-2 rooms and then adding a green house. As funds because available and/or as family grows then one ads another room with a green house in front. 

The last thing we want is to loose the momentum and leave an unfinished monstrosity on our and run to the city to make money.

Fractal construction is phase #1 of Wautillarium.  In the design that I will be building in 2023 and what I will be using to teach this course from I will refer to: 

• 1x central wooden vault  of 30 sq m / 333 sq ft - Siberian style
• 1x side room, CalEarth style (mesh + stabilised earth).

For both of the rooms I would use two rows of tires for foundations (in my cold climate) + 3 foot high walls. The rest of the height will be achieved by the vaults. 

The reason that you will not bump your head if you are standing right next to the wall is because the kitchen counters and/or custom rocket stove cob couch will be placed next to the wall..

You do not need to use tyres for foundations, rocks, gravel, SuperAdobe are some of the alternative methods of foundations that can be done, depending you your climate, underground water level, soil expansion qualities, bogginess. I’ll discuss the foundations in great details in a video lesson, soon after this text.

Building with labour, friends or alone?

To answer this question you need to know Pro’s and Cons of each method of construction, which I will explain later on. I would recommend trying to pound a tire, try and ram a 5 foot long earth bag. Get to feel what each method of construction is. No amount of YouTube videos will come close to experiencing what building with each material feels like. 

There are certain building methods such as aircrete / hemp brick dome that could be build alone, and there are other methods such as Super/HyperAdobe that take very very long if you try and build them alone, especially if you do not have a large cement mixer.

If I am building super adobe wall in an ideal situation with an ok budget, I will have 1x guy on the mix and myself +1x guy on building the bags. Thus 3 man crew is preferable. With a 2 man crew I would make a large quantity of mix first (4x 25kg bags of cement to 10 parts earth) and then build till lunch then repeat same process after lunch.  

2x man crew can do 20x running metres of super adobe per day (excluding barbwire time).

What I am trying to say is that with a 3x man crew you could almost double your production VS 2 man crew. So it is advisable to use a 3 women/men crew. If you are a first time builder I would recommend getting 1x person to assist. It is good to try out the job yourself first, then you know how long what takes so the assistant will not waste time or a be a “tire kicker” (no pun intended)

It is important that you enjoy being with this person as building together is a close knit job. I.e if someone is drinking heavily and next morning they are coming to your building site, it will be unpleasant to work with them and nasty to be in their energetically field. 

If you worker is constantly talking about this and that and you want to be working in silence, know that it is your right to ask them not to talk and respect their space or put headphones on. I made that mistake of thinking that if the worker is helping me , then I must let them do what they want, so they are comfortable (my people pleaser program > psychology) as they are doing me a favour by helping me.  Thus said I allowed them to talk and talk and talk all day long. Eventually so much resentment was build up that I never wanted to see them or work with them again. Be upfront and straight to the point. If you enjoy working quietly then speak your truth!!!

Building with friends is a tricky one and I after all the years of experience I would not do it. It is one thing to ask 2 buddies to come and assist for the day with some task that you just can’t do alone, such as lifting of the wooden arches, then after it is done you could carry on without them. 

On the other hand to build for 1 or more  month together, with your friends could be a recipe for disaster. It all depends yon your relationship of course and level of copious maturity, but no friend I know will pump for one month continuously for free at the same rate as a worker. Then you will be expected to do the same. I would rather employ someone for a month and then not be obliged to spend a month of my time funding tires for my friend. 

Same goes for a workshop: building something easy, fast and fun at a workshop for 10 days is one thing like a 5m aircrete dome + a tiny Superadobe 3 m dome. It is achievable with 15 workshop attendants and even then I provided 2 labourers that constantly rolled in the mix. No students at a workshop want to make mix for 15 days even on rotation basis. It is meant to be a fun and happy experience. I really mean fun and happy.

Building a full scale large 800 sq ft home (like we did in Brazil) for 3 weeks was a disaster as no workshop attendant wants  to pound 6000 feet / 2000 metres of HyperAdobe. My workshop attendants got pissed off with me.

After all the years of construction I came to solution that a small team with 1-2 others is perfect. Treating the workers equal and working together with them, eating together and taking good care of them, whilst paying fairly is crucial !!!

Building with labourers can be dangerous. I had multiple robberies and some violent ones from my own labourers. It all depends how you treat them, how much you pay them, how desperate they are, what is their trauma history? All of these components are just out of your control. I will have a separate section on using labourers.

Yes it does sound good to build together with a friend, first he helps you build your house and then …then you might not have time to build his house. If you are building with a friend I  would recommend 2-3 days on your building site and 2-3 days on your friends’ building site, this way both of your homes are growing simultaneously. I have not tested this method, it is just a concept.

My choice on a tight budget is: 1 men to assist you on your task. Having one extra person to help you can speed up the construction up to 5x fold, because:

• it is more fun to build together
• you are more committed
• you have a responsibility to be at the building site at certain time
• you work for 6-8 hours instead of 2-3
• you are not messing around as you would be if it was just a friend.

Helping hand VS slave labour

In essence helping hand is someone that came to assist you with your build and you build with them and treat them like equal VS slave labour is getting a crew of low cost 3rd world labourers and they build for you whilst you do something else. (My dome and Water course where created in this manner) 

Back when I was building my first super adobe dome cluster I was an ass to my labourers, There was a hierarchy (not a good one). I never ate together with them, they had a far worse food then me etc. Yes I worked with them together but there was no equality and they felt it. In 2012 I had an argument about money with one of them and then a while later he came with a buddy in a black mask with a knife and a hammer to my mobile trailer home and robbed us by tying up my 7 year old son and my ex. I was 100 metres away building my SuperAdobe dome whilst that happened.

I had a few robberies from my labourers in my life. When I was building a 54 metre super adobe wall in Johannesburg, I employed 9 people … I left my room to go outside for 5 minutes and came back and my large iMac as well as apple laptop + 2000 USD worth of cash were gone right out of my room. I was in my garden! When you employ a large amount of crew from the street, that you do not know, you are asking for trouble, as you never know where they all come from and what intentions they have. Even if you treat them well. People are desperate and hungry.

I am a different person now. Russia does not have slave labour mentality. Now I work solely together with people I employ.  We eat together, we joke together. I send them Xmas messages etc. I am on equal with them. I make sure that I pay an average rate and then I add good food (same as I eat)  which we share together. It is very different to how it was before. 

Still it is very important to speak what you feel, be it that they are constantly talking or doing bad quality work, or constant arriving late. DO NOT keep quiet as it will only grow into aggravation and agitation which will explode into something terrible.

I am looking forward to getting a 3D printer going because I am moving towards property development and I want to only use people when it is absolutely necessary. Building the walls I want to entrust to a 3D printer. As it is very similar to sandbag technology. 

Printing head prints 3 cm wide by1 cm high and sand bag is 30 cm wide and 10 cm high, that’s  10x bigger. Both of the methods use ADDITIVE TECHNOLOGY Of course it is not feasible at the moment to own a 3D printer for one home. I am hoping that in the very near future I will be able to provide a blueprint that can be done by a 3D printer. The vaults will be done using augmented reality with followgram software  

The burying of the home will be done by an excavator and then finishing touches will be done by skilled plasterers, electricians etc. Even plastering will be done using a spray on method for the plaster. Building of the home should not be a freaking mission. 

What materials can I get hold of? What materials are near me?

For the last few years I thought that I would never use wood as it is neither ecological nor it is sustainable. But living in Russia which is covered by wood entirely made me change my mind.  Building with wood is fast and enjoyable.  One cannot be anal about materials. If you can get hold of some good sustainably sourced or recycled timber, go for it. If you have good sandy soil under your feet for super/hyper adobe walls go for it. If you have a large van and live nearby the city where you can get a vast amount of polystyrene to make polystyrene aircrete walls or insulation, go for it! If you live near a forest where there is a lot of dry logs and you can take them out without anyone noticing, go for it.  If you live near fields where there are a lot of straw bales that you can get at low-cost /for free, then go for it: If you can use grass to thatch your roof, go for it! 

Straw bales are a fantastic insulation but they like to breathe, so that they stay dry in order not to rot. I’ve recently attended a workshop where they are building a home in 2 days from large straw bale blocks (3 x 1.2 x 0.6) meters.  (check out the link, it is good resource)

With materials, use what you can get your hands on.

My preferable method of materials is aligned to what I know how to use. When I learn how to build vaults with thin bricks (Guastavino / Catalan vault style) then I will most probably switch to this method for my vaults instead of ferro cement. It all depends on energetics and also how simple and effective we make the thin tile brick construction. According to Dan Winter, clay and other natural materials make architecture hum with good charge. You can watch this interview here. 

For now my vaults are made from ferro cement or wood. Hyperadobe for the walls is preferable to SuperAdobe as it does not involve barb wire. Hyperadobe is vegetable bag on a sleeve that allows for some dirt to get through the netting and grip the previous layer. We will discuss the materials later on.

There are many various natural materials that one can build from, for the sake of this course I will settle on what I know how to use and what is available in my cold climatic conditions. If you wish to learn to use other materials such as bamboo or thin fabric cement shells, then please find a master and learn your preferred method from them. I’ve travelled the world and done just that. Below is a list of materials that I would like to focus on. 

1. foundation from pounded tires for its strength, wide footing, free / low cost factor and simple to learn construction method.  By building a foundation from tires we remove a hell of a lot of rubbish from the dump.
2. Walls from HyperAdobe - ease of construction (event for a1st time builder) 
3. Vaulted roof from wood (if sustainable option is available) for it’s lightning speed, ease of construction as well as “stretchiness / elasticity” in seismic activities
4. Vaulted roof from ferro cement: for its ability to create a fancy catenary shape. Simple vaults without fancy shapes are easy to build from earthen cement, especially if you have a form work. (I will show this worm work in our practical). Without worm from the ferro vault can be built on the ground and carried into place to be plastered on the walls. They are easy to plaster and if built correctly can be load bearing constructions. 
5. Because I live nearby to the city I will get hold of polystyrene to make my own polystyrene+cement for insulation, please see this video

I have recorded two lessons on Key principles of Biological design where you will learn about buttressing and other specifics that are necessary to build vaults and domes safely from above materials. These lessons will be presented to you soon after this one.

There is also a detailed lesson on how to find a good mix for super adobe (this will be provided for you) , Generally super/hyper adobe likes sandy soils. I have build with clayey soil in my SuperAdobe bags and it worked with 20-30 % addition of sand. NB: Remember  to make stabilised earth especially for foundations. (earth that will not erode under rain or wind) !!! One can get away by using not stabilised earth in the walls if one is on a super tight budget, provided that the walls will not get wet !!!!!!!! NB: Any time you buy materials especially a lot of them it costs. If you want build a lot of structures, ideal is if your land can provide your soil for super/hyper adobe mix. 

Remember Clayey soils like lime and sandy soils like cement to be stabilised  I.e. Clay and cement don’t stabilise well together!

The reason that I like hyper/super adobe is for its ability to  play in curvilinear forms and spiralling shapes. To date, in my projects, I have used over 6000 metres of this lovely material.

We will get into materials much deeper later on, but for now it is important to understand them at the basic levels. 

MASS = HEAVY WEIGHT = DENSE = stone, rammed earth (in tires), concrete, clay

INSULATION = LIGHT WEIGHT = AIRY FLUFFY = polystyrene, straw, aircrete

Mass holds heat or cold for a long time. Insulation does not hold the heat/cold but stops it from leaving the home (like in a cooler box). Mike Reynolds made a really good analogy with 3 glass jars: one is filled with just air, one is filled with water, and one is filled with water and has an insulation layer all round it. Of course the air will be instantly heated or cooled depending on the outside temperature, the jar with water will slowly heat or cool itself to match the outside temperature and the flask is going to retain the temperature of inner water for up to 24 hours and even more depending on the level (R value) of insulation + the volume of the water.

I lived comfortably in an aircrete dome with a small fire place, all year around in South Africa. The home was under a large decisions mulberry tree. In summer the tree provided shade and I was comfortable inside, I just opened the doors and windows for cross draft. And in winter the tree shed the leaves and I was comfortable inside with a tiny fire place which I just stoked in the evening time. The sandbag dome (MASS) with its thick walls also was fine if it was made in a light colour. 

However if there is no shade the sandbag dome made of mass can heat up so much that you will join inside, especially at night, due to the laws of thermal dynamics. (the walls switch “ON’ when the temperature inside is cooler than the walls)

I would insist on a shade awning/balcony for hot climate 2/3rds of they up and the upper 1/3rd insulate around the mass so it doesn’t get hot. I can sketch it for anyone who wants to build in warmer climates, just speak up and ask questions about your climatic conditions. 

For the sake of this book and my Wautillarium course, I will focus predominantly on cold climate as getting a home comfortable for warm climate is easier and cheaper. in the relevant lesson in our Wautillarium Course, I will share the passive heating and cooling strategies in detail for various climatic conditions.

COMPARISON OF VARIOUS MATERIALS

Below table is in progress (not completed)

What is the difference of using tires, sandbags or logs for my walls? 

TIRES: Pounded tires are free to get but they are hard work as you gotta pound them ridiculously with a sledge hammer.  Bending down to ram the earth in from all around the tire in order for this earth to literally compress into stone. It is tiresome for the back and really good exercise. If I was 20 years old I’d go for it 😉

Material inside is generally what can be found from under your feet. There is no cement being used as a steel encased rubber tire is sufficient and will not degrade in a few lifetimes if plastered and not exposed to the elements. Mike Reynolds also claims that they do not off-gas if plastered, the research is on his webpage. Convincing people  of Russia to build of tires is useless so I will stick to using 2 rows of them in foundations only. You do not need to do anything to the mix, just straight in dry soil! 

SUPERADOBE:  bags are relatively cheap. If used with 1 part cement to 10 parts earth (from under your feet) it is a not an expensive method of construction. You can get away by not using cement in the walls if they walls stay dry and plastered  so that the bags do not degrade. (please do your soil test prior, if you have clayey soils and they get wet, your home will fold like an ice cream, if it not stabilised. No need to pound the superadobe as hard as tires.  The stomping is much gentler and you do not have to bend down as you use a stomper with a long handle. The strength comes from wetness and cement. The speed of construction is dependant on the speed that you make your mix. If you have made the mix the building goes relatively fast.  I recommend getting a large / industrial second hand 300 litre cement mixer (VS new small one) and getting that mix made fast. 

Having a huge pile of earth right next to you instead of digging it bucket by bucket will accelerate the mix making process. (this can be done by digger loader if you have access to one. SuperAdobe uses polypropylene bag on a sleeve with barbwire between each layer making it stronger for seismic activity VS HyperAdobe that uses vegetable sack on a sleeve with no barbwire, thus is it much faster. It is still very strong especially if curves and catenary shapes are used. You can also build an egg dome with them.

LARGE LOGS: Similar to what we used in Siberia. I don’t recommend using wooden logs for your walls if you are placing a vault made of ferro cement or bricks above. Wood stretches and settles and thus your HARD material above your head could crack and crumble. If you are using wooden logs then you gotta stick with wooden vault or wooden rafters (for flat roofs) 

Using logs is a fast way to build walls, especially if you get them already cleaned from the bark. (there is a tool attachment for the chainsaw to do this) Wood is prone to mould if you have high water table and don’t place them on proper foundation and separate them with plastic from wet soils. 

In Siberia we used them without foundations by creating a “skirt” made of plastic to keep them dry, and we also build up into the hill where the water table is far down. 

My friend Kolya has build his home using the same method of construction and  it is standing strong and dry for 11 years. If build above ground then they need to be buttressed or interlocked by other logs in order not to pop out.  Buttressing is explained in the lesson on key principles of ecological design. If you have access to loads of dry, dead logs that are not rotten, then I would recommend them in your construction. If you have neighbours that might report you, then check in with authorities as it might be illegal to remove dead wood.  

In this training I will show you how to position them into place using a 4x4 vehicle and a coupe of metal rods.

It is important to understand that wood is neither MASS nor INSULATION, it is somewhere in between. It has properties to keep a bit of warmth and give it back into the space and it has a bit of insulating qualities by not losing this warmth too fast to outside. 

In cold climate If they are kept above ground they need to be insulated, especially if you are going for a solar passive home. Most Russian homes are build with logs without insulation, but in winter they burn a tonne of firewood to stay warm inside.

If you have access to small crane working with large wooden logs will be a piece of cake. In this training I will only show you how to build a wooden vault that is positioned on wooden logs that are submerged into the ground (hobbit home). Above the ground construction with logs will not covered in this training.

It all goes back to what is available and how much strength/endurance you have.

What soil type? What’s under my feet?

I had a friend who was digging a large underground cellar type of space and discovered massive rocks all over the place. On the good note they got a lot of stones that they could use for other construction and on the bad note the excavator count not dig deeper than 5 feet without a dynamite.

Knowing what’s under your feet is crucial

• If it is sand or sandy soil with tiny stones then it is perfect for super adobe. Stones could be easily screened and used in a wetland (up to 1 inch /2.5 cm diameter)  
• If it is clay then you will need to add bought sand to mix for super adobe. Bought sand will add to the budget and might not be available nearby. Clay is NOT GOOD for tires if it gets wet, The water locks in the tyres and if you don’t let it get dry then there will be mould problems.
• If it is rock underneath then all the soil will need to be brought in for the home and depends where you live as delivering sand might be very expensive (if you live on a volcano island with no sand), I would recommend learning from a stone mason, to use this material that’s under your feet.
• How high is the water table - if you are planning to build an underground home, and you live on a land with a high water table, then you are in for a disaster. Constant mould problems which lead to health problems. Trying to waterproof an underground space that has water pushing in from all sides is very difficult.

Doing 2-3 pilot holes, in the place where you will getting your building material from is advisable.  Pilot holes should be 2 feet / 60 cm deep beneath the topsoil.

NB: Remember topsoil is gold, never build with it in sandbags and never bury it. Always put it to the side for future use (such as gardens or greening the dam wall) You can not plant into clay, but you can in to topsoil! Nature takes 500 years to make 2.5 cm /1 inch of topsoil.

If you have not bought land I would recommend doing a pilot hole prior your purchase. Especially if you are tight on budget for buying material and want to be using your own soil (which mostly works). That could be the deciding factor, if you are choosing from a list of various lands. 

Doing a pilot hole will also show you the water level , the best time to check underground water level is in spring, after snow melt or at the peak of the rainy season. Make sure you have a “volcano ridge” so surface water does not enter into your hole. Cover the hole with a board and plastic so snow / rain does not fall in either. 

This way what you have in the ground is your true water level, at the peak of rainy/snowmelt season. We will discuss foundations and their relevance to the water table in the foundation section.  You could also observe which direction the water is seeping in from -> that’s where a French drain / Diversion trench will be necessary to be installed to drain the water away from your home ( will be explained later on )

If you are on a tiny plot, like us - 1/3rd of an acre, then getting soil from your own land, to fill your sandbags or tyres with, might be problematic. 

Sure if you have a natural pool in mind and you know exactly where it will go then use soil from there to build your home. But if you don’t know that or have no budget or time right away for your pool, then ending up with a massive hole for 10+ years in the middle of your small garden is not a good idea. It will keep on collapsing and expanding due to rain and non-stabilised vertical walls as well as a breeding ground for mosquitos. 

Thus said: on a tiny plot I would recommend buying in builders sand (the cheapest sand or subsoil you can buy that will work for your bags or tyres. It is advisable to get a sample of what you will be using and do a soil test, I will show this all in practical part)

How expensive is water or is it even available where you want to build?

If there is no water at all you gotta get that sorted before you build. Super/hyperadobe or cement construction all require water. Washing tools etc. 

We did build the wooden vault without water. We used very little for the clay lock +- 300 litres. All of this will be explained to you in the practical.

If there is no water and you are in a rainy season then I recommend a “fast to set up” second hand stretch tent from a festival or a plastic / secondhand advertising billboard tarp. The stretch tent is awesome as it is made from slightly stretchy semi waterproof / waterproof fabric. 100 sq m tent can go up in less than an hour. It can withstand up to 80 miles an hour winds.  It can be used as a fast roof to get cleanish water into a water tank. I will explain this in a practical.

Alternatively if you have a lake nearby then you could haul water (I don’t know the legalities in your country. If you are not allowed to haul water from a lake I would not live in such a country) If there is a pond nearby you could pump from that. All if this I will show when we get to a practical. 

Alternatively a well with a pump. There is a solar pump that does not need a battery . It runs straight from a solar panel as soon as the sun hits it and can pump up to 200+ feet (+-500-600 USD) ***

You need to know where your water is coming from. In my case we have too much underground water as I live in a cold climate. I do not feel bad about pumping it from the ground in this area of the world. It is very different to a hot country like Mexico or most countries in Africa. 

Here our aquifers are constantly boosted with snow and due to lack of evaporation we have an over abundance of water. In fact if I dug a 2 foot deep hole, it will fill up with underground water. Here water is a problem because there is just too much of it. 

In 1950’s, in some parts of Mexico, water was found at just 5 m deep, however now at the same places water is found at over 1000 metres deep. Because they pierced the various lenses they mixed up toxic arsenic water with fresh water. 

Thus said, pumping water from underground if you are in a country that is dry and/or hot, is irresponsible. It is just like buying wood that you know is coming from amazon forest.

In my case I will get a well installed on my land first. Without this well I am not even going to start building because I want to move on the land asap and I need clean water to drink, cooking and building.

Large rainwater tank is a solution and if there is no water or you aren’t in a rainy season, getting non drinkable water trucked in could be a good solution. 

In our cold climate, the rain water tank, will freeze and pop in winter. There is a way to use a typical cylindrical water tank and bury it (voiding the use of an expensive special buriable water tank) I will share this later with you in the WATER SECTION

So it all depends on your climate, you financial situation etc. The cheapest water tank and a must have on any construction site is a 1000 Litre square IBC tank. These are fantastic and fit into most pick up vans (and my mini bus). Installing that on a platform just above your head thus doubling it up as a shower is a good idea. I will share with you how I did that in the WATER SECTION.

How expensive is electricity and is it available where you want to build?

Please do not go on what you think is a “romantic” idea of off-grid living. Instead be practical and debt free.

Were I am going to build there is a source of cheap electricity. It is so cheap that going solar will cost me 35 years worth of paying for electricity on monthly basis. I am not discussing wether it is green or dirty electricity. Is it there or not and is it affordable. You could always go off-grid in future, but if there is a plug point already on your land, use it.

In my case I do not need to focus on getting an expensive solar system upfront. Sure if you have the budget for a 30000 USD solar system straight away, go for it. I had a professional Outback system installed (this is what Earthships use) in South Africa and it is currently waiting to be sent from my moms’ garage. 

Focusing on the build is one thing and adding instalment of a powerful electrical system straight away is a costly endeavour. If you are far from electrical connection then you gotta work with it and put that down straight away as one of the expenses. 

You do not need an expensive system or a pro to instal it. A simple 1-2 panel setup + a small 1000 Watt inverter (converts 12V to 220V) + a charge controller (does not overcharge the batteries from solar panels) +  couple of car/truck batteries can all be wired up in under an hour by an amateur, with no electrical experience whatsoever. This set-up will run a camping fridge and plenty of LED lighting as well as a laptop and phones. This set up will not work if you have extensive overcast conditions like in Northern Europe. 

I will address understanding your climate later on. For power tools, use a generator. Always get a bit bigger and more powerful then you need (generators, power tools, concrete mixers etc). 

You also do not need a solar system powerful  enough to power all your power tools unless you have a huge budget to do so. Small solar system + a generator + petrol / diesel powered concrete mixer is a sweet spot.

Do you need a vehicle and which one?

If you want to be resourceful by getting free materials such as polystyrene, cans, bottles,  tires, upcycled timber, I would highly recommend for any permaculturist or natural builder to have a pickup truck van or a mini bus. It will save you thousands of dollars in delivery fees and material costs. 

It is possible to build without a vehicle but then you have to be super organised, plan all the materials weeks upfront. Expect to pay lots of delivery fees. 

Having a normal city car is almost the same as not having a vehicle. Unless you have a trailer which makes it more difficult and dangerous to travel with.

And the next question after the car is: what is the distance to the nearest hardware / materials store?

Planning for building the walls and roof is serious business, but when it comes to finishing touches such as electrical, plumbing and glazing, will always bring up stuff that you need, even straight after you just arrived from a hardware store.

Avoiding unnecessary trips to the shop means means you are a well balanced individual in a good head space and you know your stuff. Even after many builds I still end up forgetting something or making a mistake even if I drew every last detail that I require. A house has many components and to try and plan for all of them straight away is almost impossible. I will record everything I buy for the construction of Wautillarium. And present you a list of Phase #1(2 vaults with a small greenhouse) , but the list of materials will come with a Wautillarium blueprint

Living far from a Hardware store would require for you to think in advance. Today you are building foundation and you need stuff fo foundation. You can not think of walls or windows as you are in the foundation mindset. You get what I mean.

Are you going to take credit for your build?

There are pros and cons of taking a credit.

You could build faster, and move in and thus get to work on your income producing work straight away. 

Without credit you will be more resourceful and still build an awesome home.

On the other hand having a burden of a 25 year credit is a sure way to destroy your life and your family, especially if you have to do a job you hate. Anytime you do anything you hate you generate self hate > which makes you want to suppress anyone else that is better off then you > that usually leads to destruction of family.

I will do everything I can to make it available for most people to build what I teach without climbing into debt!

Together with Zoya we are starting with a tiny budget ourselves. Thus said if there is no cash for fancy windows, that I designed, then I will get second hand triple pane glass and still get the job done, with rectangular windows I can find.

Each situation is different. Do your calculations and weigh up pros and cons. As I wrote above paragraph I was against taking credit. I do however want to produce a finished home by the end of 2023 as I will be using it to promote a completely new style of building that’s new to my country and I want to find investors for further property development and my education centre.

What we don’t want is to take a credit so we:

• build a home bigger than we need
• build a home to show off (to raise our self worth)
• build too fast and buy expensive materials that we could. Have sourced much cheaper
• piss money down the drain by making mistakes whilst using banks money
• Forget about our resourcefulness and creativity because of a  large amount of $

Do I need to have a design of my land before I build a home?

It is a good to have a rough design of your land. Where your food forest will fit in, where a pond will end up. Thats why testing soil probes is important.

In permaculture earthworks course I was taught to test soil for its ability to hold water, for building a dam, before doing a design. You might have a specific design in mindset it will not correlate to reality. I.e You design a site for your home where there is good clay. And on the other hand you design a spot for a dam in a place of sandy soils, therefore making your dam wall loose water.  Sure it all can be fixed with an EPDM or old billboard liner but at a cost. No problem for a small frog pond but the costs really go up with size.

The smaller the land the more important it is to have at least a rough design of where what will go.  Large trees that you don’t want to or can’t cut down as well as proximity to neighbours and road noise also dictate your layout of your land.

But for a small plot of +- 1 acre or under it is good not to have your home in the middle of your land but to bring it closer to the northern side/corner (if you are in the northern hemisphere) 

On the east could be your veggie garden that will not be shaded by the food forest. Food forest on the west and north behind your home so they don’t shade you solar passive green house. 

By having your home to the back of your land you can enjoy the view of your entire garden in front of your home. 

One should still feel intuitively, there is definitely THE SWEET SPOT where a home should go and one feels it almost straight away. However keep on mind that large trees will kill your vegetable garden, large trees with dropping seeds and leaves next to your pool will always require maintenance of the pool, large  trees that are ever green will stop sunlight from entering your solar passive home. 

If you do place your home in the middle of a small plot then you could loose a part of the garden that will be behind your home. But because we are building a hobbit earthship Wautillarium, that’s covered by earth, you could still enjoy the 360 degree panoramic beauty whist sun bathing on top of your home. Once again I recommend camping out on the land to get a good feel of where to place a home.

 Look out for trees with lumps on the side of them. That is usually a sign of “cancerous” growth due to possible geopathic stress underneath.

What about Vastu and Fengshui?

I don’t know much about these practices and thus I can not comment much. I do know that these sciences are important for well being of the person. I come more from a practical point of view.

• All windows to the sun in cold climate 
• Get on the land fast, debt free, dry and warm 
• Make sure plumping is lumped together sharing one common wall, like in an earthship. I.e. Plumbing should be nearby to a washing machine, kitchen, shower etc. this saves money
• It would be advisable to have the septic outside of the main home space due to legalities in some countries as well as energetics that feces produce
• Entrance on the east is taken from fengshui
• Sleeping direction is important and I think one should test what works for you.

We do have a lovely lecture from one of our students on fengshui in the dome course.

In Biogeometry Ibrahim Karim learned to correct the negative energies by placing certain shapes into the home. Our Wautillarium design has been tested by a Bio Geometry practitioner and the results were positive. I intent that through my thoughtful Bio-Geometrical and Bio-Mimicry inspired design as well as good choice of materials, the Wautillarium homes will hum with high frequency.

To summarise: yes to Bio-Geometrical design (sacred geometrical shapes and proportions), yes to good natural materials, yes to practicality, yes to researching Hartman and Curry underground grid lines (if in doubt observe the cat where it likes to sleep)

Practicality and cost factor play an important role for me. One could wreck their brain with correct fengshui practices and whilst renting and running bankrupt or one could just get on the land and build a neat home without debt. I prefer the later 

To date I’ve put in more than 10000 hours towards getting this current design that I will be presenting to you in this course. I will be building this same design as our family home, starting early this spring. Living in this home will assist me to refine this training material and my Wautillarium design. 

If one is living in a good head space, free from traumas and broken programs, even if their space is not a light temple but a simple cleaned our shed, they will still manifest great things and build a strong warm family. 

On the other hand one could live in a Crystal castle, that is indebted to the bank, work like a dog in a job they hate, be an arse,  destroy their family and die from cancer at the age of 40. 

Again everything comes down to psychology and how are we feel in our heart, solar plexus and throat chakra areas. I refer to that burning sensation that makes our legs shake…  

Comfortable temperatures in any climate

We will go into this in much more detail when we get to section on heating and cooling your home passively. For now I will just touch on a couple of important points and provide you an article written by an earthship hacker.

Understanding the mean temperature of the earth is crucial to get comfortable temperatures!

Knowing the mean temparate of the earth will help you understand how passive cooling and heating will work for you in your specific climatic conditions. Mean temperatures of the earth is dictated by the average temperature above the earth + moisture content. Most soil transfers heat and cold faster than dry earth. (We will brainstorm the book on Passive Annual Heat. Storage my John Hait to discuss strategies he discovered) 

For Example in Taos, New Mexico, the earthship don’t insulate themselves underneath as the temperature of the earth is cool and inside the rooms the dark coloured clay (MASS) floors are warmed up by the constant sun that’s blasting all year around. In summer the cool earth cools down the home through their cooling tubes. 

But what if you lived in Northern Canada where there is permafrost (the ground is constantly frozen) or what if you lived in a country that has 3 months of no sun with really cold underground temperatures (+2 - +5 degree Celsius - same as your fridge) 

Of course cooling will not be an issue. However the warmth, in winter time, will all be transferred into the ground (the ground will take the warmth to bring its own temperature to the same temperature as inside the home > the laws of thermal-dynamics) Thus insulating underneath the home is important. This also goes hand in hand with the underground water level. If you want to store warmth in the ground then it HAS TO BE DRY. There is a good book by Mike Reynolds: Comfort in any climate.

Cold earth could be used to cool down a cellar and avoid using a fridge. 

Here is a good article by Rachel Preston Prinz, Pratik Zaveri, and Asha Stout. They researched Earthships and have a fantastic book: Hacking an Earthship.

Thermal comfort has been one of the most difficult aspects of designing buildings since we started building them. Our earliest civilizations were more concerned about portability in regard to their buildings so they could move from hunting spot to gathering spot depending on the seasons. Once we started planting crops, we needed to build more permanent structures to keep our stores of agricultural products safe, at a temperature they could safely be stored at, and moist or dry depending on the product.

Using natural materials in their unworked forms makes achieving thermal comfort in cold climates more difficult, because natural forms are almost never perfectly square, which means they do not fit together in a way that can prevent air and thus cold from moving through the walls.

The stone buildings of our earliest major civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece had sophisticated tools which allowed them to work stone. They also had slaves and mason/architects who could tell the slaves how to work the stone. They used stone, not only for its monumental qualities which we still get to enjoy to this day, but moreover because a massive stone building is a great insulator from the heat. The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde similarly use their overhanging cave shelter to provide shade for the hot summer months, while allowing the low-angled winter sun to come in and warm the spaces naturally. The stone buildings there were able to be tightly fitted with minimal working because of the type of sedimentary rock that was used. It flaked off in linear chunks that were relatively easy to stack tall without mortar.

But stone was not always available, nor were the slaves that many civilisations used to get these buildings built. Pretty much everyone else, everywhere else, had to make do with less formalised massive structures made of natural, easily worked, materials. They just came up with simple solutions for filling in the gaps. In log cabins, they would add a chinking of mud between the logs to stop the biggest leaks. They would add lime if they had access to it. Then they would put blankets and animal skins over the insides of the walls to keep the heat in and act like insulation. Even the teepees of the Plains Indian are lined with skins and blankets to keep the heat in. 

Igloo builders would often build their entrance on a sloped ramp that accessed the inside space below the living level so the heat inside the space would rise and stay in the building instead of escaping out the access hallway. Using this technique, they could heat up a space with just body heat and the heat from a lantern or small fire.

Early farmhouses in the Midwest and Eastern U.S. had a double entry vestibule, which acted as a buffer to present the direct loss of heat.

Tropical buildings, like the amazing bamboo Green School by Ibuku in Bali, Indonesia, are often built in the treetops. Tropical architects design their buildings like this to get up into the areas that are shaded and have access to cool breezes. They want to stay away from the earth because in humid locations, being near the earth also means being near water. These raised buildings stay drier longer during seasonal and storm flooding, and they stay cooler in the heat too.

These are just a few of the many ways in which humans around the world have found a ways of achieving thermal comfort.

Some building scientists will build their research around the idea that comfortable temperature limits are around a low of 65°F (19°C) in winter and a high of 80°F (27°C) in summer. However, when people are asked what their idea of comfortable really is, they will say that it is 70°F (21°C) in winter and 75°F (24°C) in summer. Knowing what your own comfort limits are will help you to plan your home for what you really need.

To achieve temperatures in these ranges, we really need to understand what makes those temperatures comfortable, and why they might be different in the summer versus the winter. To get to that, we need to understand that human comfort is dependent on heat retention and heat loss, which is affected by:

CONVECTION – the circulation caused by temperature difference; when air temperature is lower than body temperature, we get cold. This can be exacerbated by air motion.

RADIATION – when heat transfers are caused by electromagnetic waves; we radiate heat to cooler surroundings and absorb heat from warmer surroundings. Glass in winter can be 25 degrees cooler than the inside temperature at windows. That is a form of radiation. This causes “cold spots”.

EVAPORATION – changes liquid to vapour; this is another way we dissipate heat from our bodies: through the breath and perspiration. We can get hot or cold based on how much water we are evaporating from our systems.

We also need to understand a little bit about the physics of heat. Heat flows from the upper temperatures towards cooler temperatures. Like everything in nature, heat is trying to find balance or equilibrium. Because of this, the greater the temperature difference between two spaces, the more quickly heat will flow through them.

Building materials and insulation slow the movement of heat though them at a rate that depends on the properties of the material. No two materials work the same way exactly.

While it may be tempting to build as massive of a wall as possible, it is also important to note that resistance to heat flow (insulation) and heat storage (thermal) capacity are not the same. Concrete, brick, and stone are poor insulators, but work great as thermal collectors because they hold the heat for hours until the air outside them starts to cool down below the temperature of the warmth stored, and thus the heat starts radiating into the space.

One of the biggest ways we can improve thermal performance of the building is to minimise the air volume in the home. This allows us to use small systems to control airflow. Minimising your footprint is the first step, and we will cover how to do that in later sections. The other important thing to consider is ceiling height, as this is what gives you your volume. The higher your ceilings, the more volume of air you need to heat, cool, humidify, or dehumidify. So soaring ceilings might not be the best idea throughout the house, unless you live in a hot/humid climate where getting that heat UP and out of the living space is a great idea for thermal comfort. When we have clients who want the beautiful effect of a large space but not the hassle of the larger systems, we suggest that they choose one room that is most important and make that space tall. Leaving the other spaces at normal heights will save you money.

WHERE

Where should I build?

Every time I moved on a new piece of land I thought I was going to stay there forever. Every time I’d say: “Finally I found my land where I’ll grow until the end of my days”

I want you to understand that this is a nice fantasy and reality is very different. I’ve moved at least 10 times since 2009. I don’t know if it is because I am an air sign or is it psychology (neurosis) or is it because people are not destined to live at one place. Maybe for some people living in one home for 50 years and being on 1 job for 30 years is ok. It has not been my case

In 2011 when I bought my land cash I moved off it in less than a year, after a robbery. When I bought my house on a 25 year credit in 2007 I also thought that this is a home for life… I gave it to a bank in 2019, half way through my payments.In 2009 I moved out of the city leaving my home to 3 various “freeman” and permaculture teachers (rent free) that did nothing good except leaving me rubbish and electrical bills.

After Zoya and I bought a home in a village in Russia that we invested all our savings towards,we only lived in it for 3 months. We relocated and bought another land, after a neighbour shot at me. And the list goes on and on. 

Political climates change, wars start, neighbours shoot, robberies happen, city sewage starts floating up your toilet… there are no guarantees…  there are many  factors that you should understand before buying a piece of land or even deciding which country to live in. Weigh up the pros and cons and do your research diligently !!! 

A good exercise here is to divide a paper into 4 columns. Write down Pro’s and Con’s of making this choice (or buying this land, or staying in this country) and then Pro’s and Con’s of not making this choice. Then straight away, write the answer or the solution that comes down.

This is a big topic which I will record an audio or video about, but in essence you gotta live in a place that you feel safe in and that you are free to build what you want to build. If anyone is forbidding you to build what you want, it is an infringement on human rights and your freedom. You might not understand what I mean, because you never lived like this in your life. But imagine waking up tomorrow and drawing a house of your dreams and just building it and then moving in when you want. That is how it is in our country, as well as in many other countries.

The consequences of the infringement on your freedom are bigger than you can possibly fathom and will be addressed in Psychology section.

For example if you are wanting to build a stealth fortress in a country that is unsafe or has insane building restrictions, why not ask the question of why do I want to live in this country on a first place?  What are the secondary benefits of me living in fear? What kick do I get by remaining in a country that’s boiling me slowly like a frog?

I wish I was asking this question when I kept on wanting to live in one of the most dangerous countries on earth. 7 violent robberies later I finally ran from South Africa so fast, that I handed my house with 100.000 USD worth of  permaculture tech back to the bank.

Now I live in Russia where everyone grows organic food. Where there are absolutely no building restrictions. Land is cheap, water is abundant, there is true freedom of speech, income tax is 4% (which I gladly pay), and it is super safe (we seldom lock our doors) Thus having robbers stealing my food is just out of the question. 

TIP: It all goes back to psychology; when we change our beliefs our lives will change, and then we relocate to where it is good for us and our families.

What climatic conditions are you building in? Or should you be building in?

I know it sounds “romantic and awesome” to live in a climate that is constantly warm and never freezes, but the fact of the matter is everyone is different and got used to different lifestyles. We can not project others experience onto us. I love cold winters in a warm home. For me winter time is perfect to do other things such as writing, reading, drawing etc. 

In summer the energy is just too different. Of course I am speaking from a position of not doing a 9-5 job.  If you are going to a job where you have to be early in then waking up whilst it is still dark and going out into the cold and then arriving home after dark and never seeing your children, then life can get pretty nasty… 

I am speaking from a position of living lightly and doing what you love. In this case winter time is incredible.… but whatever your choice is:

Know thy land and your climatic conditions! Please do research on where you are planning on building. A good website is suncalc and ******

• Amount of sunshine having winter sun in cold climate is very nice. Earthship performs in Taos because of that. 
• Overcast patterns - I am living in a climate where there is literally 2 months of overcast in winter. I am almost 60 degrees north. Sun comes up at 10:00 am and sets at 16:00. For the 5-6 hours that the sun is up, the sky is fully overcast. 

Because we spend 6 months indoors (for exception of an occasional walk or trip to town),  developing a large green house for our Wautillarium is crucial. Greenhouse with its large indoor growing area will make it fun for me to spend my winters in. Developing an interesting warm lighting system that is good for plants and humans is just as important as having loads of greenery.

• Amount of precipitation - good to know what you are in for, wether it is rain water and sizing your water tank (calculating the roof size {length x width x amount of rainfall in mm/inches}. Speak to the neighbours about any floods.
• How deep does your ground freeze in winter - here it freezes 4 feet, in Canada it freezes up to 6+ feet. This will effect your foundations. Coupled with clay soils, that has retained moisture from summer, will result in a giant block of ice that will literally lift your home up. Making a skirt out of reflective foam 3-4 feet around your home will solve this problem. Foundations are MASS and therefore transfer cold into your home and suck warmth out of your home balancing out indoor and outdoor temperatures (thats the quality of MASS without an insulative thermal break) . A thermal break is necessary in order for the cold foundation not to steal warmth away from our passive home... We will discuss solutions and foundation types in our foundation section.

 Are your building on your land or other’s land? Community or not to community.

This is a big topic and needs a separate video about it. On my Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/aloshalynov) Zoya and I recorded few videos about this subject. 

All I can say is that it is risky as you don’t know the people until you lived with them. I am a firm believer of private property that is bought without debt. After losing 2 homes, 1 to the bank and one to a community I was building in. 

If you are building on a land that does not belong to you, no matter how good your relationship with the land owners, be ready to leave your home behind. If you do not think it will happen to you, it just happened to me 3 months ago. I built “my home” on another’s land and when I left, this home stayed there. 

Why did I do it? For now in short I will say psychology! I once again though that I was building my own home that I will live in till the end of my days in community of loving and caring people… for 3 months since them I am now dong specific inner process work, to stop these “self perpetuating b.s. prophecies”… 

If you are building your own home then it should be in your land, or you should have a clear long term rental agreement with most important point of: WHAT IF SOMETHING DOES NOT WORK!?

Thankfully what I build did not cost me more than 2000 USD and 2 months of my time and the upside I have a lovely method in my tool kit that I am sharing with you in this course with you. 

However now at the age of 41, after building many homes for others,  I am still in a rental home myself and will only be building my own proper home.  After 13 years of trying to find that perfect land. 

Between 2009 and 2023 I have moved over 7 times to various lands (and we owned 6 of them. 5 of those without debt) So all I can say is that no matter how nice the land owner is, who might be your friend, when various people move in on one land, a disaster is destined to happen, because of psychology. It is this stuff that makes your best buddy or you turn into a monster… I will explain more  in detail in the psychology section. 

If you are building  a home on someone else’s land, then make sure it is something that you can relocate. If it is a hobbit earthship then possibly cover it with a tin roof instead of burying it with earth. Make sure you use screws for the arches instead of nails so you can take it apart.

Would I live in a community, I no longer think so. After dreaming of living in a community for 15 years. I’ve travelled to many various communes and realised that it is far better to have a balanced good family.  I would rather meet other amazing people on zoom or real life, and that is why I relocated 60 miles from one of the most beautiful cultural cities of Russia, St Pietersburg. 

We do not necessity have to all live together on one land. I do however love the concept of Arcosanti Arcology, where Paolo Soleri with others build a small urban space around a business of making brass bells. I visited it whilst I was touring US. 

Inspired by Arcosanti and Venus project, I will be developing properties with multiple homes for various cultures who want to move to our country. In my property development I will implement permaculture design practices as well as certain community and co-housing aspects, that will bring people closer. But keep the obligatory b.s. away. 

For example community gardens and food forests, benches and children playgrounds, working office spaces with fast internet and maker spaces with joint tools are some of the strategies I want to add to my property development designs to arouse the community vibes.  This way English and other language speaking people will find it easier to relocate and integrate into our amazing country… thats when I need that 3D printer I spoke of, to build homes fast.

How comfortable you are alone?  Is an important question. Some people constantly need others, whist other people don’t want people nearby and are content with just their families, whilst others don’t want anyone else and are content with being a lone wolf in the forest. This is all driven by Psychology and will be discussed in that section . I used to be an extravert and constantly wanted to run workshops where I would have loads of other people. As time went on and I did more and more specific inner work, I became comfortable on my own with just my wife around. I do occasionally meet on zoom with amazing people and I go to meetings in town with other interesting people. That is enough for me.

Neigbours

Speaking from personal experience I suggest that you do not interact with neighbours on friendly terms straight away. I recommend not to go to their land or enter their homes or to allow them to enter your personal space. Meet on neutral ground, if need be. It is better to develop relationship overtime. Keep In mind psychology, that most people want to either dominate (tyrant) or be dominated  (victim) 

I’ve had a neighbour shoot at at me because I got too friendly too soon. I spoke of my plans to build an eco village and this made him put a bid on the land right next to me where I wanted to expand. Neighbours is an important subject. Having good relationship with neighbours be mutually beneficial or be detrimental should such a relationship turn out nasty. This same neighbour that shot at me, was chain sawing trees 20 feet away from my bedroom window at 7 am in the middle of winter. He also complained that our dogs were running around. I placed my dogs inside the fence and now he was screaming that my dogs were barking eventually he shot from a rifle in my direction… We moved to a new land and I repeated the same mistake, my new neighbours shot both of my dogs down.

My point of view now: We bought a plot of land on the edge of the neighbourhood with the forest being on the northern side. From the other 3 sides I will build a wall for privacy and get to know people very very very slowly without forcing any happy relationships. I learned this the hard way. The further away you are from the city the trickier the neighbour story is. Near the city you have 1000’s of neighbours and no-one really cares.  Whilst if you are out in the countryside, you might have 1-2 neighbours and there could grow a war between you or there might be a thriving mutual relationship. My other neighbour I was buying farm produce and firewood. It was a good relationship between us and it is also a result of how I positioned myself from the beginning. I will elaborate more in the psychology section. For now I will just say competition is a bad program that all of us have from school  days. Competition coupled with low self worth as well as our EGO’s + tyrant and/or victim mentalities are a cause of all wars.

Flooding or any other nature disasters.

Good idea to research where you are buying. Geoff Lawton has a good video about choosing the right piece of land where you can build a dam with least amount of materials. 

This is not a permaculture course however I do want to mention that I had my entire permaculture herb garden flattened by a raging river in flood. The river even entered my home and I lost an expensive Wacom tablet. I bought this piece of land in Johannesburg, South Africa. Because it was on the river front, it was lush and green, with a tranquil water sound. 
Being on a river front brought in severe problems that I had to deal with for the net 12 years, I purchased my home in 2007 as prices where at their peak and took a 25 year loan  - wy did I need a 5 bedroom house ? Low self worth and trying to boost my Ego with things… psychology I say yet again…

1. A few years later the river flooded and wiped out most of my permaculture garden. I build a 54 metre super adobe wall that stopped a flood
2. A city sewer pipe that was going across the river got hit by logs floating down the river. This resulted in sewerage backing up and flooding up from my downstairs toilet and bath. Eventually it flooded both downstairs rooms with 1 metre of sh*t. I disconnected from city sewer grid and created an online course called Abundance of Water  - www.bioveda.co/water 
3. Many sewage pipes were dumping raw feces straight into the river.  With time the smell got so bad that it was truly horrible living next to  “pretty lush jungle” I could do nothing about this, except leave.

Choose your land wisely:

• speak to the neighbours before you purchase 
• do your research
• check google maps
• look out for chemical plants that could leach toxicity in the underground water that you might be pumping up
• check for contour lines to understand the greater water-shed as something far away could be leaching toxins on your land. 

Although I speak of all these wise things, I just bought my land, that I really fell in love with,  within a 20 miles radius from one of the largest nuclear power stations.

Do your research and follow your intuition. Know that your intuition is following your intent and intent is directed by psychology (ill traumas and broken beliefs). There are no right answers and I can not protect you from your experience. 

The best advice I can provide is to heal your head and heart, then your life will flourish.

How sure where you are going to build your home is where you will end up staying?

I would recommend building something not too expensive and that you could take apart (even an aircrete back dome or a wooden vault can be taken apart) or living on the land in a mobile home investing into pumps and other things that could be moved with you. But for the first year I would rather not build something too big and permanent unless you are 100% sure that you can sell it.

I mentioned earlier that every time I moved onto a new land I though I was going to stay there forever. Every time I moved, leaving HUGE investment behind. I never ever recouped any of the investment I did to the properties I stayed.

Although we just bought land near St Pietersburg , I also don’t know if that is where we’ll live forever, but because we are both over 41 we need a base. Zoya’s mom and daughter are in this city and thus we decided to have one solid base here. 

Although I am giving you a recommendation above, we are building a fully fledged WautillariuM Earthship because of our own life circumstances. 

I have itchy fingers to finally build a proper earthship to completion for the sake of living in one myself and teaching you guys how to do it. Too many times I built for others and the time has come for me to build for my own family + I know that we could always sell it at a profit as we are building not too far from the city and 8 minute walk from the train and bus station that leads to the second largest city of our country (thats 1.5 hours on a train) . 

Sometimes it is a good idea to camp on the land before you buy it.  Although that did not stop me from leaving my amazing land in South Africa. In all goes back to psychology… why we do what we do and why families and lives fall apart and what is our role in all of that…

Geo political climate and foreseen dangers

I do want to mention more the Geo political climate: You need to do independent research about your chosen country and try and foresee where it will be in 10-20 years down the line.

In South Africa the price of municipal water went up 10x fold in one year just after a drought… The same is happening in Europe as all the gas pipes that were pumping cheap gas into Europe from Russia have been bombed by NATO block, at the end of 2022. 

Did you know that the police is issuing fines in France to anyone who tries to heat their home or office above 9 degrees Celsius? I don’t want to get into details of various countries, you know what is going on in your own country better than anyone else. Stay alert and be prepared to leave if you have to.

You do not need to stay in a country that is unsafe, that does not have good moral principles, that does not have good and fair government that cares for it’s people.Q: I am interested in your courses on design & building, but live in Texas, USA, and we have more hot weather than cold. How much adaptation is included for warmer climates?

A: I will cover warm climate adaptations in great detail. Having lived in South Africa for 23 years, I know how uncomfortable hot weather can be. Also our summers here are very hot as well. In both training programs, we’ll spend a great deal of time discussing solutions for our passive homes to mitigate that unbearable heat as well as freezing cold.

Q: You have two training programs which cover the Earthship-Hybrid. What is the difference between the training programs? As a newbie do I need to take both classes?

BELOW IS THE SCRIPT FOR OUR FIRST VIDEO LESSON FOR NEXT WEEK 22nd Jan 2023

LOCATING OUR PASSIVE HOME TO GET THE SUN & PREPPING THE GROUND

Identifying the site

The first step is to decide where exactly to build our solar passive home and how to get as much sun exposure as possible or as needed. 

On the settings in your iPhone you can choose option to use true north VS Magnetic north, but I would always double check it with real compass and use the steps below to find the true South (on the northern hemisphere)

Our homes in cold climate will be positioned towards the TRUE SOUTH. The sun is aligned to TRUE SOUTH (Northern Hemisphere) . We want to get maximum sunshine into our homes. Tilting a little EASTWARDS (from True South) will welcome more morning sun and tilting a little WESTWARDS (from True South) will bring a lot more heat in the already warm afternoon. If you have a mountain in the way or a large tree you might want to til a little more Westwards 

This should be a well calculated decision, incorporating:

• Major obstructions
• Beautiful view 
• How cold it gets in your area and for how long
• Understanding that AM sun will give that much needed warmth in your greenhouse
• How much overcast you have in winter
• When does the sun finally starts to shine in winter and at what angle above the horizon.

In order to find the true south,  I have taken the following great set of instructions from the Greenhouse of the future book:

The ideal angle to position the greenhouse is 15 degrees east of the true south (see next page to find true south if needed). However, if a large obstacle like a mountain or another building hides part of the sun coming from the east, it is possible that the best solution is to position the greenhouse directly towards the true south or even 15 degrees west of it. There is no set measure. The goal is to get as much sunshine as possible in the greenhouse during the day so you have to adjust according to the land. Of course, if you move away from the true south, the efficiency of the greenhouse will diminish. We recommend an angle of 15 degrees east of the true south for one specific reason: the greenhouse cools down overnight so the morning’s first rays of sunlight will warm it up again; unlike the rays of sunlight from the end of the afternoon, which are not as necessary because the heat will have accumulated throughout the day.