ECO DESIGNERS & ENGINEERS OF THE FUTURE

prep for the design of your ecohome

To start digging out the foundations you need to be able to draw your home on the ground. The objective of this lesson is to prepare you for this vital step.

Before we get to transfer our homes on the ground we need to first be able to draw them on paper. HOWEVER before we draw our homes on paper we need to have a basic understanding of the forces and laws that make our homes stand-up to wind, snow and other loads. If we do not have a basic understand of the physics and geometry then we are just drawing doodles of houses that are not related to physical reality and may collapse, especially if buried by heavy snow and earth.

If you purchase a professional blueprint from an architect the forces that exert pressure on the structure such as own weight of the roof, wind, snow , etc are usually worked out and tested. 

When it comes to natural building, designing your own dwelling is a fun part and makes you take responsibility for your own creative expression. You can develop a home suited to your budget, available materials and needs. Most importantly you can develop your own home that will keep you temperature stable and vitaminized with healthy food through out the year. Another amazing benefit of designing your own home is to let it grow as your family grows and rent off parts of it when your kids grow up and leave.

Consider this: Once the children reach adulthood then they go off to experience their own life. Suddenly a large portion of the home is freed up. Getting tenants in your private space will be tricky due to their noise pollution, energetics of their own family, dirty life style habits, etc. 

If I was designing a home with an expanding family, I would keep in mind that kids will grow up and having left with 75% unused space that I can not rent in the future would be a liability. I would design a home that grows as my family grows. I would also design in the factor so the home can be split easily and sub rented in the future. This needs to be done in a way that I do not hear and see the neighbours. 

When designing a unique home, it might not be for everyone’s liking . I encountered this problem when trying to sell my permaculture off-grid home in South Africa. All the extras I’ve added such as: domes, water tanks, natural pool conversion, a wall that stopped a flood, my own bio gas sewage system, so city sewer would not flow upwards into the house, ferro cement sea shell roof…etc, the cost me close to 100.000 USD. When trying to sell it, potential buyers did not want to pay for it. They could not even believe me when I told them that the flooding river flattened my garden and thus the wall, and that the sewage flooded two downstairs rooms and hence my own sewage system. The agent told me I over invested into my home. Its like getting a second hand VW and putting in nice mags, expensive ABS breaking system, leather seats etc. If I were to try and sell this car people would only want to pay for second hand value of VW of that specific milage and that specific year of manufacturing.  

Don’t get me wrong there is always a buyer who will appreciate off-grid permaculture eco tech and all the years you’ve invested into your creation, but the chances are slim. So a better solution might be: to rent a part of it out or have your elderly parents/parent move in. So we need to design a home that should we wish to have other people stay near us, that we still have our own private space without hearing or feeling people near by.

In my case I bought already an expensive land with a home in the city and added all those permaculture eco technologies and structures. It will be different if you bought a cheap piece of land in popular countryside and build a home that will be attractive for others to live in. 

Popular countryside is a key! If it is out in the middle of nowhere finding tenants in the future might also be a problem as not many people are prepared to live without other people. So if you are the only neighbour around, there might be manipulations and other issues. When designing a home one should think all these things from the get go. For example a potential to build a wall (with sound insulation) to separate and demarcate 2 spaces within your  home, as well as 2 separate entrances or like one of my wautillarium design, I have two wings in the house.

The new homes I am designing, inspired by Philip Block could grow and shrink as needed.

If you absolutely hate design and do not trust yourself, then you might be better off buying a professionally worked out architectural blueprint. If you are willing to try then I am here to assist you all the way, as Bio-Architecture is my own passion.

The challenges when buying a blueprint, is that it does not consider your budget, strength levels and availability of local materials.  For example:

• if you live in a rocky area then foundations and stem walls could be build from rocks
• Specific climatic conditions require specific design changes to avoid expensive heating and cooling costs, for the duration of your home’s life

This off-the-shelf blueprint will be generalised as to what the architect has learned and can “safely” put his stamp on. It usually involves using expensive materials that one has to climb into debt to acquire.

An Earthship blueprint does not consider earth bag for walls and CalEarth blueprints do not consider a stem wall or foundation made of tires. Of course these changes can be figured out and manually plugged in into any blueprint.

It all really depends on you: if you have decided to invest into a professional blueprint that meets your:

• floor space and volume needs
• strength levels
• level of construction skills
• involves the local (under your feet) materials that you will be using
• allocates for easy split off for part of the home in order to rent out

Then why not… I found it hard to find a blueprint that meets all the boxes above.

It is my life’s work to develop a DIY, fast to build, self heating & cooling, food producing, off-grid living bio shelter for most erratic weather. To date I’ve invested over 10000 hours into my wautillarium house design.  Other bio-architects I learned from such as Mike Reynolds, Hajjar Gibran, Nader Khalili, Michael Rice, Philip Block, Frei Otto etc have also invested countless hours into their architectural designs. Taking inspiration from other Bio-Architects and natural builders or by investing into their blueprints, if they suit you, is a wise choice.  

I am also designing a professional blueprint for my first wautillarium. The same one that we will be working on throughout this training. I will refer to it by the name of 

”LARIUM AQUA TERRARIUM”

I’ll test out this dwelling on myself as our family home. I will get it assessed and calculated by a professional certified engineer to produce a blueprint that can easily get an approval within your own country. 

I also offer my own time to assist you with your own home design in your specific climatic conditions.

This aim of this training is to assist you in building the actual home, whether you decide to draw your own design or purchase a ready made blueprint.

If you do want to delve deeper into learning HOW TO DESIGN YOUR OWN HOME I have a 2D>3D drawing course where you will learn how to  draw a home on Graph paper and in CAD. This information will not be covered in this Wautillarium course.     www.bioveda.co/3d 

In this course I will focus on how to build a home with its various DIY elements so that  our living bio shelters:

• Harvest precipitation, 
• Pressurise stored water to our taps, (Water Organising Module video is ready) 
• RE-cycle our grey and black water 
• Using our grey water to safely grow ornamentals and food within the green house
• DIY Low-cost for black water treatment to fruit trees
• Passive cooling and heating techniques
• 2 types of vaults (ferro cement & wooden lattice)

For a successful and safe construction you will need to have the knowledge and practical understanding of the following elements that I will present to you within this training:

• The various foundations types based on your climate and soil types, 
• The materials that your home will be build from and their insulatative, mass and strengths properties  
• The geometries that make your home strong and solid. 

We will digest all of the above one step at a time. The most important anchoring point is to build a shell that is strong and comfortable to inhabit. The rest can be added afterwards.

Of course all the sleeves have to be placed through, under and above your foundations. Sleeves are: pieces of short pipe that you will place your grey and black water outlets, fresh water in, air ducts, electrical. This will be shown later on in practical.

The challenge I have set myself is to develop the home with above strategies that can be accomplished with relative simplicity on a shoestring budget!

PRACTICAL: I will share the basic drawing class (IT IS BELOW) with you so you are able to draw and visualise your home from the top, side and front. To be able to see your home from all sides, forms the basics of your visualisation process. This will assist you to transfer your home design onto the ground.  If you can see it you can build it!

All good designs are inspired by nature. Any natural form of a living organism is designed to suit the function that this organism (a home) has to perform. A successful design of any organism must be able to fuse the laws of physics and correct geometry to consider it’s habitat and it’s function within this habitat.

Things to consider that will affect the designs of our homes

WATER 

HIGH WATER TABLE - if high water table then wide tire footing with gravel in the first course. Trench is a must to lower the water table around the building site. My friend Derrell has a great tool for pulling up tire to make it much much easier to ram the earth in it. The Gravel might not need much ramming once the tool releases the rims/sides of the tire downwards, as stones do not compress. 

LOW WATER TABLE  - Good chase that you will be able to dig your home in and use undisturbed earth as a “free” buttress. Water might be scarce hence think of a water tank.

FLOODING ZONES - definitely think of raising your home above the 100 year flood mark. Speak to the neighbours to find out about floods in the past. Look at drone and google earth footage, take hikes to observe the terrain for water gullies. Do research on what to look out for. Take responsibility: this is serious, the river flooded my home and also bent the city sewage pipe which resulted in sewage also flooding my home. If river is nearby or you are buying a home on a flood plain, it could mean danger. Study topographical maps and observe the contour lines…try and imagine the path of water within these contour lines. The climates are changing… my river never flooded until upstream the grass land turned into hard surface run-off, with newly built roofs, paving and roads. This is important, because if you are choosing to build next to a city, hard surface run off is likely to happen and will cause floods that never were observed before. Remember what Viktor Schauberger said, if the soil is hotter than rain that falls down, then the soil can not absorb the water. Thus said it becomes the same as hard surface run-off, most of the rain skims on the surface. Very little of it penetrates into the ground, and none of it reaches the aquifers

SOILS

CLAYEY SOILS   - if expansive clays with high water table then wide footing such as pick-up tire 225/16/65 or proper concrete with rebar foundation. Bad drainage in clay soils, therefore think of french drain to divert the water away from foundations.

You might want to consider employing a clay brick vault builder that you can co-work and learn from, especially if you are going to be building many structures on your property.  Clay soils love lime as stabiliser (not cement) {lime burns hands}

SANDY SOILS - drainage will be good, easier to dig the foundations with just spades. Excellent material for +- 1:10 to go straight into super adobe bags. (1 part cement : 10 parts earth)  Sandy soils prefer cement as stabiliser rather than lime.

ROCKY SOILS - will effect your excavation for the foundations and make it much harder. Could use stones to lay out the foundations and even build your walls with. (all depends on the amount of stones you have around you). You material will need to be screened if you want to put it into Hyperadobe / super adobe bags (depends on the quantity and size of your stones). Sharp stones in your bags might rip the Hyperadobe as you stomp them. SuperAdobe might be better… DO A REAL LIFE BUILDING TEST pounding ready made mix into a HyperAdobe and a SuperAdobe bag and choose what works for you. Remember that super adobe uses 1x extra step, the barbwire

ENVIRONMENT

FORESTED AREA - might not be enough sunlight to charge up the mass of our homes in summer. There might not be any winter sun at all. You need to think of a masonry heater (with a solid foundation due to its weight) as firewood is plenty. Your masonry heater should be large enough so you can stoke it no more than once a day in winter. In my case I will utilise a south Korean warm floor system, making my whole earthen floor as one large MASS “masonry" heater.

DESERT  - plan for large water tank and incorporate it into the burial or insulate it so it does not freeze in winter (depends how cold it gets). You will need to think of designing a large roof in order to harvest big quantity of clean water. You also might want to consider sinking your home in, to reap that benefits of the mean stable temperature of the earth. Design a  “C” shape diversion swale direct the flooding water away from your home (if you are at the lower/valley part)

ON A SLOPING SITE -  diversion swale to divert water coming from uphill.  If on a slope then you might be able to dig your home in and use earth as buttress and tap into the warmer temperature of the earth. On a steep slope you will need to think of splitting your home into various stepped levels. The warmth and air circulation is in your favour as you could store the warmth lower and sent it up. The air circulation will work the same , by letting in preheated fresh air at the bottom (the know how will be discussed in the future section) then this air will flow upwards through out your home whilst exiting at the highest point of the highest floor. Plan the air travelling pathway straight away. Try and imagine that you are air… hot air rises, cold air sinks.

BOGGY OR MARHS site - see hight water table (above) Consider adding an extra stem wall filled with sand to keep yourself way above ground

CLIMATE

SUBZERO WINTERS - If you temperatures are constantly at least -5C / 23F & colder then foundations should be insulated either with a skirt (much cheaper) or perpendicularly down. (Foundations will be discussed later)  A course of pumice or scoria could be used in the first course of tires or earth bags to separate from cold ground, or use another load bearing insulation.

There might be plenty of underground water which you can use for washing and building. You might not need a large reservoir / water tank. Outside it will definitely freeze and pop (unless buried within the berm). Only a smaller tank might me necessary for drinking / cooking needs. Test you well water, do price comparison of  a shallow well (4 feet wide  6-18 feet deep) - this water is generally worse if there are a lot of neighbours around VS deep well with better quality water. Test you water in any case just to know if it is good for consumption. Designing a small water harvesting system just for drinking and cooking is much cheaper  than designing a system to meet ALL your water needs.

OVERCAST IN COLD WINTER -  orient the angle of your greenhouse glazing towards the “sunnier times”. The same should be done with the pitch of your roof, if you want the winter sun to reach to the back of your rooms  (on the local weather website find out the averages of when the cloud cover usually dissipates. Keep in mind that 3 layered polycarbonate reduces sunlight only by +-%5 at an angle of up to 40 degrees from perpendicular penetration. This is the reason that I am able to play with curvilinear shapes as the sunlight will still enter the home through the polycarbonate. The same can not be spoken about the glass; at 40 degrees angle from direct perpendicular solar penetration, the glass will act similar to a mirror and reflect a larger percentage of sunlight rays. Do your own research into the exact angles, if this is relevant for you. It might not be applicable if you have already decided to make a vertical glass to avoid complications.

HIGH WINDS / hurricanes or tornado -  Buried home or interesting shape of the home that can not be lifted. Depending on your wind situation you might want to consider over engineering a bit by increasing the frequency of “ribs/struts” that your glazing is connected to. For example not every 1 metre between glass but less. Amount of over engineering should be your own research and common sense. (here I will share with you my 14000 litre / 3500 Gal water tank in South Africa that I attached to my lounge wall. Slightly Over engineering a home with common sense will still be cheaper then going to an engineer and you will have a steadier stronger home. The dangers come when we bury our homes and then we need to be careful and calculate materials and geometry (which will be discussed below) 

Talking to an engineer is never a bad idea, although few of them are knowledgable in round shapes and arches. I.e. they are not used to calculating  designing arches and dome  

Also you might experience a mix of the above situations and then you should plan accordingly. High desert, low precipitation, occasional tornados, freezing winters, low water table etc.

COMMON SENSE ENGINEERING 

What do I mean by using common sense in engineering? Important to understand that more than 99% of homes around the world are not engineered and most of them are standing up. There are some failures at times, and usually when the materials are not stabilised (with lime or cement) and they just get mushy soft with water or if the correct geometry was not adhered to during construction. We can not go wrong and our homes will stand the test of time if we use common sense, tried and tested geometry with correct implementation techniques and materials.

IMPORTANT FACTS WITH REGADS TO STRENGTH OF OUR STRUCTURES THAT COME FROM TENSILE AND COMPRESSIVE FORCES

1. We know that tires and super/hyper adobe are incredibly strong on compression, they are heavy as they are a rammed/compressed earth techniques. This means that if compressed properly (this technique will be shown later in practical) they by themselves WILL hold an insane amount of weight, if the force of this weight is exerted downwards on the Tire or SuperAdobe or Rammed earth wall
2. We know that if we have a catenary chain hanging upside down and all parts of our vault structure fit in (including the thickness of the walls and thickness of the vault) then it will stand by itself, without collapsing. This is how ancient engineers and architects worked out complex structures. Gaudi worked out his famous cathedral, Basílica de la Sagrada Família,  all upside down.
3. We know that if we place a concrete rebar reinforced beam then we have a solid binding of vault to our walls. This is coupled with TENSILE FORCES that hold the vault in place, “glued” to the wall and counter balanced the pressure, that the vault is exerting outwards. The horizontal beam spreads this force  evenly over the entire length of the wall.  (will be shown in practical)

However because the roof was not buried, In our Brazil build, we did not use such a beam and just hammered a 3 foot rebar (2 foot in), into predrilled holes every 40 cm. The 1 foot of rebar that was sticking out, is what we tied the metal mesh vault to later plaster on.

Thus said healthy over engineering would be: 

• to build this horizontal ferro beam (see our underground water tank in the water course - the know how  will be shown in practical)
• . EarthShips also use a horizontal ferro beam with rebar sticks sticking out (just like we did in Brazil) but they also have 1-2 horizontal rebars that run continuously along the whole beam connecting to these verticals.   (will be shown in practical)
• Cal earth also don’t have a concrete beam but they have a double wall which counterbalances the lateral forces that the vault exerts.

This over engineering is still cheaper than getting an engineer involved.

1. BUTTRESSING: We know that buttressing is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to counter balance the lateral forces. There are 3 types of buttressing

• (A) By submerging the home in the earth or by burying the walls with earth (EarthShip style) we counterbalance  the static force that’s exerted from the above earthen burial (including the weight of the roof itself). By buttressing the sides we guarantee that our vaults DO NOT POP OUT. Domes are also buttressed at the entrance s or unproportionaly large windows*  Submerged home is the easiest and strongest way of buttressing. If you have a low water table I would highly recommend it, as it will reduce the cost due to lower height of the walls + stabilise the temperature of the home (warmer in winter and cooler in summer)
• (B) Instead of buttressing with the earth the vault can be buttressed by building a double wall (this is a calculated decision, to be discussed in the video lesson). The other way is to create “rib” supports on the outside of the wall that holds the vault, which we did in Brazil. This also stabilises the wall and provides the same effect as our foot and toes. (without our feet and toes we would topple forwards much easier) - it counterbalances the lateral forces.
• (C) The 3rd way of buttressing is actually to connect the dome with steel rings or by using steel cables within the vault. This is discussed in tensile forces below >

1. Tensile Forces - Alternative to buttressing is to tie the vault with steel cables from inside. You often have seen it in various venues. This serves the same function: makes sure that the vault does not pop out! Guastavino dome and vault builder used metal tension rings in his brick domes making them monolithic  self supporting structures. This also replaces buttressing (it’s a calculated decision) and ties the dome together from within the structure - done within the bottom few rows when tensile forces are the strongest. When building super adobe dome we use barbwire which also serves the same function - The egg/lancet arch shape of our dome acts in compression and the continuous barbwire provides tensile forces to bind the dome together. THUS YOU HAVE TENSION & COMPRESSION FORCES  WORKING SIDE BY SIDE. In HyperAdobe method we do not use barbwire. Thus I would classify the use of barbwire as an over engineering technique that I would only use in an area of heavy duty seismic activity. Just like doing a super adobe bench around the home as per this home in Joshua Tree We will go into the know how at a later stage in the practical part of this training.

1. By using the same hanging CATENARY CHAIN we can safely test out whether our structures will hold. With upside down chains we get to learn that shallow vaulted arch will push more sideways in other words exert stronger lateral force. The higher / elongated vault will push more downwards, in other words exert a stronger vertical force . How does this effect our design? > If we have a shallow vault then we will need more buttressing and if it is an elongated higher vault therefore it will need less buttressing. Also consider that higher elongated vault can not be covered by thin layer of earth as anything over than 25 - 30 degree angle will result in earth sliding off!!! To work our how much buttressing you need and to get more info on vault calculations here is an excellent document from the AuroVille eco village. Here is a simple excellent video lesson that explains this 

By adding the cement and sand plaster to the metal mesh you now get ferro cement. Coupled with correct geometry, ferro cement arches and vaults are very strong on tension as well as compression. Please watch this video (9 min 40 sec in) where the architect stands on the miniature 1:10 scale model. (you can multiple the real weight that it can hold by x1000 times, because it is x10 smaller in Length, Width and Height) therefore his full scale vaulted structure can HOLD AN  EQUIVALENT OF AN ABRAHAMS TANK ON TOP OF IT!!!

1. For deeper understanding of force diagrams there is a subject called GRAPHIC STATICS. Graphic Statics shows how the forces of our structures are exerted. This video by Philip Block explains it superbly.  I am new to Graphic Statics but the way Philip Block explains it, makes it understandable even for any novice. It’s the basics of structural engineering. It is a subject that I will be delving deeper into as I develop more complex curvilinearly organic vaulted masonry systems as per Philip Block’s Rhino Vault 2 plug in that they developed (it is open source plug in to Rhino 3D. I teach Rhino 3D at our drawing course)

If you do not want to calculate the catenaries and understand the graphic tactics then I recommend to use simple RULE OF THUMB sizes and shapes of rooms that are perfected. I will present these to you in our training:

• SIZE: size structures I have been taught and that I teach. For example I don’t push over 5.5 m / 16 feet for aircrete dome. Going bigger will need to increase in size of brick, possibly the strength of aircrete brick and even a tweak within the foundation to accommodate the increased weight of the structure.
• THICKNESS: 4 inch thickness of the ferro-cement vault (max of 4 metre width
• BUTTRESS: Double wall for a standard 4 m vaults as per cal earth. Doing what we did in Brazil is uncalculated and risky due to the catenary arch that has to go through the vault.
• SUBMERGED HOME: exact Siberian method of wooden vault (max 6.5 m width) + NB buttress.  The earth is the best butters hence if your home is submerged in the ground one does not need to calculate the correct amount of buttressing. Unlike if you home is above the ground, then the walls that hold the vault need to be bermed up with compressed earth or buttressed as per the vault diagram. Failure to do so will result in collapse!
• DISTANCE BETWEEN DOORD AND WINDOWS: correct distance between openings (that is doors and windows in a dome as taught in the principles of bio-tecture part #1 and part #2 lessons). 
• DISTANCE BETWEEN COLUMNS: Safe distance between columns: I’ve been taught to use 3 metres between arches and I replicated this successfully in my ferro cement seashell 11x6.5 m or 33x20 foot span

As a first time builder I would not recommend to go bigger then the above recommendations. They can be increased with practice and correct engineering using methods such as graphic statics and understanding of catenary arches.