Allie Westhoff
Natural Building Summer 2015
Home Design
The past few weeks I have been sketching rough plans of my home, researching the building codes and permits required to build an accessory dwelling unit in Garfield County, Colorado.
I've decided to base the house's plan around a golden rectangle with the rooms in golden ratio sections. The interior dimensions are 25ft by 41ft with an additional 8ft wide greenhouse running the length of the south side. This gives me 1025 square feet of space in the home, and 296 square feet to work with in the greenhouse. The bathroom will be on 3 ft stem walls and kitchen will be on 5 ft stem walls made from stone and mortar on the south side of the house. This will provide a crawl space to accommodate grey water systems, plumbing, gas lines, and a root cellar under the kitchen. Ideally I will use as little concrete as possible in the foundation, utilizing a rubble trench with a thin concrete slab on top. There are a lot of large stones on my land and I want to stack them with concrete mortar to form the stem walls for the kitchen and bathroom. The bedroom and living areas will be dug to 36" into the earth with a monolithic slab foundation on top of an insulated floor. There will be steps up to the elevated part of the home, and steps down into the greenhouse which will be set on piers with undisturbed earth as the floor. The frame will be post and beam, with straw bale infill on the north east and west walls. The interior walls and the south side of the house will be blends of stone, wood, cob, and glass (or a similar clear material with better insulation). There will also be a loft above the living room.
Ideally in the future I will attain all my energy from wind turbines and solar panels, contain the gases from my compost as fuel for my stove, and grow the majority of my own food year round. I also hope to create a large duck pond with my treated grey water and plant an extensive food forest of mountain friendly plants. The goal is to create a diverse home stead that will create habitat for wildlife and make the land better with development.
Here are my floor plan and foundation plans:
The house will be located in Glenwood Springs, Colorado at an elevation of 6400 ft. There's an average rainfall of 21 inches a year and average snowfall of 51 inches per year. The wind on the property comes primarily from the west and south west. We get very cold winters and hot summers, so good insulation and the right window/ thermal mass ratio is important. The frost line that the foundation must be dug to is 36 inches, the wall's insulation must have a value of R-20, and the snow load requirement that my structure must be able to support is 40PSI.
If all goes according to plan I will be starting construction in the spring of 2016... and with the help of friends and family hopefully have it finished in two years.
Links:
Adobe floor tutorial: http://buildnaturally.blogspot.com/search/label/adobe%20floor
Strawbale tips: http://buildnaturally.blogspot.com/search/label/strawbale
Passive Solar Heating and Cooling: http://passivesolar.sustainablesources.com/
Attached Greenhouse Info: http://www.theyearofmud.com/2012/04/02/build-your-own-attached-greenhouse/
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