This is an implementation brief for a large site we’re designing in the Altai Republic.
Our goals
The plans for the Altai site require the team’s attention to these main success factors:
- Supporting the basic functions of the chapel and/or monastery and center
- Creating a quiet, prayerful setting
- Preserving and enhancing the landscape’s natural beauty and richness
In permaculture design, we integrate all information about the land and environment, and make recommendations that allow developers to make the best possible use of nature in any project.
I have taken this occasion to write a report about how permaculture design can best inform the first steps of this important project in a beautiful setting.
Findings
As permaculture designers, our first duty is to encourage a mutually beneficial relationship between people and the environment they live in. One of the most important areas where that relationship can often be improved is in the buildings we inhabit.
Structures are an extension of the land, and the building methods we use directly impact the earth. Small, inexpensive changes in our building practices can be the difference between harming the environment and healing it.
Many people want to build in an ecological way. But many “ecological” buildings are expensive and artificial, and will be catastrophic to the environment at the end of their lifespan. Is this necessary? What if we could construct comfortable, environmentally friendly structures using simple, affordable, and biodegradable materials?
Let’s take a permaculture approach to this question, starting with the specific factors we have to work with for this site.
Site considerations: soil and water
Soil
The soil on the site we’re developing is fragile. It’s rich and deep, a valuable resource that’s at risk of being lost to erosion. Many farms throughout the area have soil visibly slumping off hillsides due to poor management. Especially during the building process, but also through the lifetime of the building, measures must be taken to avoid hastening this degradation.
At any building site on the property, there will be a great deal of topsoil to remove before the foundation can be laid.
When moving fertile soil, it is important to avoid its destruction as a result of compaction or mixing with other materials, including infertile soil.
It is also important to consider where the soil should be moved. It can be used to fill terraced gardens or to make the slope leading down from the building more gentle.
We must also ensure that on any non-terraced slope created during excavation, the rise-to-run ratio is 1:3 or shallower, and that anti-erosion groundcover plants are planted immediately.
Water
First, a commonly understood rule: if there’s water under the foundations, and it’s near enough the surface to freeze, it will destabilize the structure. This means that foundations must reach deep, and be supported below the frost depth—or that the ground underneath must remain perfectly dry.
But there’s also the issue of flooding, which was unfortunately missed in the construction of Dmitri’s cottage at the creek, the only structure currently in use on the property.
If a building is placed where water pools naturally at any time of year, that building will flood during those times. Dmitri’s cottage is within the creek’s flood zone, an area better left without buildings. Before building, it’s important to know where flood zones are, and where the ground will stay reasonably dry and stable. This will often mean building on ridges, and staying out of valleys.
Improving the future by building on the past: local materials and traditional methods
It may be possible to pour concrete foundations and to truck in flatbeds of AAC block or notched logs for izba buildings, but that doesn’t mean these are the best options. Besides the initial cost of materials and transportation, moving those materials up the hills on our site without causing significant erosion seems very difficult. This approach would also be dependent on much skilled labor and heavy machinery, and would leave a lot of debris and waste to clean up after construction is completed. All this would add to costs and time, and disrupt the landscape severely.
A more proper solution may be to only use materials that come directly from the site. If we build with the wood, earth, and stone found in the valley itself, materials are essentially free. Not only this, but the use of local materials motivates people to take responsibility for maintaining the land and buildings where they live and work. Therefore, I posit that materials gathered on the site itself should be used whenever possible in all structures.
Dmitri’s house
I mentioned some of the issues the little cottage by the creek faces. These are of course vital concerns in any building, but the type of construction it uses is ingenious, and a wonderful example to work from. It’s simple, cheap, and durable, and can be implemented without heavy equipment.
The house is framed with large timbers, and only has one floor. A grid of wood lath is nailed between the timbers, onto which is plastered the mud mix that forms the walls themselves. The outer walls are clad in wood, while the interior is plastered.
This sort of system, where a timber frame is infilled with a cheap nonstructural material like mud, makes the use of local materials very straightforward. Larch timbers suitable for framing and birch for lath are readily available on the mountainsides, and mud is simple to make from the earth we build on. A sawmill is not necessary to frame with large timbers, since they can be simply hewn with an axe, or used in their original round form.
Conclusion
As we build on this site, these are the most important details to get right:
- To avoid exacerbating erosion, we should take care in how vehicles move through the site during construction; where motor vehicles must be used, most vital is to avoid driving in valleys.
- Soil moved during construction should be saved carefully and used on the site.
- Buildings should go in well-drained areas, not in valleys. Rainwater should be diverted from the foundations.
- Local wood, stone, and earth should be used everywhere possible. It’s necessary to harvest these correctly, in a way that doesn’t destroy the landscape.
- Dmitri’s house is a great starting point for methods of construction.
- Consult with us on the implementation of all these points.
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