Hello everyone, hope you're having a splendid day!
Thought I'd post another Tipi update.. What with my musical endeavours, my go series HTPG and the weekly podcast, I don't want the ecoVillage (the reason I originally joined Hive) to fall between the cracks..
So apologies for the sparse posts, but I'll do my best to keep you all up to speed.
Also, it must be said that the land isn't progressing with haste... More of a lackadaisical pace...
This is not for lack of want, or even trying, but we do seem to have a lot on our plate right now..
We manage to get down to the land around 3 times a week each of us, for a few hours at a time.. Not a lot, but more than we were in the preceeding months...
The reason for this post is, I wanted to share with you our design for the floor. If you haven't been following us, we decided to raise a Tipi as our first home on the land. The Tipi wasn't our first choice, but we eventually decided on it for a variety of reasons (check my last updatefor more deets)..
We began by sourcing the poles on the land, but this proved to be impossible to complete before the winter (watch the video at the end for more details) and so we bought the remaining poles we needed, raised the Tipi (without the cover)
to get more accurate measurements for the floor, and now we're ready to start!
Now, a Tipi is a temporary dwelling, designed to be put up and taken down in a matter of hours.
This is why most people either go with the standard nylon floor cover, along with some rugs to insulate a bit, or the equally standard wooden deck,(usually with some rugs as well).
We however have chosen a different route..
We wanted to use this opportunity to learn some new skills, and we both love working with Cob (an earth building mixture) so we decided to design and build a floor for our Tipi.
Since we're doing it all ourselves from the bottom up, we have the liberty to design (and completely over-engineer) our perfect floor.
Our thought being, although the Tipi itself might not stay up, the floor should be able to be built up one day.. (add some cob walls, or a wooden shack, and you've got a house).
OK, enough chit chat, on to the design:
The base of the floor is a layer of rocks of various sizes, from big boulders down to gravel to fill in the gaps. This acts as a drainage layer, so that any excess water that manages to find its way under the floor, will have room to escape. We're building a retainer dry wall around the lower half of the floor (as it is on a slope) and through the wall we will fit a small draining pipe, so the water doesn't find its way through the wall itself.
On top of the rocks goes most of the earth. The type of earth for this layer is called roadside, and is basically made up of all different sizes and types of minirals; sand, clay, soil, rocks of all sizes. Since its the bottom layer, that provides stability but doesn't stand tall, it doesn't need as much binding material as cob walls.
The final layer of the floor is made up of increasingly finer layers of clay,eventually sealing it all with a lot of linseed oil. This both seals the floor to be water proof, prevents bacteria and other organisms burrowing through, and softens the clay to a more rubbery texture, that feels wonderful under your bare feet (and cushions any of Tao's falls)
So far, that's a pretty standard cob floor.
Our addition, which I'm quite excited about, is that we want to have air tunnels going through the floor. These tunnels will serve a dual purpose. In the summer they allow cool air to flow in from a lower prussure point (further down the slope outside), replacing the hot air in the Tipi that escapes through the top. And in the winter, the air pipes outlet will connect to our stove to serve as a permanent oxygen supply for the fire. (with the same principle. The fire heats up the air around it, which draws in cool air from outside.)
The idea is to build a cob rocket stove, a two meter chamber in a slight arc on the ground, that will be both a warmed bench, and allow more heat to dissipate before traveling up the chimney escape.
The tunnels are easy to make, as they don't have to be water tight, and since they're buried underground,even if there is a hole in the pipe, it should still work. Of course we'll cover the end with mesh to prevent things just walking in.. But the system itself requires no power, can be very long lasting (as there are no moving parts) and if anything goes wrong no damage is caused, it just stops working...
So that's our plan for the floor... We'll keep you posted as it develops, right now I'm running around the land collecting the biggest rocks I can find, loading the wheelbarrow, and dumping them all on the floor, to slowly see it fill up...
Slowly...
If you would like to see us raising the tipi and working on the land, here's our latest video on YouTube.