Radon

I remember the big fuss about radon when it first came out (yeah, I'm that old) and since I'd really like to dig 3-4ft below grade (given we don't hit solid rock) so we're protected from weather by the earth, radon is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. So I thought I'd dig into it and research it now before we put more time and effort into design. I personally know of no one who has even done anything to reduce radon levels in their home, nor do they seem at all concerned about it. But every website I found that talks about it raises concern about its links to lung cancer. I have always wanted to have fresh air in my home, to bring what's outside, inside. Breathing in concentrated radiation isn't my idea of clean air.

My latest research into radon included an Ohio map of counties where homes were found most likely to test high for radon. The county in which we plan to build was among those in the red zone. :-(

 My guess is that the reason for such high numbers of radon-saturated homes is that the county we're moving to is a predominantly rural county and there are a lot of old houses that have crawlspaces with wood floors, or with unfinished basements where the mortar has cracked, some without any brick at all. Radon gas comes from the constant breakdown of uranium and radium in our soil - Ohio apparently has some quantities of it.

The problem with radon isn't that it gets into the home and we breathe it in. It's that most homes are airtight and the air doesn't flow through it very freely. In a lot of cases, there's a negative air flow in the basements caused by the furnace pulling in air to heat the house. That air sucks the radon gas from the basement walls and floor into the rest of the house and doesn't leave very quickly. Instead it gets recirculated through the air intake ducts, pulling dust in with it. Breathing radon gas directly isn't what's dangerous, because you just breathe it right back out, and it doesn't have time to do any damage to your lungs. The problem most modern homes have is that the radon settles into the dust, thanks to static electricity, which recirculates through the furnace ducts, then you breathe in the dust particles and the radioactive radon molecules that are attached to those dust particles that get lodged in your lungs will sit and decay - slowly releasing radiation into your lungs that can cause cancer.

Fortunately, the conditions that mitigate the concentration of radon into a home are inherently built in to natural home building's design.

To start with, there's the floor.

I included this image in another post earlier describing the kind of floor I wanted to build.

By laying down a vapor barrier on top the open, bare earth, we've already slowed down radon's release into the home considerably. We also intended to include a vapor barrier between the back-fill and whatever we use to build the walls (rammed earth tires, earth bags, can walls, bottle walls etc). When  I first considered doing this floor, I thought the vapor barrier might not be necessary. But considering Ohio's high radon output, I'd just rather do it than have to worry about it.

On top of the vapor barrier I want to put river rock, or large gravel, followed by layers of finer gravel. Initially this was to help distribute the heat (that is absorbed from the rocket mass heater) throughout the house. Now, I'm thinking of adding some open pipes near the outside edges of the lower regions of the layer with the largest gravel to facilitate some air flow.

Negative pressure usually occurs on the side of the house where the wind doesn't blow. In Ohio, most of the wind comes from the southwest. A few strategically placed (and screened to keep out critters) pipes on the northeast perimeter of the house, stretching from under the larger gravel to above grade, and capped with an aerodynamic cap (both to keep out the rain and to act like an airplane-wing to create more negative air pressure moving upwards), could gently draw out stagnant air from under the gravel. To prevent the negative air space (caused by the northeast pipes) from drawing in even more radon from the soil, a smaller number of pipes, with inclined, funnel shaped openings on the side of the house that the wind hits (the southwest perimeter), directed to accept the wind pressure, could force enough air into the gravel layer to replace the air being drawn out.

The two sets of pipes can create a gentle exchange of air throughout the floor gravel, letting the floor breathe, limiting not only radon build-up, but stagnant moisture accumulation as well. Combined with the heat from the rocket mass heater, any moisture that could travel between the stones would be gently carried away by the slow air flow. All this with zero expended energy.

Finally - since the home won't be heated through the transfer of forced warm, dry air through ventilation ducts, it's unlikely dust will accumulate the way it does in a traditional home. Fresh air will be brought in through pipes at the bottom of the back-fills. The temperature of the earth remains fairly constant at that depth - like around 50. In theory, the backfill would warm up the freezing, winter air and cool down the hot, summer air, so the air coming into the house would be regulated to a tolerable degree. The roof vent (we'll cover that in another blog) would release any warmed air through the roof, creating a negative air flow, pulling in the regulated air from the back-fill pipes. In winter, the rocket mass heater would be sucking in the air from the room to fuel the fire with oxygen, so that would also create a negative air flow to pull in the back-fill regulated air.

This regular exchange of fresh air should vent out any radon gas that would wander in - again, letting the whole house breathe. Combined with the oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange from planting edible plants in every available space in the house that receives sunlight, I think the air in our little space should be as fresh as a forest.

Quick and Dirty Swale Calculator

If you know permaculture, you know the importance of swales... those wonderful little ditches that trap water and use it to feed your land. If you don't know what they are, this is a link to a video by the great Jeff Lawton himself that describes it better than I ever could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KftJ5ZP4nTs

A cheap, quick and easy way to make a tool to calculate the contour of your land is to ...

1. Take two long boards - doesn't matter exactly how long, as long as they're the same length and long enough to come up to about eye level.
2. Bolt them together at one end with a 1" or 2" block of wood between them, because you're going to...
3. attach another board as a crossbar to the first two boards equidistant from the other ends of the first two boards, forming a capital 'A'
4. Strap a level to the crossbar and you're done

To use that tool, you ...

1. Start at one end of your property
2. Find a spot on the side of your hill, preferably higher up, where you'd like to stop the flow of runoff across your land. 
3. pound in a stake in the ground
4. put one leg of your "Atool" next to that stake
5. then swing the other leg around, watching your level on the crossbar and making sure it stays level.
6. When you hit the ground and you're crossbar is level, you know you've found the next place to pound a stake. 
7. Keep doing that across your property until you get to the other end.
8. Now you dig your ditch along the line you made with those stakes, piling the dirt just below the ditch you dug.

Update: 1/5/15

Quicker and dirtier? Yes you can!
If you can't afford a level --- try this?
Just tie two long sticks together, holding the "A" together at the top.
Hang a weight from a string tied to the point of the "A".
Notch where the string crosses the center of the cross bar.
Flip the A frame around so each leg is in the exact same spot the opposite leg was.
Notch the crossbar again where the string crosses it.
The point halfway between the two notches (if they're not at the same place)
will mark the exact center perpendicular to level ground.

Floor

I once attended a workshop at the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, Pa where a Native American talked about how he set up his tipi on a gravel floor and put his fire pit below grade to distribute the heat throughout the floor. Ever since them I wanted to move my rocket stove under a gravel floor.

I read a forum post on permies.com about using gravel under the subflooring to prevent moisture, and it brought me back to the same idea. After reading that I'm wondering now whether or not I should use a vapor barrier.

It would seem to me that if I provide enough 'below grade' drainage along the uphill perimeter of the house that should significantly reduce moisture. Also the river gravel should prevent moisture wicking up from below. Then when I apply heat in the form of solar radiation and a rocket mass heater, that should provide enough evaporation to prevent condensation from building up within the gravel. I'm afraid that if I use a vapor barrier, that might lose breathe-ability, causing moisture pockets. 

Guess we should test for radon :-\

So far, this is the plan. We'll see what happens.

Useful Websites

This is just a start - I'll post useful videos and websites all in one place for access to us and whoever wants to read this blog.

http://homestead.org/
Has a nice index of articles on homesteading. The first one we read was how to save tons of money paying off the loan sooner.

http://www.permies.com/
Real people, doin' it. Mostly covers permaculture techniques and people's experience with it.

http://earthship.com/blogs/category/ck1-learn-more/ck2-how-to/
The home website of our original inspiration for doing what we're doing now.

http://weatherspark.com/
Great detailed charts on local weather, as well as trends, highs and lows, all in chart foramt to make it easy to visualize. Even sun angles at various times of the day, nice for figuring overhanging areas for shade and solar gain.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/renewable-energy-options-zm0z14jjzrob.aspx#axzz3Ky0aKyET
Various places on a Homestead where renewable energy can be implemented

http://www.conservationtechnology.com
Though geared more towards manufactured products for various green building design, it still has useful 'general' info on water collection, ponds, green roofs, etc

Growing Grains (Mother Earth News article)
Advice on growing grains

Fungi.com
Mycoremediation - we plan to use it in our composting toilets and to protect from neighboring pesticide and herbicide runoff

Attracting Bats

Nickel Iron Batteries
Apparently you can build your own battery, they last 50 years and are non-toxic.

Open Permaculture Magazine

First things to do

Before we consider anything, we need to look into planting some trees.

Nut trees...

• almonds
• pecans
• Umbrella English walnuts
• Black walnuts
• hazelnut bushes

 ....on the south end of the woods, cuz they grow well in the woods.

Fruit trees...

• Apples - 3-6 varieties
• Plums
• Pears
• Apricots
• Cherries

.... on the north by the road, that's the top of the hill.

Fruit trees would get tons of sun on top the hill, and help hold the water table up a bit more. The blossoms will look awesome in spring and help draw pollinators, who will hopefully stop and pollinate our garden too. 

Maybe blackberry, raspberry for fencing all along the west border.

At home over this first winter we can work on some things too...

• make bottle bricks
• make frames for temporary walls and critter structures
• Make things for the cat corral
• hoard stuff for building

We need to test stuff, too ---

• Test the soil in various areas. 
• Test the water in the stream for pesticides and herbicides.
• Test for radon in the building area

Plant buckwheat and/or oats - they're good for developing soil

(to be continued...)

Reading the lay of the land.

So I spent a little time last week mapping the contours of the building area and some of the creek to see what exactly could be done with the property from a permaculture standpoint. To do this, I pulled up Google earth, hovered my cursor over the various points along the terrain and drew lines, using GM's line tool, to trace out everything that was a certain elevation, then moved down 2 feet in elevation to make the next line. This created the following contour lines...

Not exactly a good replacement for surveying but satellite measurements I hear are pretty accurate.

Most americans will move onto a property and just plop down a house with the windows facing the road, throw in a few yard ornaments and spend the rest of their lives mowing the lawn. We're not about that. Moving into a property is creating a relationship with the property. It's taken a lot of time for the current ecosystem to evolve. Your best bet is to ease into the system, figure out how it works, then make just a few minor tweaks to to make it all work in your favor without upsetting the whole flow of things. First you need to get a feel for how the land is laid out. Then you have to figure how to slow down and use the water, from the time it hits the ground (or your roof) til it finally leaves the creek, so you don't have to rely on some government agency to pipe water into your house.

I hadn't outlined the other hills in the woods yet, but so far the highest elevation on the landscape was in the 1052'-1053' area up by the building area (far left), and the lowest was 994' where the creek let out onto the next lower property (the red area in the middle). So in 404' the property drops 59 feet'. This section will be the zone 0, zone 1 and zone 2 areas for gardening.

Below there's a satellite shot of the place with my notes. The green outline is all our land.


Building will likely be along the 1040'-1050' elevation lines, and the 1030', more closely lined area will be for terrace gardening. We're thinking it might work best to cut a drainage ditch along the northeast contour and drain it west where we can make a small fishpond along that only spot where it dips into the contour. We could incorporate that into the building as an aquaponics pool. Maybe if we find that it overflows we can build some trickling waterfalls along the west border until it empties into the first of the garden swales below the building area, like this...

The south facing hill at the north end of the land will be the best place to capture the sun. The northern rail fence we plan to plant corn and sunflower, maybe Jerusalem artichokes, and lots of fruit trees. That, along with the backfill to the house and the downward slope of the hill, will protect us from the cold north winds in the winter time.

There's an existing rail fence all along the east side also that would be great for growing plants with vines and plants that need support. The fence is a few feet in from the eastern border of the land. The previous owners built it that way so they could mow around it. There'll be no talk of mowing on this property :-\ But since we have that unused space there, planting can be done along the other side of the fenceline to save room for more plants on this side, so the space won't go un-utilized. Maybe a series of arbors can also go along the east side of that fence for things like gourds, or we can grow grapes and other bush-type plants in that strip.

The contour lines show good possibilities for adding swales to slow the water flow and help feed the streams also. Permaculture is mostly about slowing down the flow of resources across your land and using them as much as possible. Swales are a good way to slow the flow of water, one of the most precious of resources. Using them to distribute small, shallow, long ponds along the contours (like the overflow pond in the image above) can create a lot of small ecosystems for growing sun-loving water plants.

There's a small bottleneck farther upstream that so far appears to be the best place to build a dam for a woodland pond, but that's a huge undertaking, especially given that I doubt I can get equipment back there. It's something I'd have to build when we've moved in and probably not til we've paid off the land so I can take a few weeks off work. But it would be a place to grow water plants and bring in more biodiversity. With two streams dumping into that spot a few rainstorms might fill it up quickly. There may be a better spot farther upstream. When I finish drawing the contour lines I'll be able to tell better.

To the south of us is a pasture (lots of puffball mushrooms we've seen already) and west is a corn field. Since it's likely a Monsatan-fed and pesticide-sprayed field, the entire west side top swale(s) will likely need to feature some heavy myco-remediation (cleaning with mushrooms), probably in the form of strawbales in the swale-ditches and hugelkultur mounds on its downhill side, to limit the flow of pesticides into our stream.

Nut trees will likely be planted around the woods, but maybe not til we find out where all the yummy morels are growing. We don't want to disturb the existing edibles - that's already free food for zero work. We've already found a few thick patches of puffballs, some hickory, pawpaw, black raspberries, wild grape and a few other edibles. We'd like to try to propogate those wild edibles as much as we can, as well as importing some of the plants we have where we're living now, like Mayapple, black raspberry, violets and spring beauties, wild onion, chickory, sweet annie, sorrell, etc.

There are still more contour lines to draw and more observing to do before we make final decisions, but edible fruit/nut trees take a few years to mature enough to get food from them, so we can't afford to wait too long. Right now it's a priority.

Finding the land

Andrea found this land months ago, and if you read our previous post, you read how we teetered between properties.

We'll we finally settled on Soulstice Homestead. The land was what I'd been looking for from the beginning. The road was on the north, so the windows of the house would face away from it. It sloped to the south, was elevated (so dampness wouldn't be an issue) and overlooked another 9 acres or so of woods with a small creek on it. The positioning was perfect for optimum solar and wind. The top of the slope was covered in clover already, so I figure the soil would be full of nitrogen. We could hook up electricity from the grid til we weened ourselves off it. The road was rarely traveled, and no houses would be in our southern view.

It's not the kind of lot most people would pay that kind of money for. It's nowhere near employment. Not much road frontage. The red line is the trail we took through it with the grandkids when we first looked at it - it had too many stickers to drag them through it.

It's the leftover land that can't be farmed (not by traditional agribusiness methods at least). That's what you want to look for, because it's cheap by comparison. I'm secretly hoping it fails a perc test just so we can use it as an excuse to create composting / vermiculture / mycoremediation toilets.

I called the local township re: building permits and inspection - they said I could pick up a building permit for $50 at the town meeting every first and third Tuesday of the month, and that Alvin usually shows up at about 6pm to issue them. There won't be any inspectors.

When we originally found it, there was no mention of a land contract, but rather than pass it up we felt it wouldn't hurt to ask, so I emailed the realtor handling the place and he said he'd ask, and we continued our search for a place to live. About a month later we met with him at the property for a tour. We said we had $8000 down and could handle about $300/month. I figured if we nailed down a flat figure the seller would be more accepting.

We had managed to save a few thousand over 4 years. Once we had that, we borrowed $1000 from 2 other people and $2000 from family, paying each back 10% of the loan per month with interest. We did this before we actually purchased land because we wanted to have a good down payment to entice owners to agree to a land contract - even if they hadn't planned on it originally. Those personal loans are now almost half paid off as we move forward to purchase this land.

We went through a few versions of the contract with the realtor - reading everything carefully. They first wanted a balloon payment after 3 years. We declined. They came back with a balloon payment after 6 years. After calculating and allowing for income tax returns for the next 6 years, we realized we could meet that and accepted. We also realized if we used those tax returns to pay more up front we'd save on the interest and pay it off sooner. So that's now the plan.

Next - I asked a couple questions about our ability to build on the land before the land was paid for. We swapped contract versions back and forth. The seller wrote that we could build so long as it met building code in regards to standard building practices and materials. I explained that tires and aluminum cans and wine bottles weren't standard building materials and if we couldn't build, we couldn't buy. Realizing the seller wasn't familiar with these building methods, I wrote out the following contract myself, taking into consideration her rights and what we wanted to do, and sent it to her through our realtor.


The seller agreed to the terms and at closing signed the agreement.

We were able to find this land by constantly and relentlessly searching Craigslist, Zillow, LandandFarm.com and other land websites. At one point we had even found a 16 acre lot with some old trailers on it for less than we're paying for this one, but we waited too long and the seller's relatives talked him out of selling it. Land is out there, you just need to look, and be patient.

But first you have to save.

We live a frugal lifestyle and this blog will try to organize and describe that lifestyle (that we'll cover in other blog posts) and you can do the same. Saving money is better than making money because it's tax free.

So fall's here. We have a lot of planning to do. We'll want to plant some fruit and nut trees in the spring and maybe do a little swale-digging to build up the water table. But first we'll need to observe, plan some camping trips, get a feel for the place before we make concrete plans.

Starting in the middle

So the first thing you need to survive cheaply in this world is land, and that's what we set out to find.

Owning land is the least expensive way to live in this world. When you rent, you are at the mercy of the owner of the house. If they don't want you to build something or knock out a wall or heat with wood or dig up the lawn for a garden, you can't. If they want to sell their property, you have to move. If they want to raise the rent, you have to move or pay more.

Owning a normal American house isn't much better. When you live in a normal American house, you're living in a house that in many cases was built for the least amount of money possible, using the least expensive materials, and sold for the most possible profit. If it's like most American homes, it was built to make you dependent upon oil companies, utility companies and builder supply chains to keep it livable. It wasn't designed to work with nature - it was designed to work against it. Today I was driving in the country and saw a modular home with the entire north face covered in windows... in the Northern Hemisphere, mind you! No thought given whatsoever to the fact that the cold north wind will blow icy air right into that window.

On to our search -- 

We originally had wanted to move to Maine, where land was cheap and people were scarce, build a tent, then a small structure, then add on, build an earthship and get some goats and chickens to help us take care of the land. But circumstances led us to gain custody of 4 of Andrea's grandbabies. By court ruling, we couldn't leave Ohio. So with 4 grandbabies, 20 cats (many were leftovers from Andrea's cat rescue, and a few I brought with me, and a few more we found starving and couldn't just leave, and all fixed, tested and vaccinated), a dog, a sparrow and 2 fish it was unlikely we'd find another place to rent, especially within our price range. 

On top of this, our landlords wanted to renovate the house we were renting and sell it. When we were first informed we were told we had 2 years to move out, which would ordinarily be plenty of time. We'd already put about $1000 or so away in a tea can for our Maine money. But now we were on a time limit. We needed to move fast. Maine was no longer an option, and Ohio land isn't cheap. 

Andrea discovered the concept of joining a sustainably active intentional community. We spent a year getting to know a few of them, found one we loved, and spent a lot of time with, and made some great friends. They invited us to move down in the spring and rent a nice little house on the property for what we were paying in rent now. If it worked out we could basically "buy in" to the community and become a member, and build our dream home with people who shared our values.

Though the cats had been a topic of discussion the entire year we'd known them, even to the point where they were suggesting accommodations for them, I don't think it ever was fully understood that we'd had 20 until the last meeting before we were invited. Some of the members were concerned about them and it seemed to snowball into a major issue in a short amount of time. We were given options to rehome as many of the cats as we could, but the reason we had the cats was that they were so difficult to rehome. It came down to a choice between placing them in a shelter or giving up the community. I sleep better not having put them into a shelter. Our intention was to become an asset to the community, not a burden, and it was best to abandon the idea so we could all remain friends. It was clearly going to cause some rifts.

Our options dwindled down to looking for foreclosed houses in the ghettos of Ohio's dying urban neighborhoods. Some of them were only a few thousand dollars. If we could nab one of those and fix it up, we could try to do intensive urban gardening, cover every square inch with some kind of edible plant, catch rainwater off the roof, put solar panels up to save on utilities, and hope we save enough money to sell the improved house for a profit and use the money to buy land.

Andrea hit Zillow - every day, every night, every break from whatever daily tasks she had, for a full year. We travelled all over the state, toting frightened realtors through some rough-looking neighborhoods. We took photos, trolled Streetview, kept records on Google Spreadsheets and images and prices on Google Maps trying to find the best deal, and the least vandalized houses. We studied urban permacultre and urban homesteading online whenever we had the time.

We found one house in East Cleveland that really caught our eye - a foreclosed home that had not yet been vandalized because it was out in the open away from other houses on one way streets. The houses around it were all abandoned, it had a good size yard for the city, and lots of sun. We had our savings, which had increased a bit, a big income tax check because we had the grandbabies, then borrowed from friends and family, paying back 10%/month with interest. That gave us enough to pay cash for the house.

We sent the earnest money check to put a bid on the house, but someone beat us to it. 

With the only constant in this world being change, after 2 years of looking, we'd received 2 pieces of good news - Andrea could have schooling paid for at Columbus State through a government program that would land her a better paying job, and our landlords weren't ready to throw us out as they had too much going on in their lives to spend time and money renovating our home to sell, so we could stay at least another year.

With most of the money in a small tea can, enough for an earnest money cashiers check in a dedicated bank account, and what we had in the bank, we began bypassing the foreclosed home idea and went straight for looking for land, trying to find folks who would do a land contract. 

Most of what we found were companies that sold land without the mineral rights at outrageous interest rates. We scrapped that idea and started looking for land sold by the owners. I went to all the Craigslists in Ohio, did a search for land under $30,000 - figuring that would be the most we could afford to pay monthly on, especially the first year and still paying rent - and piped all those craigslist ads through my Inoreader RSS reader, creating a folder, so I could access all the listings in one place.

I created a Google Spreadsheet that calculated monthly payments and price per acre - I just had to key in the total price, the down payment, the rates and the years. This helped me quickly figure what we could afford to do with each situation, which had the lowest price per acre, or the lowest monthly installments.

Whenever we found land we could afford we'd email them and ask about a land contract. I was amazed at how many folks went for the idea! I thought maybe a few people would consider it, and charge outrageous rates, but two places that we were really interested in actually offered no interest at all and were happy with whatever we could pay a month. 

Eventually we found exactly what we were looking for and hence - this blog.

Land is out there. Maybe not today, but every once-in-a-while someone somewhere will put up a piece of land. Be ready to take something that no one else wants. Be ready to adapt to strange environments. Be ready to start REALLY small. My research has suggested most people abandon the idea of building a natural building because they start out too big. Be ready to live in a tent. Then you'll appreciate the house you CAN build.