PORCH AREA: When time permits, extend your porch area. Measure out another 12 feet and set posts at the 6 foot points. Cut and install the beams, and weave in between. Once your porch is extended, you have no end to storage space, and the south side can be made into a hot house for giving spring plants a head start if you have clear plastic sheeting. If you have sheeted the roof with plastic sheeting, then water will run off the edges. It doesn't take much foresight to see that if gutters and down spouts were installed, the water runoff could be caught in barrels and used for watering plants... Areas on the Northern side can be used for storage and wood shed. Though, save a cool, shady place on the north side for a summertime sitting porch. By-the-way, You can dry your vegetables by hanging them from your rafters, even mushrooms and garlic, peas and beans.
VARIATIONS: If there are a lot of rocks lying about in your area, try using them to build up the first three feet or so of your perimeter wall. Place them between your sapling supports in the fashion of a rock wall, using clay as mortar. Be sure to stagger the stones like bricks for bonding and strength. This makes a very serviceable wall base. If you are going to do this, dig a shallow trench to anchor the bottom course of rocks in the ground so they won't slip. Your overhangs will keep most of the rain and show off of them so they shouldn't deteriorate very fast.
If you are good at woodcraft, and know how to split wooden shakes, then side your house with those. Wood shakes make an excellent siding. The process is: take a 24 to 30 inch log and cut it in 10 or 12 inch rings or slices, using a chain or crosscut saw. Split one of the rings in half, then split off narrow shingles around the ring, something like slicing narrow pieces of an apple pie from the center out. This is done with a hammer, maul and coal chisel type tools. For getting the idea, try splitting kindling wood. This is good practice and you'll need the kindling anyway.
If there are plenty of 6 inch saplings about, fill in your perimeter wall by stacking and tying or spiking them in horizontally. The cracks between can be chinked with mud or clay mortar mixed with chopped grass or pine needles. If you know you are going to do this type of project, you might want to increase the thickness of your vertical posts. For all practical purposes, this is just post and beam construction. This makes a very substantial wall and allows a log cabin type building that can be built by one person. A regular log cabin would take at least another person or a horse or mule to move the logs.
STRAW BALE HOUSE: In this variation your basic post and beam house can be filled in with straw bales should they be available. This makes a particularly comfortable house as the bales provide considerable insulation. In this case, adjust your posts so that a straw bale just fits between them. Once it's up and settled, mix a stucco of clay and chopped straw and coat it. If paint is available, then paint it too. This house is as durable as any other and better insulated than most. Beef up the posts and beams and you could even increase the thatching on the roof, perhaps covering it with living sod, Tudor style.
FLOORING: The pioneers and Indians used buffalo or cattle dung for their floors. Once it is dried, there is no smell, as it is mostly cellulose and quite resilient. The dung floor is a good insulator too, and once covered with carpet or skins, very comfortable. First a pit is dug in which to mix the dung. Then the dung is collected and mixed with water and clay. The resulting paste is then poured over the earth floor and screeded and trowled smooth just like a concrete floor. The floor is then allowed to dry and season. It is then covered with carpet or skins for comfort. You may use elk, deer or any other Ruminating (grass- eating) animal droppings for the same purpose. Here is a trick: If you plan such a floor, Place a transom about 4 to 6 inches above ground level and below your doors, and make your door to fit.
TEMPORARY HOUSE OR SHED: This is another round house, but built more like a tee-pee. Drive a stake in the ground. Use a string and stick to draw about a 10 foot circle on the ground. Find some long 2 inch saplings and insert them about 16 inches into the ground about every two feet around the circle except leave a three foot space for the door on the south side. Now pull the saplings together at the top to form a dome and tie them off. Next weave 1 inch branches between the verticals until you have a framework. Thatch or drape with plastic or tarp. You now have a dome shaped basket house with about 78 sq. feet of floor space, tall enough to stand up in the center, wide enough to sleep in. This is also a good temporary shelter until you get the main house up.
MODEL MAKING: Any of these houses can be made at home to scale as a model. Making such a model will give you experience and allow you to make your mistakes in an insignificant manner. If you can make a model, you can make the real thing. That is why engineers make models first before tackling major construction projects. If the model works, the actual construction will work too. Besides, once you have built your model, you will have confidence, and there will be no confusion. The only cost is grass, sticks, string, and clay. Oh, it's a good idea to build your model on a piece of heavy cardboard or scrap plywood so you can move it around or out of the way.
HEATING AND COOKING: In the summer, you cook outside. In the winter, you cook inside. That's the Indian way. You'll learn why pretty fast. Steel stoves can still be purchased from catalogue supply houses, but you can make one from a 5 to 15 gallon steel drum. Just cut a fire door about four inches up from the bottom, and punch a flue hole in the top of the drum on the opposite side of the door. Use wire for hinges, and punch a few small holes in the door. Set the stove on a base of sand or rock, place 2 inches of sand in the bottom of the drum on which to lay your fire, and you have a simple stove.
SAFETY WARNING: All stoves or fireplaces radiate heat in all directions. Wood or paper ignites at 451 degrees fahrenheit, and stoves produce more heat than that, in fact, they will turn cherry red when the draft is right. If you place your stove too near a combustible surface, you will probably, sooner or later set it on fire. do don't. Make sure that your stove is at least three feet away from any combustible surface. Also, leave at least a 6 inches space all around your flue pipe where it goes through your roof. If you have sheet metal, you can use that for a spacer, but increase the space to a foot.
At night, damp your stove. That means close the stove fire door enough so that the fire starves for air and smolders more than it burns. The fire will still produce plenty of heat, but it will burn longer without adding wood. Build your stove with an adjustable damper if possible. This will be a great convenience.
CLAY STOVES: In many countries, clay stoves are all the fashion because they don't have steel or iron stoves. These are common in most third world countries. So, if you don't have metal, make your stove of clay. The easiest way to do it is with clay bricks. Fashion it something like a barbecue and set your grille on it to hold your cookware. If you have flue pipe, use it. If not, then build your chimney out of clay bricks. Even with clay, it is best to keep well away from combustible materials.
STOVE POSITIONING: Ben Franklin discovered that a wood stove placed in the center of the room heated much better than a fire place on a wall. So, place your stove near the center of your house but away from the center support. If you burn that down, you burn down your house. Eventually, you will have two stoves. One inside for heating and cooking in winter and one outside for cooking in the summer. The outside one will most likely be made of stone or clay. The inside one will be made from whatever you have available.
THE SUPPORT STOVE: Many houses of this type will use a central, stone or brick stove or fireplace as the central support of the house. In this case, the stove and its chimney which is the central support of the house is massive. This is so for many reasons, the most important of which is support. The other is the stone or clay serves as a massive heat storage device and radiator. Once you get that mass warmed up, it will stay warm for hours, even without a fire. However, it is thick enough that the outside surface does not get hot enough to start the roof beams on fire. This house is built like a large wheel, the stove being the hub. Everything around the stove stays warm. Very comfortable!
SANITATION: There are many ways to handle this problem all the way from a simple latrine to an elaborate arobic-anarobic system that eventually returns usable fertilizer, both liquid and solid to the environment. However, to begin with, an old fashioned out-house is a good bet. Just be sure to position it as far as practical from your house, down wind and down hill. The construction of one of these is quite simple. Just dig a pit a yard square as deep as you can, cover it with a plank floor with a suitable opening to the rear. Next make a bench seat about 18 inches high and saw out a hole similar to the one in your house toilet. Place the seat over the opening over the pit. Last, build a hut of any design you like over it, and you're in business. When the pit gets near full, just dig another pit and move your out-house over it.
Under these conditions, a septic system just isn't practical unless you have plenty of running water to do the flushing. Such a system is possible, but out of the scope of basic survival.
A CLOSED LOOP SYSTEM: If you are really interested in such a system read a few of Bill Mollison's books on Permaculture. He describes a system where the humans and animals become part of the loop so that everything is dependent upon everything else. You might want to learn about mushrooms too as they can convert organic waste of all sorts into potting soil, but that is another story.
WINDING DOWN: In this collection of Scrolls, I've tried to open the doors to using mostly old time, low- tech ideas to make possible an exodus from a bad situation that is waiting in the wings. It has all happened before and will sooner or later happen again. Most will parish, but many can survive with a little planning and foresight. Nothing offered here is particularly difficult or hard to learn. The theories, principles and applications are inexpensive and available to anyone who cares to learn and use them, though most will ignore the handwriting on the wall and fall by the wayside.
When possible, I've mentioned other books available to interested parties who might value their information. I've already learned the old ways at my grandparent's knees, and you can bet that I've more than one good place staked out, stocked up and waiting for the time that I or my family might need them. All of them are only a few miles from a major city, and all of them are livable. I drive out to see them once in a while, and when I do, I take along various items I've found here and there for a dollar or two that would make life more comfortable should I ever need them. Things like building materials, used windows, doors, plumbing parts, jars for canning, bags of salt, rolls of wire and just about anything of interest. The other day, I purchased a 100 foot roll of chicken wire for 20 bucks. That could be real handy too. Now man does not live by bread alone, so I've even stashed some of those old paper backed books that you can buy for a quarter or fifty cents to help pass the time during winter. My tool kit is more than basic, and I can be up and running, living good, out there away from the rage of a collapsing society in short order. I hope that you can too, but then, that's up to you.
