Cognisant
cackling in the trenches
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- Joined
- Dec 12, 2009
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- 11,155
I've been thinking of building a house in the Australian outback.
Below is a cross section, the best I could do before I completely lost my patience with the Windows 11 version of paint.
I forgot to add a concrete slab underneath, doesn't matter, you know what a slab is.
The walls are either going to be concrete or besser/cinder block and the innermost structural walls will probably be double thick, not as depicted here. Outside of those are a series of retaining walls containing mostly concrete and solid filler with space at the top for about 20cm of planter soil, like a terraced garden.
The problems I'm trying to solve are flooding, fire, and heat.
The raised deck roof provides shade and convection draws hot air up through vents in the top allowing cooler air to come in through the sides, also being raised up a bit allows more of a breeze to pass through.
My original concept was for a house underground but that's quite expensive, it's not just the hole you need to get equipment into the hole to stabilize the soil before you put your slab in, and then there's issues with ground water which become particularly troublesome during a flood. Instead by making the walls extra thick and having space for plants to grow I'm doing three things, adding thermal mass (it gets cold at night in the outback), cooling my house when I water the plants, and providing more shade for the structure with those plants. With lots of thermal mass providing insulation an air-conditioning system will be a lot more effective and energy efficient.
By making the outside of the structure primarily out of steel and concrete I've largely eliminated the bushfire problem, to be clear the deck is not a wooden deck, it's reinforced concrete.
By having these retainers/terraces go all the way around the house can resist flooding insofar as it isn't completely submerged, which is fine, flooding affects huge areas in the flatlands but the actual floodwaters tend not to be very deep unless you've built your home somewhere stupid like in a geological basin. The problem an underground structure faces is that water penetrates the soil and when that soil becomes water laden the distinction between being underground and underwater becomes moot, which makes any hollow underground structure essentially a concrete submarine with insufficient ballast to stay submerged.
Access to the deck is via stairs (not pictured in the above cross section) and entry into the structure is via another set of stairs down into the deck where there's a small entry and a door. The great thing about having a house built like a chest freezer is that I can pin open my front door, while say entertaining people on my big raised deck, and the cold conditioned air isn't going anywhere.
Please add your own thoughts and ideas for my consideration.
Below is a cross section, the best I could do before I completely lost my patience with the Windows 11 version of paint.
I forgot to add a concrete slab underneath, doesn't matter, you know what a slab is.
The walls are either going to be concrete or besser/cinder block and the innermost structural walls will probably be double thick, not as depicted here. Outside of those are a series of retaining walls containing mostly concrete and solid filler with space at the top for about 20cm of planter soil, like a terraced garden.
The problems I'm trying to solve are flooding, fire, and heat.
The raised deck roof provides shade and convection draws hot air up through vents in the top allowing cooler air to come in through the sides, also being raised up a bit allows more of a breeze to pass through.
My original concept was for a house underground but that's quite expensive, it's not just the hole you need to get equipment into the hole to stabilize the soil before you put your slab in, and then there's issues with ground water which become particularly troublesome during a flood. Instead by making the walls extra thick and having space for plants to grow I'm doing three things, adding thermal mass (it gets cold at night in the outback), cooling my house when I water the plants, and providing more shade for the structure with those plants. With lots of thermal mass providing insulation an air-conditioning system will be a lot more effective and energy efficient.
By making the outside of the structure primarily out of steel and concrete I've largely eliminated the bushfire problem, to be clear the deck is not a wooden deck, it's reinforced concrete.
By having these retainers/terraces go all the way around the house can resist flooding insofar as it isn't completely submerged, which is fine, flooding affects huge areas in the flatlands but the actual floodwaters tend not to be very deep unless you've built your home somewhere stupid like in a geological basin. The problem an underground structure faces is that water penetrates the soil and when that soil becomes water laden the distinction between being underground and underwater becomes moot, which makes any hollow underground structure essentially a concrete submarine with insufficient ballast to stay submerged.
Access to the deck is via stairs (not pictured in the above cross section) and entry into the structure is via another set of stairs down into the deck where there's a small entry and a door. The great thing about having a house built like a chest freezer is that I can pin open my front door, while say entertaining people on my big raised deck, and the cold conditioned air isn't going anywhere.
Please add your own thoughts and ideas for my consideration.
