Introducing the Winter Palace

I started this section of my blog developing ideas about a really ambitious home I wanted to build. I eventually came to the conclusion that that first design was either too expensive or, if done cheaply, too environmentally unfriendly. So I developed a second, simpler design which still had a lot of interesting features. It was always obvious that it was going to be hard getting either design past planning permission. It was also always obvious that while I might be able to live in a vestigial shelter in the woods in summer, that wasn't going to be possible in winter. So there had to be a plan B; a plan B that could be quickly and inexpensively implemented to provide cosy and weatherproof shelter for the winter, and that that plan B would have to be implemented if I didn't have planning permission by midsummer.

It's midsummer. I don't have planning permission. It's time for plan B.

I've been developing ideas for plan B for as long as I've been working on the croft house designs. The original idea was to build a tiny Tardis like structure, based on what I've learned from yacht cabins - the smallest possible space in which I could live and stay warm. Later, I considered a log cabin - which would be less than ten feet square - built in the space underneath the Summer Palace. Both of these are still possibilities, but about six weeks ago, I made an interesting discovery.

This farm is called Standingstone. It's part of the old monastic grange of Hazelfield, and Anglian name which means 'stony field'. The grange of Hazelfield stands within the vicinity of the village of Auchencairn, a Gaelic which means 'stony field'. You might be excused for noticing a thread here. The fields hereabouts, while fertile, are extremely stony; the whole valley is the terminal moraine of a long-vanished glacier. So for three thousand years people hereabouts have been clearing the larger stones off the ploughland, and dumping them in land which isn't fit for ploughing.

And one of the places people have been dumping stones for generations is in my wood; that's partly, I suspect, why there is a wood here now. It was always wet land - probably a willow carr - on the banks of the burn, not fit for ploughing. So my predecessors have dumped stones in many places through the wood; but in one particular place on the eastern edge of the wood I found a huge pile, some seven metres long, five wide and one high, with an almost flat top. It's a perfect, self draining, foundation for a small building. I've spent some time tidying it up and adding to it - about seven cubic metres of stone we've picked off the ploughland this year.

Given a foundation like that it's obvious that a bigger, more comfortable cabin can be built - still in the wood, still discreetly sheltered, but neither tardis-like nor minimalistic. So I plan to make use of that seven by five metre platform to build a seven by five metre dwelling. I plan straw bale walls, possibly using the straw from my own barley. I plan a wooden floor and roof largely using wood from my own trees. The straw bale walls will be half a metre thick, so the internal space I'll be left with is smaller - about four metres (13 feet) by six and a half (21 feet). Of that, the western two metres will have a sleeping loft over a small kitchen and a small bathroom. Almost in the centre - between the kitchen and the living area, beside the ladder up to the sleeping loft - will be a wood fired cooker with a back boiler to heat water. The remaining four metre square area will be a multi-use eating, working, and entertaining space - a living room, in fact. The whole east end of the building will be mostly glass, facing out onto my own meadow.

So, this is nothing like as ambitious or interesting a structure as either 'sousterran' or 'singlespace' designs. I still intend to try to get planning permission for something more interesting (and a bit larger). But the cabin in the woods means I'm no longer under time pressure; planning permission is off the critical path.

One question remains: if I can't get planning permission for what I really want to build, how can I get planning permission for the Winter Palace? The answer is I can't, and I'm not even going to seek it. The winter palace won't be visible from anyone else's property. As a structure, it's justifiable either as a tool store or as a wood shed, neither of which I'd need planning permission for. If in the end the planners require me to pull it down, I can disassemble it with small loss.

As I've said, I've already started to level the foundation. Alex and I will start to mill timber for the winter palace in the next couple of weeks. I plan to have a 'barn raising' party to put it up, which will be either on the weekend of 20th-21st August or the 17th-18th September, depending partly on when I can get straw. Pencil those dates in your diary now!

On war, and elites

Wars are not won by elites. Or, to be more precise, twentieth century wars were not won by elites. From the middle of the bronze age to the end of the medieval period wars were, more or less, won by elites - for very long periods an elite warrior, equipped with the best armour and the best weapons of the time, was able to slaughter the peasantry almost with impunity. That's why the epic battles of both Scotland's and England's national myths - Bannockburn and Agincourt respectively - were each in their time so shocking: largely elite armies were defeated - at Bannockburn by careful choice of terrain, at Agincourt by the use of the most basic of peasant weapons - by largely non-elite forces. These battles were, in their time, exceptional. Until the development of the reliable portable firearm the elite warrior was perceived as invincible. And all too many of the elite families who established their power with a destrier and a suit of plate armour still have it.

I've always thought it was interesting how the enclosures - the great land seizure by the elites from the commons - occurred just in the period where the elites no longer had anything to offer the peasantry. Formerly, they had offered protection - from other robber barons like themselves - but after the restoration of the monarchy in the United Kingdom they could no longer offer this. Armies such as Cromwell's New Model Army had established once and for all that a disciplined mass of inexpensively equipped commoners could beat any elite force. But in that historical moment of the restoration, with the nations of Britain war weary from fifty years of conflict, the elites - largely those same elites of destrier and plate - still had residual power and prestige, and they used it to steal the land.

But that's not, as Arlo Guthrie famously put it, what I came to talk about. I came to talk about the draft.

The First World War - even more than the Crimean and Boer wars which preceded it, but similarly to the American Civil War - was a war of the masses: fought by the commons, suffered by the commons... but very largely fought in the interests of the elites. For the first time, the elites needed the commons. In order to win the war, the elites had to engage the commons. The Russian elites failed to do this, and they suffered revolution. The Western elites took a different tack: they offered bribes. In the United Kingdom, homes fit for heroes. More democracy. They offered, but in the economic chaos of the nineteen twenties and thirties, they largely failed to deliver. In particular, though the economic suffering of the thirties hurt everyone, it hit the commons far harder than it hit the elites.

Yet only two decades later the elites needed to engage the commons in another mass war. Half hearted promises no longer cut it. The elites had to demonstrate that they were sharing the suffering...

Where does this essay come from? It comes from a short but pungent pamphlet written by a hero of the French resistance, Stephane Hessel, 'Indignez-Vous', translated into English as 'Time for Outrage'; I commend it to you, gentle reader. Go out and buy a copy. It comes from a column I read recently in the Guardian, about the state of the United States economy, which I foolishly failed to bookmark and now can't find. Both pieces make exactly the same point: in the desperate economic conditions of the end of the Second World War, in times of chaos and dislocation, the west could afford health care for all. We could afford homes for all. We could afford pensions for all. Now that we are, collectively, far richer, we can't. And the reason was this: in the aftermath of the Second World War, across the west, the elites paid - both as individuals through their income taxes and death duties, and corporately through taxes on businesses - a share of taxation which reflected their privilege. They paid their share because they needed to. They paid their share because they needed us.

They no longer believe they do.

Modern war is fought with precision munitions, with drone aircraft, increasingly with robots. Hugely capital intensive weapons; but they relieve the elites of the need to deploy a mass army. Of course, these capital intensive weapons are paid for by the taxes on the poor, but the poor cannot escape taxes. Of course, large profits can be made from the manufacture and sale of such weapons. Of course, these capital intensive forces are good at 'shock and awe', much less good at holding territory - which is why the war in Afghanistan is currently being lost and why the war in Iraq probably will ultimately be. But the west does not actually want the territory of Afghanistan, and all it wants from Iraq will be pumped out in twenty years.

More than this, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pose no existential threat to the Western elites. Yes, we're fighting the war in Afghanistan in reprisal for Al Quaeda taking out the World Trade Centre, and the deaths of the bankers (and others) who worked there; but the derivatives broker, the arbitrageur, the financial engineer of today does not see Afghanistan or Iraq as a real and present danger to his life, let alone to his wealth and power.

The threat of war no longer frightens the elites, and they no longer believe they need an engaged citizen army to protect their interests. In short, the elites no longer feel any common cause with, or need for, the commons, except as what elites have always seen the commons as: a herd of host organisms on which to parasitise.

The banker with his million pound bonus sees no reason to share it. The futures-market gambler with his billion dollar profit sees no need to consider the community. Sharing - community - is for losers. There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are Ferrari dealers. If the tax regime under which he lives and works proves too onerous, to keen to encourage equity, he'll leave and seek another. And so we've - all the nations of the west - engaged in a race to the bottom. Lower taxes on the rich - never mind, the poor will pay. Lower taxes on the corporations - never mind, the poor will pay. But we've got to the point that the poor can't pay, because the rich are taking so large a share of the sum total of all the resources available, there isn't enough left. And so our health systems crumble, our public infrastructure is sold off, our social care fails. This doesn't worry the elites, of course. A helicopter flies over all traffic jams. The elites don't need 'socialised' health care or social care - they can buy their own.

I write this in the aftermath of the 'banking crisis', the 'financial meltdown' in which the taxpayers - which means the poor - of the western world struggle to repay the losses made by irresponsible gambling by the rich. Are the rich paying? Surprise, they're not. Throughout this recession, the very rich have continued to get richer. What we've seen has not been, in fact, a banking crisis, just one more step of the ratchet which moves wealth from the poor to the rich.

And the question has to be asked: have the people of Ireland benefited from their low corporation taxes? Have the people of Iceland, Scotland and England benefited from bank deregulation? I would argue we haven't. Closing down the City of London wouldn't make the United Kingdom richer; indeed, it probably is true that in aggregate is would make us poorer. But what wealth was left would be shared much more evenly, so the interests of the rulers would not be so sharply at variance with the interests of the ruled. For each of us individually, our spending power would be at worst not much reduced; for us corporately, our corporate interest would be once more in the provision of a social structure which supports everyone, including the poorest.

Oh, and, by the way, 'equity', for those who found my use of the word strange, does not mean a negotiable instrument. It means fairness.

Things I miss

The Summer Palace

This summer of homelessness - even if I chose it, even if it is a gamble which still may pay off with something wonderful - has been tougher than I expected. This essay is to acknowledge that, and to celebrate those aspects of our modern western lives which actually are to be valued. So here's a list of things I miss...

Being warm

It's a fortnight before midsummer, late morning, and my fingers are so cold as I type this that the joints hurt. My bedding is damp again, not because of rain driving in - except during the big storm, it hasn't - but just because of the humidity in the air. I do have a little woodstove - borrowed - but because I have no walls it's ineffective either at raising the temperature or at cooking, so I don't use it much.

Closely related to being warm,

Hot water on tap

I'm a person who likes to be clean. I like to have a hot bath every night. I like to wash my dishes in hot water. Lots of hot water. Here, I haul every drop of water I use - at minimum from the water trough on the far side of my croft, but in practice usually from the farm, because the trough is open and therefore not clean. I use the wheelbarrow, so I'm not actually carrying it, but it's still five hundred metres over the hilltop; hard work. To heat it, I have my small kettle and my small gas stove. A cupful or two is easy to heat. A bathful (even if I had a bath, which I don't)? Impossible.

And next down the list

Dry boots

I have boots, of course. I have two pairs of boots which cope reasonably well with wet weather. But in the long periods of wet weather I've had I've twice got to the point where both pairs were wet. Boots are important. Wet boots are miserable. And drying boots out once they're wet comes back to being warm.

These are the critical things. Of course, there are things I have which if I lacked them would be critical. I can get clean water. I can afford food. I have friends. I have the National Health Service. And I do have security of tenure - I own this land, no-one can throw me off it. Less critically, but contributing to my quality of life, I also have technology - my laptop, my phone, my camera - and somewhere I can go to recharge their batteries.

Less important stuff

So having dealt with the critical things, what are the other things I miss?

Water on tap

Digging a track down the field and laying in a water pipe is going to cost a big chunk of the money I have, and it can't be a priority. I may not be able to do it straight off. But using water without having to think about whether there's enough, whether it will run out, what the cost of fetching it will be... that's a luxury.

Artificial light

OK, I have a storm lantern. Just at present it's out of oil and I ought to get more but haven't. But it doesn't throw a lot of light anyway, so I don't use it much... of course, it's summer. Of course, it never really gets dark at this time of year. In winter, artificial light may feel more important. Just at present, it's surprisingly minor. But... over the year as a whole... over the year as a whole, rather to be desired.

Broadband

I have had a computer network connection into my home since 1984. Then, it was a 300 baud modem; then, it didn't connect to the Internet, because JANET had not yet been connected to the Internet; JANET ran on coloured books over X.25 rather than on TCP/IP. I used network chat to communicate with my profoundly deaf tutor. Later, I ran UUCP over a 2800 baud modem; it wasn't until 1993 that I had a PPP connection feeding real-time Internet protocol - and the then new Web - into my home.

Of course, I still have a network connection. The GPRS connection that my phone provides is far faster than those old modems. But in the meantime, the Web has developed to assume fast links. Web pages are graphics heavy, and call down complex JavaScript libraries or Flash animations. Browsing the Web on a slow connection is far more painful than it was seventeen years ago. I don't need a broadband link. I can live without it. But... it would be nice.

Electricity

To get broadband here, I'm going to have to relay wifi over the hill. That means I'd need electricity in two places - one on the hilltop to drive the relay, and one in my home to receive it. Trecking over the hill to recharge laptop and phone batteries once a day - as I do now - won't cut it. On the other hand a mains connection is out of the question, since I can't afford one, let alone two. Laying cable is a non-starter, not only because of cost but also because of lightning strike issues. The hilltop relay can probably be solar powered, and reasonably low cost. But if I'm going to power a transciever at my home, I might as well have electricity for other purposes - powering a computer, for one; powering a bit of electric light, for another. So a wind turbine of about 1600 watts - and batteries to buffer its output - is the sensible way to go. And that doesn't come cheap. So electricity is a nice to have. It isn't a priority. But I would like it.

Two referenda?

Two referenda? Aye, right

Our Liberal 'Democrat' Secretary of not-very-much, Michael Moore (no, not the famous Michael Moore, the other one) thinks we need two referenda to achieve independence. What has he been smoking?

The theory of it starts here: the Westminster parliament, in its Scotland Act, did not cede to the Holyrood parliament the power to hold legally binding referenda. So, says Moore, a referendum held by the Holyrood parliament cannot be legally binding. So, says Moore, we need a subsequent referendum, promoted by the Westminster parliament, to complete the process.

There's a certain amount of sense to it: this much. The first referendum would empower the Scottish Government to negotiate with Downing Street on the terms for independence; and the exact terms of independence are not clear. There are natural resources, financial debts, military forces, foreign embassies, and many other complex issues to apportion. After an agreed apportionment has been made, there's some sense in going back to the people and asking whether they want independence on those terms.

But that's not what Micky Moore is arguing. He's not arguing on the pragmatics, but what he perceives as the legalities. Only the Westminster parliament, says Mouse, can hold a legally binding referendum...

But here's the rub: it can't. It never has been able to. It can't because there's a critical difference between Scottish legal theory and English legal theory. Mouse, being (Northern) Irish, can't really be expected to know this. Under English legal theory, Parliament is sovereign. So no referendum, not even one it has itself called, is binding on the English Parliament. But under Scottish legal theory, the people are sovereign. So any referendum of the Scottish people, even one it hasn't itself called, is binding on the Scottish parliament.

So let's get down to realpolitik: do we need two referenda? The first gives Scotland the authority and the clear democratic mandate to negotiate. For the rump of the United Kingdom to seek to impose unfair terms would be unwise, if not improbable. If an equitable settlement could not be negotiated, then grass roots pressure in Scotland would rapidly ramp up. Finally, no Scottish government is going to accept an inequitable settlement. So if we get to the point of an independence bill, we will have a (reasonably) equitable settlement. In that case, would we need a second referendum? I can't see it. The government have been mandated by the people to negotiate to achieve this end, they've achieved the end, where's the problem?

If the government reached the conclusion that an equitable settlement could not be reached, then I can see a point of going back to the people and say, ok, this is the best we can do, is it good enough? But that's a different issue. That's an issue which arises when negotiation has, in effect, failed. We hope that won't happen.

But for Micky Mouse to tell us, now, that we have to have two, that we have to have two because Westminster is sovereign? Aye, as they say, right.

On living rough with cats

Ivan and Penny in the Summer Palace

We're all familiar with the image of an urban rough sleeper with his mongrel on a string. Rough sleepers commonly have dogs, and it's easy to understand why. A familiar animal - an animal which offers some affection, some uncritical regard, and, at night, some warmth - has to help a person cope with the extremely tough life a rough sleeper has to cope with.

But you don't typically see rough sleepers with cats. Cats are different from dogs; they are much more self sufficient: specialist individual predators, able to feed themselves adequately in most British landscapes. A closely related species is even native. Cats don't, in fact, need us. When they choose to live with us it's from choice. That choice is certainly based on some simple pragmatic considerations. If we have the resources we can provide regular palatable food. If we have homes, we can provide comfort and warmth - which cats love - and a degree of security. We also, if we have homes, provide stability of place - a fixed base, a hub for a hunting ground. Cats do like a familiar hunting ground.

Cats are different from us - so different that any attempt to think ourselves imaginatively into their minds is at best uncertain. Do they feel affection, bonding, identification with us? To some extent it seems that they do. It certainly comforts me to believe that my cats love me. And their behaviour does suggest this.

Ivan regularly comes up to me and writhes on his back inviting me to tickle his tummy. Penny is cuddled up to me as I type this, and often chooses to sit close to me. When I walk through the woods both of them usually come with me, and often when I leave the wood now they follow - something which is becoming problematic. Today, Penny twice followed me all the way to the farm - mainly, I think, to hunt rabbits on the hilltop. At night, both sleep on (and Ivan frequently in) my bed. Of course, part of this is warmth. Now, at lunchtime on the 5th of June, close to mid day and close to mid summer, I'm wearing six layers of clothing (including two wool jerseys and a jacket with a fleece lining). I'm wearing a hat and gloves. I'm cold.

The cats have, of course, fur coats. Penny has an exceptionally soft, thick one. And, today when the wind is in the east, I'm sure there are warmer places in the wood than this. So I don't believe that it is just - or even mainly - for warmth that the cats stay with me.

But that is the point. Home for us, now, is this rough platform in the wood, sheltered from the rain by a tarpaulin, from the wind not at all. It isn't comfortable. It isn't warm. It is in a fixed place - one I own, one I cannot be evicted from. And that fixed place is in a wonderful hunting environment for small predators. There are mice and voles aplenty, and one of them (I think Ivan, but I'm not yet sure) has started to bring home rabbits. It's also (although I doubt the cats can know this) a very safe place for them. The nearest road is half a mile away. There are no traps or snares or poisons on my land. And I am able to feed them - on food they like - regularly and reliably. Finally, there's no competition here, except from the badgers. While several of my co-conspirators have dogs, none have cats. I haven't seen or heard another cat since we arrived here.

But the question is, will they stay? Why should they? All around my land are hunting territories equally good, in which they could easily find themselves courie holes equally comfortable. Indeed, neighbouring territories have more rabbits - there are none locally here. As they increasingly follow me further from the croft they are seeing these potentially better territories. Hunting rabbits is not only clearly more fun than hunting other prey, the rabbits are also clearly more palatable. Rabbits which are brought home are always partially eaten, whereas mice are often left intact. As they catch more rabbits, they're less dependent on me for palatable food.

There's a problem in that. Between the wood where we live and the hilltop with its rabbits is my hay meadow. For me, it's a glorious place; for the cats it's huge and hard to cross. They can't see over the grass, so it's hard to navigate. They can cross it using a curious bounding run which rather resembles dolphins at play - leaping out of the grass high enough to get a glimpse of the horizon. But that's clearly strenuous. The meadow is also clearly - especially when a kite flies over fast and low, as one did this afternoon - a very scary place. Consequently they both prefer to have me with them when they cross the meadow, and will sit on the fenceposts and call until I escort them.

So I am anxious about them leaving. I fear that they may find a place closer to the rabbit warren which is (at least) as comfortable for as the Summer Palace. It would be a big deal for me; I have lost or abandoned so much else in my life, they're pretty important. I need to get a more secure and comfortable home for myself before winter, because in bad weather the Summer Palace is pretty tough; but far more than that I need to provide them with a more secure and comfortable home.

Tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming force

Well, we're no longer in the Summer Palace. Of our twenty days there, it rained on nineteen and blew a gale on five. Last night, the BBC was forecasting gusts of 82 miles per hour - literally hurricane force.

By dawn it was obvious that I couldn't really depend on the roof surviving; even if it did, sheeting rain was falling and fine spray was blowing through the Summer Palace, making everything wet. The shipping forecast was more soberly predicting force ten, and the BBC's 6am domestic forecast had dropped it's prediction to only 70 mph. If I'd just been myself I'd probably have tried to hold out, but the idea of trying to catch the cats after the roof had gone didn't appeal, and I decided to abandon ship while I could. I started to make things as secure as I could.

Neadless to say I didn't have the cat's transport box down at the summer palace. Ivan, who'd slept cuddled in with me all night, was still under the downie, so I emptied the cooking box and unceremoniously bundled him into it. I wheelbarrowed him over the hill to the farm; at the top I could barely stand.

With Ivan in the car I took the transport box back. I was wearing my waterproof sailing jacket with the hood pulled right down as tight as it would go; I'd deliberately left my glasses off for fear they blow away. The rain on my face was like buckshot. Needless to say, the cat  box blew clean out of the barrow.

I'd expected Penny to be hard to catch, but she'd been sleeping in her usual place in the structure of the roof, which was by now moving quite a lot, and when I called to her she climbed up through the roof structure to where she could see me. She was distressed and clearly couldn't get down by herself, so I hauled her out and bundled her into the box. Then I took down the one wall I have at the palace because it was acting as a sail and clearly making matters worse, bundled my bedding into plastic bags and hauled all my furniture into the centre of the platform, covering it with a strongly lashed tarpaulin before leaving. The roof may go but I don't think the platform will.

We're staying with friends for a couple of days while the weather abates and I get stuff dry, but then we'll go back. But after this a more permanent structure becomes more urgent - it won't wait for autumn, or for planning permission.

The Summer Palace

Tonight is our third night in the summer palace. The experience is throwing up problems I didn't expect, as well as ones I did. I have an urgent need to find somewhere for a midden for food waste - far enough away that it doesn't attract rats to the summer palace (although the cats would deal with them), near enough that it's practical to use.

Clothes don't dry in the wood - there isn't enough air movement and there isn't enough sunlight. So I'm going to have to put a clothesline out in the meadow somewhere. That also has implications for my living economy: if clothes do not dry, I must be very careful about getting wet. Fortunately, I haven't yet had a problem with rain blowing into the palace - despite two very wet windy nights; so I think I'm probably OK there.

Although I do love the palace's airiness and sense of openness to the elements, I think I will have to make it solid walls sooner or later. Just sitting, it's pretty cold. Of course, I don't yet have a chimney for my wood stove, so I can't yet use that; but even if I could, with no walls the warmth would just blow away. I'm as concerned about the cats being uncomfortable as myself - if they don't like it here, they could just leave me. And I'd hate that.

Fortunately they're settling reasonably well. Ivan is a bit clingy, and they both follow me about wherever I go in the wood (but, interestingly, not out in the pasture). But they seem quite calm and spend a lot of time playing together among the trees.

We've had our first visitors. Alice and Meg came over just to see the place, and Finn came to borrow my wheelbarrow, and stayed for a coffee.

Unexpected plusses, I think we have badgers in the wood. We've found a couple of gaps in the bottom of the fence, and the cats have been very interested in the smell of them. By one of them there was a large and well-clawed fresh paw print. I've not yet found evidence of a set though, and am surprised they don't find the wood too wet.

I've been cooking on my little camping gas stove, and am pleasantly surprised how well that's going; I'm having appetising meals from fresh ingredients with little compromise on what I would be eating if I had a more conventional cooker. Of course, I have to cook quick things to economise on gas, so no broths... but I will have the woodstove going soon.

Interestingly my nearest neighbour is also someone who is in the formal sense of the term homeless - he is living in a small caravan in the neighbouring landowner's woods. I've always known there was more rural homelessness than most people guess, but I'm starting to realise that there's far more than even I had guessed. Of course, I am in a sense voluntarily homeless, and hope it will be short term. But if I don't get planning permission to build a legal house, creating a comfortable winter palace in the woods does not feel impossible.

Batteries for both phone and computer are limited resources, so my Internet use is far less than I'm used to, but so far I'm not missing it much.

So all in all so far so good. I'll post occasional updates as time goes on.

Going straight

The singlespace roof has a slight twist, and I love it. The inner triangle is three and three quarter degrees off square from the middle hexagon, which again is three and three quarter degrees off square from the outer ring. It's that subtle twist that makes the roof so uneuropean, so quirky.

There's a reason, of course. The reason is that I couldn't get rafters long enough to span the ten metre diameter internal space that I wanted; and I didn't want to have to make a very complex joint at the top of each pillar. But I've been spending the last week working very hard on working out how to make my dwelling simpler to build, lower carbon and, ideally, cheaper; and one of the questions I've asked myself is how big a single space could I build with the rafters I can get.

The answer is that I can get 4800mm rafters at 200 x 50mm cheaply - just as cheap per metre run as 3600mm rafters. Given that the rafters cannot go right to the peak of the roof and that the gradient is shallow, two 4800mm rafters will actually span almost ten metres. But that's the full span of the roof. The walls come inside that span. If I'm going to use straw bale - which I'm now thinking of very seriously - each wall is 600mm thick, and allowing 150mm for eaves that takes 1500mm - or 15% - off the inner diameter, and consequently off the floor space; down from 78.5 square metres to 56.75 square metres.

It means, sadly, that I lose the twist. In a sense it doesn't matter; if I'm insulating the roof with sheeps wool - which again I'm now considering very seriously - there needs to be an inner skin on the roof, a ceiling, to hold the wool up. Which means the rafters are hidden, so the twist would show only in the alignment of the pillars - a bit subtle. But this process of refining the design has been one of losing one little elegant touch after another, and I mourn the passing of each and every one.

You'd think that losing 15% off the internal volume would also be a pretty big issue. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to be. The picture shows exactly the same furniture (at exactly the same size) as in all the other 'furnished' drawings, and it all fits with adequate circulation space. The two sofas are no longer at right angles to one another - but they are still fully two metres long. The office area is now quite cozy and definitely wouldn't be comfortable for two people. And there's some awkwardness between the kitchen counter and the dining area which needs a little more thought.

Fifteen percent off the diameter is actually slightly more than 15% off the cost, because the longer rafters are more efficient of timber. And the smaller volume will be warmer for the same heat input. All this may be academic; it now seems likely that we'll be able to mill our own timber on site by the time I'm ready to build. And reducing what was already a small dwelling needs serious thought. But... simpler is quicker, and already next winter is snapping at my heels.

Wool gathering

Singlespace, as described in the essays up until this one, is a building with a concrete floor and wall, and extruded polystyrene as insulation. Both of these materials involve a lot of embodied energy, and hence are far from carbon neutral. They're also not local - they don't occur naturally on site, but need to be transported in. I need to use these materials because I've embedded the house into the hillside, and it's a damp hillside.

But, as Pete pointed out, I don't need to earth-shelter the walls. I could have a walkway round the back of the house. Then it could be drained much more conventionally, and the wall wouldn't have to resist the pressure of either earth or water. So the wall could be much lighter. If there were problems with it, access to repair it would be easy.

More significantly, it could be timber - and timber does occur on site (although if I plan to build this year I won't have seasoned timber of my own and will have to use 'imported' timber). Even 'imported' timber has a far lower energy cost than concrete.

But even more radically, if I use a timber wall with air outside it, I don't need the polystyrene insulation whose primary virtue is it works when buried in damp earth. Instead, I can stuff the wall, between two skins of timber, with wool. Ordinary sheep wool.

Now that makes a huge difference. We now have fifty ewes (and a hundred lambs) grazing the farm. We have wool. We don't have enough wool - my estimate is I'd need about 400 fleeces - but Galloway produces masses of wool, and under current market conditions it has little value. Farmers burn fleeces to get rid of them. I can get enough fleeces for little cost.

There are problems with this solution. Concrete is such amazingly cheap stuff that, even though the polystyrene insulation is enormously more expensive than wool, using a wooden floor and wooden walls adds at least 10% to the total cost of the structure. Second, there are problems with invertebrate infestation in wool insulation - there are solutions to this, but I need to research them. Third, extruded polystyrene, as well as providing insulation, protects the waterproof membrane from mechanical damage. Without it, something else would be needed - but old carpet would do.

But finally and most seriously, there is the problem of condensation in the roof. Extruded polystyrene can be put outside the waterproof membrane; it works when wet. Wool insulation doesn't, so it must be inside the membrane. This, too, can be worked around. If there's an airgap - 50mm would do - between the insulation and the waterproof membrane, with a controlled draught, it should clear condensation. But this makes the roof much more complicated to build.

You'll gather from the tone of this essay that I'm not yet persuaded of this solution. I love the idea of an almost zero carbon dwelling. I love the idea of sourcing my materials in my native landscape. Romantically and ecologically, it is undoubtedly the right thing to do.

But two things make me cautious. The first is cost. I really am very short of money to build anyway. Adding 10% really is a big deal. It means I'm going to have to cut corners in other areas. But the other is reliability. Provided the membrane is not breached, the concrete structure will need no maintenance in my lifetime. Of course, if the membrane is breached, then that's a disaster, but it's a reasonably unlikely disaster. By contrast the wooden structure will likely - almost inevitably, in fact - require regular maintenance as I age. The maintenance will be relatively easy to do, but it will need to be done.

East wind

It's in the nature of this place, up on its high ridge, that it lives in the wind blowing in off the grey Atlantic. Our winds are westerly or southwesterly 70% of the time. Being on the western side of the ridge, my croft takes the full force of them. That's the main reason why I'm designing my croft house to be earth covered, sunk into a natural declivity in the ground. But I don't yet have a croft house; I don't yet have planning permission. So I've built a temporary shelter, my summer palace, which is essentially just a platform in the trees with a crude tent over it. And because the prevailing wind is in the southwest, I've built it in the northeast corner of my wood.

All the time I've been planning and building the summer palace, the wind has been in the west, and the wood has given it good shelter. Today, it was virtually finished. Today, I moved the last of the furniture into it. Tonight I would have moved in completely, but that I have to go to Edinburgh at the weekend, and I didn't want to leave the cats alone in a place they weren't familiar with...

Tonight, according to the met office weather station four miles away, it's blowing force nine. From the East.

My roof is - was - made of two layers of thin polypropylene 'tarpaulin' stretched over a ridgepole which is twenty feet above the ground. It makes a wonderful sail. When I got up there at 19:30 this evening, it had already torn out several of its eyelets and was rapidly destroying itself. It had to come down. But I hadn't designed for it to be taken down easily in an emergency, which meant I had to go up to the ridge pole and untie it at both ends. And I had to do it myself because there was no-one whom I could ask for help who could get there before it was too dark to work.

The first end wasn't too bad but the second end, with four hundred square feet of tarpaulin flapping around in the wind, was bloody scary. However, I got it down, dragged all my furniture into the centre of the floor, covered it tightly with tarpaulin, and left, 'homeward, tae think again'.

This is, actually, a problem. I do have to be out of here, and living in the shelter, in a week. There isn't any slack in that. But the roof as I'd planned it will not survive an easterly gale. So I need to design a new roof, and build it, within a week - and, ideally, without using any additional materials I have to buy, because the money I spend on the summer palace is money I don't have to spend on my permanent house. Reinstating the original roof isn't a solution, because it clearly isn't strong enough.

There are fundamentally three options.

The first is to borrow someone's yurt or caravan. I actually could do this. I'd really rather not - I don't want to be too dependent on other people's help. But it isn't impossible.

The second is to build a bender on the existing summer palace platform. It's what a lot of sensible people have suggested. The trouble is that a bender is claustrophobic, and, in any case, I don't have any long bendy poles to spare (although I could get some from elsewhere).

The third is to make a framed gable roof with round spruce-pole rafters - which I have in quantity - and cover those rafters with carpet and then with tarpaulin. My thinking tonight is that that is what I'm going to have to do. I do have the materials I'd need, and the tools and skills to use them. I'll need to build a lot lower than I was planning, and consequently it's inevitably going to be a bit cramped, but that can't be helped.

Planking the roof

Radial planking

Planking the roof of the cone poses interesting problems. You can plank a cone radially, and every plank is straight. My rafters run radially, but that doesn't have to be a problem; I could put short purlins between the rafters to fasten radial planks to. I can even envisage some rather pretty joinery for those purlins. It isn't impossible.

But every plank would have to be cut longitudinally - identically, so I could make a jig and it wouldn't be a big deal, but it's a significant job. More significantly, radial planking also would not strengthen and stiffen the roof, and I'm still concerned by my friend Pete's comment that the roof could be floppy in strong winds. The tensile bracing which Pete suggested and which I've shown in the last drawings will help, but...

Short tangential

When I originally envisaged planking the dome I thought of short sections of plank between two rafters only. This has multiple problems. There's a lot of work in doing that cutting, and getting it right. In practice, every one would have to be fit and then cut individually, and there would be almost two thousand of them. There's two lots of nails at every crossing between plank and rafter, doubling the opportunity to miss the rafter and end up with ugly exposed nails. Actually more than doubling, because given that every nail is through a plank end it cannot go into the middle of the rafter, and must be on a diagonal. Finally, all those cut ends create areas of roughness which could potentially damage the waterproof membrane which will be laid over them. So it's entirely possible that the roof would have to be sanded before the membrane could be laid, which would be a huge job. The more I think of it the more I see the short-plank roof as a bad idea.

Long tangential

But, a cone is a developed plane surface; there are no complex curves. So, you could lay your planks perpendicular to one key rafter, and just keep planking like a floor. The problem with this is that the cone has a curvature, and the planks will only bend so much. As you get closer to the peak, the curvature tightens. However, it's a very shallow cone - for most of its area it does not curve much. This means, of course, that the planks will partially wrap around the cone, forming graceful curves themselves which will be visible from the interior (particularly if one in every five or so is stained a contrast colour - see later in this essay).

It also means that if you started perpendicular to one particular rafter, then the natural wrap of the cone would mean that on the opposite side of the dome where the wrap met, you would have planks which were crossing the rafters at a steep angle, and you would need to provide a 'king plank' where the wrap joined. This might look good, but I'm not confident.

The solution I'm presently inclined to try is to start planking perpendicular to the most east-westerly outer rafters, and have a king plank running north-south across the roof. This makes the eastern and western halves of the cone essentially separate structures, but it solves some of the problems of wrapping and I'm confident it would look well. There's a minor problem in that the inner rafters are offset from the outer rafters by 3.75 degrees, so a king plank which is perpendicular to an outer rafter cannot be perpendicular to an inner rafter and vice versa. It will probably look best if it is not perpendicular to either.

In the upper part of the cone, the curvature will get tighter, and the planks won't curve that much naturally. There are a number of possible solutions.

First, I could saw a series of transverse cuts across the plank, halfway through the thickness. It's an old joiner's trick to ease a piece of wood through a curve that's too tight for it. The problems are that the cuts are best done on the inside of the curve, where they would be visible from the interior. The technique weakens the plank anyway, but if done on the outside weakens it more. And the risk is that it snaps, which wouldn't be good.

Second is, I could build a steam box on site and steam the sections of the planks which need to curve most tightly. This would probably work. When steamed, wood goes (relatively) floppy. It also swells, and assembling toungue-and-groove joints when the wood is swollen might be tricky, but this idea has definite merit.

Third, when the curve gets tight I could switch to a different material which can take the curvature more easily. Specifically, for the uppermost 1200mm (or even 1800mm) of the cone I could switch from 22mm tongue and groove planking to three thicknesses of 6mm plywood or one layer of 6mm plywood and two of 9mm OSB (oriented strand board - although I'm not convinced that 9mm OSB will cope with the curvature required, and 6mm isn't readily available).

On colours

In some of my working drawings I've coloured different pieces of timber in bright contrasting primary colours, to make it clearer how joints are intended to work. I never intended that the timber in the structure should be coloured in this way. But I've come back to colour from a different angle.

What I'm building is a frame to support a roof, in Galloway, where it rains. A lot. It can, of course, be covered in polythene when not being worked on; but it's also an exceptionally windy site, so polythene is likely either to get blown away, or, worse, to act as a sail and damage parts of the uncompleted structure. So it would be a good thing if the structure were resistant to wet before it's assembled. Also, the timber needs some degree of protection from xylophilic invertibrates.

I don't like paint, and, in any case, on this scale, paint is simply far too much work - I don't have either the money or the time. But the sort of stains sold for outdoor timber would be quick and not outragreously expensive to apply. They're readily available in a range of browns and greens, from pale to dark, and less readily, in a range of more saturated colours.

So, I'm thinking about staining the main structural frame; and if I'm going to stain it I'm thinking of colour. A forest green frame would definitely be nice. A variety of toning colours, in browns, greens and greys, would also be nice, and could be done either to colour-code the structural function of the element or simply, as in my drawings, to draw attention to and explain joints.

The possibility of colour staining the roof planking, either in a regular pattern or, within the toning range, randomly, also appeals, especially if the 'long tangential' planking technique is used. It would show up the boatlike form of the roof.

All this is slightly complicated by the fact that an exposed timber roof in a kitchen is required to be finished in a fire-retardent varnish, and I assume my singlespace will be considered to be all kitchen from this point of view. But there is no problem with applying fire retardent varnish over a stain, so the solution of staining before erection and then applying varnish to the interior once completed is entirely possible.

I haven't decided on colour. For that matter, I haven't decided on long-tangential planking. But that's the way my thinking is running just now.

Transport

One of the things I need to consider about the croft is moving around. Not moving me around, my feet or a bicycle do that. And for getting my groceries home, well, a bike or my feet or at worst a wheelbarrow will work. But while building my house I'm going to need to get a fair bit of building materials in, and once it's build I'm still going to need occasionally to move heavy or bulky stuff around.

The planners, of course, will not want a house which cannot be reached by road. But the planners are not me, and I do. At present, you can get a normal car over the hill to the croft... in dry weather. In normal weather, you can't - not because it will sink in, but because you can't get traction. The hill is too steep and you can't get grip.

So what are my options?

One is, construct a track over the hill so that cars can use it. In theory that's 'free' to me, since the co-op agreement is that the company pays for new roads. But the truth is, a new track to my croft is longer than all the other new tracks the company needs to build put together. And money the company spends building tracks is money the company can't return to us in loan repayment. So actually building me a track does cost me money. More significantly, it costs everyone else money, and that doesn't seem very communitarian.

OK, so next, I can depend on borrowing from my neighbours. In theory it's also 'free', although one has to have favours to trade. But that's what I'm trying at present, and it isn't working very well. Of course, when we're all settled things may be a little easier, but I don't want to have to depend on it all the time.

Third possibility, I fit off-road tyres to my little car. That's actually probably enough. But it means that the fuel consumption on-road would go up considerably. It also means that I would tend, lazily, to drive over to the croft too often, which isn't what I want. And it would mean the little car would get more beat up more quickly, as it was used as a general beast of burden (which, to be honest, it is now).

Fourth is, pony and cart. It would be transportation for which I can grow my own fuel. I don't have the skills, but plenty of my neighbours do and could teach me. However, it's probable that it wouldn't get used enough, and the pony would lack exercise and practice. Also, I don't think it would be wise or good husbandry to expect a pony to pull anything very heavy over the hill, so I would still be dependent on charity of neighbours.

Fifth is, get a motor vehicle for farm use. If it was strictly for farm use it wouldn't need MOT or road tax, and could legitimately run on red diesel; alternatively I could sell my little car and get a vehicle which would do both farm and road use, but I won't do that until I'm convinced I can earn my living without needing to drive to cities.

So what are the options for such a vehicle?

I could get what is contradictorarilly known as a 'quad bike'. They are not very expensive, and reasonably simple to run and maintain. They are what the farmers round here use for moving small quantities of stuff, and the farmers are not fools. On the other hand they're noisy, can't pull anything heavy, and might be too easy to get in the habit of using.

I could get a small old tractor like the grey fergie on which I learned to drive fourty four years ago. It would be simple and reliable, would haul a reasonable weight over the hill, and would additionally be able to do  farming jobs like thistle topping, mowing, wuffling and harrowing, and as much ploughing as I'm ever likely to want to do. Grey fergies are something of collectors items nowadays, but you can still pick up a reasonable diesel for a thousand pounds and spare parts seem easy to find. It's definitely possible.

I could get an old diesel landrover. If more than 25 years old it wouldn't need road tax, but (unlike a grey fergie) could be driven into town if I didn't have to go far. It couldn't do ploughing or anything requiring a power take-off, but it too would pull a reasonable weight over the hill. Again, a budget of a thousand pounds would get something usable.

Of course motor vehicles which aren't used very often have to be kept dry, or they deteriorate. If I can store it in the 'communal vehicles bay' in the Void that will be fine, but I expect that space is going to be oversubscribed. Otherwise I'll need to build myself a shed - which isn't a problem, but adds extra cost.

Longeaves

In my last essay I wrote of some unresolved issues in the singlespace design. In summary

• In a single space, a lavatory poses a problem;
• In my design as it stood, there was no external storage, for bicycles and firewood;
• The roof was potentially floppy, and thus vulnerable to damage in strong winds;
• Drainage on the north, uphill side, is problematic;
• The cone is an unnatural shape in the landscape, and half of it drains north, aggravating the drainage problem.

I've tried to address these issues in a new variant of the design, longeaves.

Firstly, the shape in the landscape. In the first singlespace drawing, the frontage was very stark and basic. The roof overlapped the front edge of the building very little, making the geometric regularity of the fenestration very obvious. I tried to address that in the second drawing by extending the front eaves out from the building, but I still did this with rotational symmetry, and it still looked, in my opinion, very artificial.

Considering the need to add additional space - somewhere where, in the longer term, a water closet might be installed, and also somewhere where bikes, firewood and other outdoor stuff could be stored - led  me into reconceiving the roof. If one has a conventional building, the most convenient way of adding an additional space is to add a leanto - essentially, a space under deliberately extended eaves of the roof. Well, OK, let's build the roof with long eaves on the sides, deliberately creating additional space. Let's build the retaining wall to accommodate that space. Suddenly the roof has changes shape; it's no longer a neat truncated cone. Now it has an asymmetric skirt. And if we fair that asymmetric skirt into the main roof in a fluid curve, then we have a shape which does not look quite so artificial in the landscape. The energy costs of doing so are remarkably small; the eaves will not shade the windows at noon, because they are extended only at the sides, nor will they at evening, when the sun is low.

I could, of course, build these eave-extensions on both sides of the building, and initially that's what I thought I'd do. However, but the time I'm old enough to need an inside water closet I shall probably be too old to ride a bicycle over the hill, and the shape of the depression in the ground into which I want to put my house will make it easier to have an extension on the west side only. So my present plan is to have only one such extension, arranged for now as an external store but designed with the intention (and thus with the insulation and damp-proofing) which will allow it to be incorporated into the internal space later. Again, increasing the asymmetry decreases the landscape impact by decreasing the obvious artificiality of the shape.

As discussed in the previous essay, the obvious solution to stiffen the roof is to add tensile bracing like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. My aesthetic temptation is to use rope; Hempex brand polypropylene such as I plan to use for the ring beam lashing is sufficiently durable and looks good, but I think the tensile bracing needs to be very, very low stretch indeed, so stainless steel wire with turnbuckles for tightening is probably more sensible. I might compromise and go for steel rod (which would also be cheaper than stainless). These new drawings show how this could be done, and it looks reasonably persuasive.

I thought a lot about reshaping the roof to merge it into the hillside better, and I've decided not to. Adding a gable (which would be possible) detracts from the structural simplicity, and thus elegance, of the space; the gable adds cost and complexity, and replaces a cone in the landscape with flat planes in the landscape. Making an irregular shape strong is even more complicated, and adds costs not just in materials but in time. The simple cone isn't a natural shape; but it is a simple shape to build and it does have elegance. And I think that in this version it won't shout in the landscape - particularly if I plant gorse on the roof.

This leaves the issue of draining the uphill side. I started with the idea of an underground house. That, in the end, turned out to be too expensive. Singlespace still has a turf roof, which makes it less obvious in the landscape, and it's nestled into a natural hollow. The question is, do I dig it back into the hollow and berm natural earth up against the walls? I can do. And there are well documented solutions to draining this sort of design. They aren't absurdly expensive. To be able to walk from the natural hillside onto my roof with no obvious transition seems a good thing to me. And building back into the hillside definitely decreases wind exposure and increases insulation.

But Galloway is very wet. Water will be moving down that hillside in wet weather, and the drains will be critical - digging them out after the building is complete would be difficult and expensive. My friend Pete, who's given me a number of good steers in this design process, doesn't think I should dig right back into the hillside. He thinks I should leave a walkway behind the building  to make drains maintenance easier...

He's quite possibly right. And, if I went that way, I could use straw bale for the back walls rather than concrete block and polystyrene, increasing the insulation and decreasing the energy cost. It isn't impossible, but I'm very resistant. Digging back into the hillside feels like the only part of my original concept I've got left.

Shapes in the landscape, and aerodynamics

I've now discussed the singlespace design with a lot of people, and got useful feedback.

Several people have queried having the loo in the singlespace. Actually, that was never the plan. The plan is to have a cludgie about 50 metres away in the wood.  However, this is a house to grow old in, and while it's one thing to go fifty metres into the wood on a warm summers day at fifty five, it may be a different thing on a cold winters night in twenty years time. So the design has to have an account of where an indoor water closet will go. And just at present it doesn't.

Another friend asked where I would put my bikes. Again, a very good question which this design really doesn't address. And it does need to. There's no point in having a dwelling which is almost invisible in the landscape if it's surrounded with ugly sheds.

Which brings us to my objection: the isolated geometric cone, even if covered with turf, isn't a natural shape. Granted, as an architect friend has pointed out, there's nowhere you can see the cone against the sky - it will never be skylined, because of the rising ground behind it. But it still isn't a natural shape.

Also, significantly, rain which falls on the north half of the roof drains north. Of course there needs to be thoughtful drainage around the north half of the building, but still adding more water to the problem isn't helpful. From that point of view, building a gable from the apex of the roof north-east into the hillside would both make a (somewhat) more natural land shape and reduce the drainage problem.

However, you end up with an unlovely bastard structure, and this in a building in which the structure is necessarily exposed. I'm still somewhat in love with my twisted cone roof. And my architect friend feels that the flat planes of the gable roof will look as unnatural or more unnatural in the landscape than the cone.

So there are a series of unresolved problems with the design.

However, the worst of the problems is one which should have been obvious to me. That conical roof is going to generate a huge amount or aerodynamic lift, and mine is an exceptionally windy site. My architect friend, who pointed this out, said also that as I've designed it it is also floppy and will move in the wind. This isn't a crisis. He pointed out that I could brace the roof with tensile members, like a bicycle wheel. This resolves the floppyness - instead of moving like a jellyfish, it will move as a single rigid thing.

But.

But, it will still lift. That lift has to be contained. Which means the pillars have to act as tensile members, and must transmit lift to the floor. Which means that footing pieces for the pillars have to be cast into the concrete slab foundation, in exactly the right places. So I have to get the exact positions right before I pour the slab, and I can't shift things even by a single centimetre once it's poured.

All these things are design problems. All of them have to be resolved. But none of them makes this design unusable. I shall continue to think.

Singlespace joinery detail

If the 'singlespace' design is to be built it has to be built quickly, and largely with my labour. Therefore there is not time (and not skill, either, really) for fine carpentry or elegant carving. Yet the structure is going to be exposed and needs to look good. What I'm considering in this essay is how simple carpentry can result in an elegant structure.

In my initial sketch of the structure I discovered that in order to avoid complex joins at the pillar heads, each pillar/ring beam assembly has to be rotated about the axis of the building by an odd multiple of the rafter spacing angle of the 'upstream' assembly. The rafter spacing of the inner ring is 15 degrees, and in both this drawing and its predecessor the second ring is offset by 15 degrees. The rafter spacing of the outer ring is 7.5 degrees; however, if you offset the outer ring by just 7.5 degrees it just looks odd and so in this drawing I've offset by 22.5 degrees.

Every pillar has exactly one rafter running through it, and the pillar is slotted to take the rafter. A single treenail positively locates the rafter to the pillar. Every pillar stands at the junction between two ring beam components. The ring beam components are joined with a mortice and tenon, and are then checked back into the pillar. Finally, they are lashed together round the back of the pillar, enabling a strong characterful joint. The ring beam components are notched slightly on upper and lower edges to positively locate the lashing. Each of the braces is checked into the pillar and fastened to it with two treenails. The brace is checked to accommodate the ring beam component it supports and fastened with two treenails; the joint might be a little more sophisticated than the one shown in this drawing, but I don't think it needs be.

The remaining rafters are laid on the ring beams and are checked in sufficiently to achieve a smooth,

fair, even cone to the roof. Because the rafters cross the ring beams at a range of angles each needs to be checked in individually on site - I don't think it would be wise to do this in the workshop and hope to get it right! the rafters obviously cross two ring beams, one at the upper end and one at the lower. At the upper end, the rafter is checked (although the sing beam might also be checked slightly); at the lower end, only the ring beam is checked.

Both ends of all the rafters are tapered upwards. The ends of the ring beam components are extended to a degree which is more than that strictly required for joint stability and again tapered. Exposed edges of rafters and ring beam components might be moulded with a router is there's time.

My intention at this stage is still to use plain ordinary manufactured patio door units for the front wall. Obviously these aren't designed to be fitted into this sort of structure, but they will save a great deal of complicated joinery and will just work, so I think it's worth using them and doing the necessary joinery to make them fit (and look reasonably good). I plan to put them immediately between the front pillars, inside the braces of the ring beam components, rather than either outside the pillars or inside the pillars. Obviously, between the tops of the patio door units and the roof there will be a series of complicated-shaped holes which will need to be made good with 60mm closed cell foam board faced with T&G boarding inside and out.

Finally - while this isn't strictly a joinery detail - both yesterday's drawing and todays show a polygonal wall for the back and sides of the structure. This isn't simply unnecessary - it will actually make fitting the waterproof membrane harder, because of the corners. So I now think a smooth circular wall with no corners would be preferable, and not greatly harder to build.

Singlespace

I'm revisiting the design of my proposed home yet again. Yes, I know this gets boring. But it's probably the biggest decision I'll make in the next ten years - I need to get it right.

I do like the four dome design - the design I've called 'sousterrain' - I've been working on over the past six months. It's scupltural and elegant. I think it would have elegant internal spaces. Because it's modular, you can add on modules; you can build only part of what you intend in the first phase, and live in that while you build more. Which I would need to do, since I can't afford to build it all in one phase, either in money or (probably) in time.

It's also very challenging for the policy driven, risk averse, conventional planning authorities; but frankly anything I design or want to live in will be, so that's almost a non-issue.

Food miles

However, there are a number of arguments against the sousterrain design. The first is 'food miles'.

I came up with two possible constructions, one of which was engineered plywood, the other of which was concrete elements cast in engineered plywood moulds. Plywood is a wonderful engineering material from which you can make elegant, strong, light structures. But it is mostly made from rainforest timber and one really has no assurance that the forest is sustainably managed. And it's been shipped half way round the world. It's also quite an expensive material - the four dome design in plywood came out at £20,000 for the shell structure alone, which probably makes it unaffordable to me. It's because it's an exotic, highly processed material that it's expensive.

Building the four dome design in concrete is much cheaper, despite the fact that a great deal of plywood would still be required for the moulds. Concrete is an amazingly cheap material, in financial terms. But it isn't cheap in energy terms. Making the cement for concrete embodies a huge amount of energy, with a very real carbon cost. And, in any case, it isn't made locally - from the point of view of Galloway it is again an exotic material, one which is shipped in.

I've been reading a lot of books about dwellings written by hippies lately. Mystics. People who feel that there is inherent merit in building in the stuff of the landscape in which they build - in wood and stone from the site itself. It's a romantic idea. But, beyond that, it's how most houses were built prior to our parents' generation; and, in all likelihood, how most houses will be built after our childrens'. In actuality, I could build with the materials of my own croft - obviously I could, people have been building dwellings in Galloway for four thousand years. But I am, although a hippie, a pragmatist, I hope, not a mystic. I could take the timber to build from my own wood. There is (easily) enough timber there - even for an all-timber structure.

Next, I could build the masonry parts of my building from field stone, as the people of Galloway have since the bronze age. On Standingstone farm, Auchencairn, I'm not short of stone. Now that really is practical - the embodied energy is significantly lower than building in concrete, and the stone costs me nothing except labour. I really could do it. Of course, I would still have to use cement or lime mortar, so the masonry isn't 'free' either in financial or energy terms, but it could be done and it would be better.

Pragmatics

The problem with using my own timber is that would take a year to season, and that means either I would be living in something temporary for the winter, or else burning my building money renting winter accommodation. And it would take milling, which would mean that either I would need to buy a mill (not cheap) or hire one of my friends who have mills to mill it for me. In practice I can buy timber of similar species and quality to my own timber for little more than the cost of using my own, and, provided I get planning permission, can build this year. But note - this is timber, not plywood. Plywood I don't have the ability to make.

The problem with using my own stone... The problem with using my own stone is that an underground or earth-sheltered dwelling in Galloway has to be very waterproof. Very. Of course, waterproof membranes are not native to Galloway, which is why Galloway people have historically not built earth sheltered dwellings. Traditional houses in Galloway did have high quality insulation in the form of thatch; and it's possible to insulate houses with wool, which also is produced in Galloway. But I do plan to use waterproof membranes, and the waterproof membranes I know how to use are designed to be stuck on smooth, flat surfaces. So I'm inclined just to use conventional concrete blockwork for my walls. Yes, it's embodied energy and it's an exotic material. But it's a heck of a lot quicker and easier and I end up with a reasonably smooth flat surface to which I can stick membranes which I know how to use. Outside that surface I'll use sheets of extruded (closed cell) polystyrene foam - another exotic material embodying energy - both as insulation and to protect the membrane from the soil. I'd already decided both those points when working on the four dome 'sousterrain' design. I don't need to revisit them.

After all, in the front of my dwelling I plan to use glass. It, too, is an exotic material, embodying a lot of energy, but I don't see many people too purist to use it!

The Single Space

OK, so, plywood I can't afford. Using a lot of concrete niggles at my eco-wannabe soul. And the costs of my designs - while not high, by the standards of modern housing - are hard to square with my budget. I need to rethink.

The shape which encloses the most area for the least edge - wall - is a circle. A circle is also the easiest shape to heat. And that takes me to yurts, about which I've been thinking a lot lately. Yurts are very simple and elegant structures. I've already decided that if I absolutely cannot get planning permission, a yurt is the way to go. Having slept in a yurt, I'm confident I could be comfortable in one. But it would be cramped. Even a large yurt of six metres diameter is only thirty square metres. Going up beyond about six metres you have a problem with the span of the rafters.

One American architect in one of the hippie books or websites I've read recently (I'm afraid I don't recall which one) solves this problem by arranging concentric yurt structures, with, essentially, intermediate tension rings supported by pillars. This is actually very similar to the design of round houses used by some native peoples of the south-eastern United States, and similar also to what has been inferred from post-hole evidence as the structure of a typical iron age dwelling in Britain.

A single circular space with the floor area of my four-dome structure - sixty square metres - would be slightly less than ten metres in diameter, or slightly less than five metres in radius. Which means two 2.5 metre rafters would span it with one intermediate tension ring.

A Subtle Twist

When I started thinking about this structure, I thought, as a western educated person, that naturally you'd run the two rafter sections coaxially, one in line with the other. But actually if you do that you get an incredibly complicated joint at the top of each pillar - a joint which it would be hard to make and harder to make strong. But if you offset the rings slightly, so that while each rafter is still radial to the structure it is no longer coaxial with the rafter up-roof from it, the whole structure becomes a lot easier to make, and also gains a subtle twist to the geometry which is elegant in a very unwestern way.

Internal Layout

I'm still - or, indeed, still more - resistant to the idea of internal partitions. I see this design as essentially a single space; I think its geometry demands that. But it's obvious that the stove needs to be at the centre, to provide even warmth. And it makes sense to put a (large) hot water tank also in the centre - since the hot water tank also forms part of the thermal mass which keeps the dwelling warm. A traditional yurt has two pillars supporting the ring into which the inner ends of the rafters fit; I've designed a triangle of three pillars. This triangle defines the 'warm core'; it contains the stove (facing south, towards the sun, and therefore the day side of the dwelling) and the water tank (behind it, to the north, in the night side). North of the warm core is the most shaded and most private space, so it makes sense to put the bed there.

It will be most welcoming if the floor between the entrance - the south, glass, wall - and the stove is largely clear. Kitchen preparation area is obviously needed near the stove, and should form one edge of this clear space. A dining area should also be near the stove and forms the other. Further back, the bath area needs a certain degree of privacy - not a great deal, since there are no near neighbours, but some. It makes sense to put this to the west, as there is some shelter from people approaching from the east. A work area needs protection from direct sunlight, which is hard on the eyes - but, at the same time, it's nice if there's a view. So it needs to be further back in the dwelling, and it makes sense to put it on the east.

What Doesn't Change

This is still a design to be built into the hollow I had already identified as the sousterrain site. It's still a design which will be earth sheltered - have earth covering the entire height of the north, east, and west sites; whose roof will be covered with turf; which will have 'patio door' sliding windows in its south wall, rather than a door as such. It's still a design which is intended to be inconspicuous in the landscape - although the low cone of the roof will be more obviously unnatural than the shapes you'd get from the four domes.

The Bottom Line

I started drawing this structure really as an experiment in exploring alternatives. What's startling, though, is how inexpensive it is. The materials cost of the shell works out at £6,020 - as against £11,999 for the four dome design in concrete, or £20,180.68 for the four dome design in plywood. Furthermore, while making the domes or the moulds for the four-dome design would need extremely careful finely detailed joinery, the 'singlespace' design is all simple carpentry. Unskilled people could actually help in building this. And, because it's simple, it could be built quickly - getting the shell completed in one summer season does not seem unreasonable. I'm now thinking of this design as my probable structure. Of course the verdammt planners won't like it any more than they would like the four dome design, so planning permission is still a major headache - but I don't think it's a worse headache, just something that has to be tackled.

The Plan

Julie asks, what's the plan?

The plan, above all else, is to continue to live in the hinterland of Auchencairn, without having the money it now takes to buy somewhere here. That applies to all of us. The first stage of the plan has been to group together and buy a farm. That's completed; we've done it. Ruth has been the animateur of this stage of the plan, and as her share of the deal, she's got the farmhouse. So she doesn't need to build anything.

For the rest of us, we do. We don't, at this stage, have planning permission with which to do it. We're a mixed group, but usefully mixed. Boy Alex is a tree surgeon and feller, and intends to establish a saw mill. He's (naturally) thinking about a timber framed house, with Alice, who is a multi-media artist mainly working with film. James is an electrical engineer with a special interest in wind generation; if I'm up to date with his plans he's planning something like an earthship for himself and Vicky, and their young family. Justine and Si run a business providing up-market accommodation - mostly in yurts which they make themselves - at music festivals; their plans are slightly longer term but they have been talking about a straw bale or cob house to live in; they will use their land as a campsite and perhaps run yoga courses. Finn is a blacksmith, and doesn't actually plan to live up at the farm; but he is planning to move his workshop. Godfrey is a shoemaker; his plan is for a craft workshop and gallery, and perhaps a cafe, in the existing byre building. He also plans to establish a market garden, although in the end it might be someone else who does that.

And then there's me. I don't really have any special skills, but I'm good at learning stuff and good at making things happen. I'm planning to build an earth-sheltered structure, mostly because I want to. The details, and the thinking about it, are in other essays on my blog. For the rest, I've bought seven acres of pasture and three of spruce plantation; I'm planning to plant some of my pasture with mixed native tree species to provide shelter (it's an extremely exposed, windy site). If I can get enough other people to share in the work I might keep a couple of milch cows on my pasture to provide milk for the farm; otherwise I'll probably buy a few weaner stirks each spring, and slaughter them in the autumn for beef. I'll also have a vegetable garden, although how good I'll be at making that work we'll see.

I'll need to generate my own electricity, because my croft is too far from the powerline for me to be able to afford to use mains; but fortunately there is no shortage of wind. We do fortunately have mains water, but if we didn't there are springs we could make use of - this is Galloway, after all!

My existing plantation should provide sufficient fuelwood indefinitely for my home, and I will progressively replant it with native species as I extract. But in addition, I share with everyone else in the 'commons', the land which we haven't allocated to anyone individually, and that includes 15 acres of woodland - mostly spruce - which will provide some construction timber and probably provides sufficient fuelwood indefinitely for everyone.

No-one's plan is to live exclusively off their land. We none of us have enough land for that. And we won't be operating the farm as a strictly commercial farm, more as a collection of crofts.

The extent to which we'll work as a community is still very much fluid, and will develop organically. In the short run, we're all broke and will have to help one another out with things. In the longer run, I'm sure things will develop. We're all nervous about the amount of organisation, meetings and time that goes into running existing communes like Laurieston Hall, but inevitably there will be many things which it will just be sensible to do communally. For example, we're currently discussing whether we should buy a communal digger.

All of which is to say, there isn't really a plan, beyond some broad brush strokes. We have a farm - in a startlingly beautiful (if windy) location. We have a bunch of interesting, capable people. We are going to live there (although that may take some robust negotiation with the planners). Stuff will happen.

It's an adventure, and the second phase - settling in - starts now.

Clutching at straws

In my last essay I discussed the possibility of using wool as insulation. After all, as I said, we have wool. The problem with using wool as insulation in the walls is that it has no structural strength and is not weatherproof; it must be packed into structural, weatherproof boxes. The wool is virtually free, but the boxes come expensive.

Well, OK, we do have wool. But we also have straw (and a square baler to bale it). This year we're growing three acres of barley on my croft, and thirteen acres across the farm as a whole; and no-one else is going to be bidding for the straw, except as horse bedding. Straw bales provide both structure and insulation. Indeed, the first straw bale houses, on the north american prairie, also had turf roofs, so there's no doubt whatever that they can sustain the compressive load. The insulation values - tested, again, over a century of prairie winters - are very good.

In straw bale construction, you need, of course the bales. In order to tie them strongly together, you need a certain amount of steel rod - about two or three metres for each square metre of wall. And you need a rodent-proof render on both inside and out. On top and bottom you also need something rodent-proof; boards are possible, but so is render. All this is cheap - as cheap as or cheaper than concrete blocks.

The bales must of course be used after the harvest - so September - and must be laid and rendered dry. Dry weather is not guaranteeable in Galloway autumns, so there would be benefit in having the roof up first. Furthermore if the roof isn't up first, there isn't a lot of time to get it up before winter closes in. Of course, if the roof is to be up first it must be supported on pillars. Of course, those pillars could be temporary - my proposed roof structure is after all, as Pete objected, floppy, and so will accommodate a slight movement as the pillars are removed (provided that it is slight!).

All this begins to look very like a plan. It is cheap - actually the cheapest structure I've so far costed. It's also extremely 'green' - low energy, low carbon cost. I continue to assert that the zero carbon house is impossible to achieve - this one will have some sort of plastic membrane on the roof, and will have glass windows; furthermore a certain amount of cement and quicklime will be needed for foundations and render. But this is probably as close as it is possible to get. And it makes use of materials - timber, straw, wool - which we produce on site. I think I have a plan.

Home

My parents rented the top cottage on Nether Hazelfield in 1965, when I was ten, and from that time I've always seen Auchencairn as home. Although my parents bought a house in Kirkcudbright in 1969, I returned to Auchencairn in 1977 to set up a pottery in the old mill. That business lasted until 1981, when Mrs Thatcher had her first recession and eight of the thirteen potteries in Dumfries and Galloway ceased trading, including mine. In 1982 I went away to University, and after graduating, worked as an academic in Artificial Intelligence for three years before becoming chairman of a spin-out company, attempting to market the products of our research. That company traded successfully until the recession of 1991, when it was wound up, and I returned to Auchencairn.

I've been here ever since. This is my home.

If I'm to stay here now, however, I need a home I can afford; and house prices in the village itself have become very silly, as more and more houses have become second homes or retirement homes for people who have not had to earn their living in Galloway's labour market. Consequently the Standingstone proposal has seemed to me a risk worth taking - it seems to be my best chance of staying in the valley. I appreciate that it is a risk.

If I'm to have a house here, it has to be small, cheap and simple. It has to be simple because I cannot afford to pay someone else to build it. It has to be cheap not only to build, but also to run, because the years in which I can continue to earn my living are limited. And, because it's a house to grow old in, it has to be durable enough not to need much maintenance in the next thirty years. All these things do not mean, however, that it shouldn't be well designed. On the contrary, each of them means that it should be well, and thoughtfully, designed. Building a house is something I'm almost certainly only ever going to do once; I want to get it right.

What I want is a house which vanishes into the landscape - one which, when natural planting has grown up around it for three or four years, a stranger can pass within fifty metres of and not know it's there. I want a house which is naturally warm, which doesn't take a lot of energy to heat. I want a house which is graceful and sculptural. I believe that this can all be done. More than that, I believe I can do it. I acknowledge that what I want isn't 'traditional' or 'vernacular' in Galloway, but it is nevertheless a designed repsonse to Galloway's particular geography and climate - and to my budget and needs.

Review: Oehler, M: The Underground House Book

Mike Oehler is an autodidact, and a man - he admits it, nay, proclaims it - of strong and idiosyncratic opinions. He has a recipe for building small dwellings cheaply in Pacific Northwest USA - which is to say it's as wet as western Scotland, warmer in summer and considerably colder in winter. He designs houses that I could afford to build using materials which are - with the exception of the polyethylene membranes which are key to his system - considerably more ecologically sound than most modern building materials. He makes substantial use of roundwood poles - which I have in abundance for the cost of cutting and seasoning them.

All these are reasons I should take him seriously. And yet, I'm wary. He's built - or claims to have built - remarkably few dwellings (two, as far as I can see, although people using his method have built many more). He doesn't seem to use any moisture barriers in his floors - in fact, he extols the virtues of earth floors. I simply don't see that working in Scottish conditions (In fact in the 'Update' section at the end of the book, Oehler now has a membrane under the floor of his house - which is now carpeted).

The other thing is that I strongly suspect that if you showed one of his houses to any self respecting British Building Control Officer you'd get something between a hearty guffaw and a shriek of horror. Indeed, Oehler's own response to building standards is clearly expressed on page 100 of his book: 'will a home built with the PSP system pass the code? The answer is, sadly, no... you may move to an area which has no codes...'

Well, you may. But I want to build my home on my land in my home valley, so I can't. I could adopt Oehler's alternative suggestion, of evasion... but the less said about that the better.

Finally, a note of caution about the title. Oehler's quoted prices relate to the 1970s; and even then I think a certain amount of creative (or merely forgetful) accounting was involved.

Nevertheless Oehler's book is both thoughtful and thought provoking. I'm glad I read it, and will continue to mull over it.

To cast or not to cast

To cast concrete or not to cast concrete, that is the question. 'Tis undoubtedly nobler not to. Cast concrete requires a huge amount of energy, and so inevitably has a high carbon cost. On the other hand, provided it's done right, it will stand and be useful for hundreds of years, so that energy cost is ammortised - potentially - over a very long time. But here's the rub. I don't need a dwelling that will stand for a very long time. I need a dwelling which will be reliably warm and weathertight for thirty years. After that, it's someone else's problem, and someone else may not choose to live underground.

The wood/epoxy alternative is probably but not certainly good for thirty years. If it starts to fail in twenty years, when I'm in my mid seventies and probably pretty broke, that's going to be bad news. I don't think it would, but it might. Also, the cast concrete structure is remarkably cheaper, and remarkably easier to insulate, than the wooden one. Given how tight I am for money, that's a very significant consideration.

Casting on-site is definitely out. I can't get a readimix truck to site, and I can't quality-control the concrete I can mix for myself on site. Also, the shuttering cost of casting on site is high because it would be necessary to cast a whole dome in one go. I had ruled out my original idea of casting off-site because I had thought that I could not afford the heavy equipment to move stuff on site. But Boy Alex's Unimog can do exactly that. Casting off-site is once again an option.

If anyone thinks that, like Hamlet, I'm labouring this decision, well, I am. This is almost certainly the biggest decision of the rest of my life.

Structure Review

OK, I'm getting very close to the point where I have to commit to a structure for my new home. I have to apply for planning consent, and I have to do it soon. If - improbably - I get consent quickly, then I can build this summer. And that would solve a lot of problems.

Of course, I can't actually afford, now, to build the full structure I want for the long term, so it has to be modular: I have to be able to build some 'now' and some 'later'. So let's again review the arguments and the options.

Conception

The original conception was for an underground structure sunk into a south-facing slope, comprising four hexagonal domes each 4.8 meters in diameter: one for services, one for kitchen, one for day, one for night - where the 'service' dome held bathroom, store and spare bedroom. The roofs were domed mainly because, in concrete, that's a good self supporting shape, and form followed function. They were 4.8 metres in diameter mainly because they would be cast over fundamentally plywood forms, and plywood comes in 2.4 metre sheets.

Underground is important both for insulation, for landscape considerations, and, most importantly on the very windy site, gets down out of the wind. The alternative of, for example, a timber framed straw-bale building would be both very intrusive in the landscape and very exposed to wind.

The south slope is important because it allows a fundamentally underground dwelling to have passive solar gain through south facing windows. In any case I've deliberately bought a south-facing slope for exactly this reason. An underground dwelling on a fundamentally flattish site in Galloway would have more significant problems with drainage and with daylight. I could get a more conventional house out of the wind by sheltering it behind my wood, but then it would lose the south aspect and consequently the passive solar gain.

The case for a hexagonal grid is a bit less compelling. Mass produced furniture is designed for rectangular spaces. Deliberately choosing a non-rectangular space means that much more of the interior furniture must be custom designed, which pushes the cost, either in money or time, up. However the human eye is very good at finding linear features in a landscape. Straight lines are very obvious, very noticable; and a structure with a rectangular grid exposes longer and more obviously related straight lines. It becomes more noticable in the landscape. However, my choice of a hexagonal grid is primarily aesthetic rather than rational.

Realisation

However, I've now doubtful about cast concrete. I don't think I can guarantee the engineering qualities of concrete I can make on site. I could as I originally intended cast concrete units in the void and hire Alex's Unimog to move them to site, so that is still a real possibility, but these are heavy units.

Against it, concrete has very high embodied energy, and I really would have to hire an engineer to check my structures.

For it, concrete is extremely durable - there aren't any doubts that it would stay up for my lifetime.

I've considered a wood epoxy composite structure. The problem with that is that if the epoxy encapsulation is breached it will rot, and lose structural integrity; and it's hard to imagine that it can support the overburden required for good soil insulation, so insulation would need to built into the structure. Which could be done. For the roof sections, the 'well it might rot' problem is to some extent mitigated by the fact it can't be buried deep - if a module rots, it can be unburied and repaired or replaced.

However, one of the important considerations is that this is a dwelling to grow old in. As I get older, my ability to do repairs myself reduces, and my ability to pay others to do repairs also reduces. If the structure has ongoing maintenance problems it will become unsustainable.

If I'm dealing with a structure which cannot sustain a heavy overburden, paradoxically larger modules become easier to achieve. Instead of four 4.8 metre domes, I could have fewer, bigger ones. But actually the small domes have two significant advantages. Firstly, I can build them one at a time, as I can afford them. A single 4.8 metre dome would be a small but tolerable living space for next winter. Two 4.8 metre domes - the service and the kitchen dome - would make a perfectly acceptable space. And realistically that is almost certainly as much as I can afford for just now.

Equally, if I'm not designing in a heavy material with a significant overburden, the dome is no longer form following function: it serves no functional purpose at all. It becomes, in fact, a sculptural conceit - and one which does not come for free. It makes the whole structure taller - and thus harder to bury - than flat ceilings. Like the hexagonal grid it becomes simply an aesthetic conceit. Yet it remains one that appeals to me. I believe it will make a graceful space. Furthermore, actually, a wooden dome lined with birch plywood becomes an even more graceful space than a concrete one.

So the compromise solution - concrete walls and wood/epoxy roof - seems the most attractive at present. I think. I'm almost decided.