First Work Party Builds Earth Bag Habitat and Stage

We had a great weekend at the new property in our two day work party. A fun time was had by all (from what I could tell). In all, I think we had about 20-25 people show up, about half of whom stayed both days. Some even slept overnight in tents on the property. With a Walmart about a 10 minutes drive away (after getting off the property, which takes ten minutes to drive across at near walking speed), people had a place to go for any "needs" they might have.

The first thing we did was remove some of the sage brush and rocks from the primitive road I laid out the day before, so we could drive regular vehicles to the end of the property where there is kind of a campground like area. I had to zig zag the road in order to get to areas where the gullies could be crossed on essentially flat terrain.


Here Renee, Annette, Torg, Travis, Christian and Aubrie stand at the entrance to the property, before we started in on clearing sagebrush from the road.

Despite all that effort to find a nominal road, it is still very bumpy, prohibiting speeds over 5 mph.

John Day brought a trailer full of long planks that he scavenged from somewhere, getting a great price for them. He thought we could build a little stage for putting on shows, dances, classes. I had just the area in mind to put the stage, and with some other input, we decided on the exact spot. It's at the base of an area where there are several natural terraces of rock outcroppings going up the hill to the north. We figured the audience could just sit on the hill for now.





I thought we'd maybe see that materialize in a few weeks, but to my surprise it was nearly done (at least the floor portion) by the end of the second day. Ed Hernandez and John put their heads together, planned how to design it, and viola, up it went. For most of the posts, we got some cedar posts that someone had cut from juniper trees on the east end of our land around the time we were closing on the property. That had kind of miffed us, so we returned the favor by putting them to good use on our property.

Torg brought a bunch of rice bags to fill to build a 120-square-foot "habitat" earth bag shed, just up the hill from where we put the stage. Utah code allows for structures of 120 square feet or less to be built without a building permit, as long as they don't have plumbing, electricity, or tap water. In July, that will be bumped to 200 square feet. Larger structures can be built, such as a pavilion (or stage) as long as they don't have walls or a roof.


Torg and Renee situated the earthbag structure with a live tree in the middle, clearing the branches to about 8 feet up. The roof will go around the tree to allow it to continue to grow.



A majority of the labor on the first day was devoted to filling the bags with the earth shoveled out from under where the structure goes – maybe 100 bags in all.


Two of my girls, Aubrie and Hailee, got into the act filling a Subway sandwich bag, but to them it was "oats", and they were cooking. I guess that's not too far removed from us adults who were filling rice bags with dirt.

I set a couple of cedar posts for the doorway.



Torg fastened curvy branches over their top.

Here's a video we shot of activities from day one:





The ladies prepared some wonderful meals to keep everyone fed. On Saturday night, as we sat around the campfire, Torg distributed little packets of some kind of firework substance folded in paper; and one at a time had us each say one word or two that captured what we were thinking, such as "music; love; dreams coming true; having fun working; freedom". We would then throw the packet on the fire, and a colorful, but not dangerous poof would errupt to everyeone's delight.

On the second day, those bags were laid in rows, and tamped down hard, to the point that the metal on the tamperer began to ring (at least that was the objective).


The earth bags were laid on top of a French drain composed of rocks.



The handle broke about three times, and we had to cut it shorter and reinsert it, so that by the end the handle was about a foot and a half long.





When the bags were all laid down, next began the task of mixing cob (resembles adobe), by stepping in the mud-like mixture.








My girls had fun helping with that one, until their feet got cold. Renee laid it on top of the first row of bags, pushing carrot-size holes into it with a stick to help it dry faster and to help the fibers tie the cob together.
Renee forms a cob brick out of mud mixed with straw. In the background you can see some of the sticks collected to make the roof joists.





Those take a couple of days to dry, apparently. So one row is done, you wait for it to dry, then do another row – very slow going, unless you're doing a lot of structures at once.

Another task that got started was to dig out an area that could serve as an outdoor kitchen/barbeque/oven. The ladies thought we should use the trackhoe that we just bought for $5k to dig that out, but the guys thought it would tear up the ground too much to bring it in. Maybe a bobcat could do it without imposing much damage.

Here's a video from the second day:



Susan doused for water and found a couple of options for digging a well where our home sites are. Last fall she had found a place that seemed to give a big reading. With my son Christian's help, she found it again, along with another not far away. Now we can have the survey/engineer guy recommend where to dig some exploratory holes for doing a percolation test. That will be happening Today. It sounds like I get to be the one to run the trackhoe. I've never done it before, but John says it is easy. So if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I tipped over or something.



Unfortunately, the weather today is going to be back to what it has been for most of this winter: cold and snowy. We caught a break for our first week-end work party, with the weather clearing and getting warm for those two days. It was very pleasant.

Torg and Renee are planning the next weekend work party, which for them will begin Thursday.


That's me at the waterless waterfall on the northwest corner of the 90 acres.

Purchased White Hills 90 Acres & Water

It's been a while since I've given an update on our house and sustainable community project. Much has happened.

A week ago, March 29, we closed on the 90-acre piece of ground on the south-facing hill of what is called White Hill south of Spring City, Utah; along Little Pigeon Hollow Rd. Then on April 5, we purchased four underground water rights (4 acre-feet total) toward the first four homes that will go into our minor subdivision; later to grow into a major subdivision.

Here's a view of the hill looking west near the northern border of the property.



It doesn't look like much from the road; but once you get up in there, it gets quite pretty, with a wide diversity of terrain, and lots of places for earth-friendly houses to be situated out of view.

This coming Saturday we're going to be having a work party on the property from 1-6 pm, building our first 120-square-foot storage shed using earth bag technology, among other miscellaneous tasks we can tackle now. You're welcome to show up if you're in the area. Bring gloves and a shovel.

Here's some video footage I shot about a month ago of the property, showing some of the possible building lots. It's no Hollywood production, so don't expect to be entertained.



The property is located north of Ephraim, UT about 2 miles, and east of Hwy 89 about 2 miles, along Little Pigeon Hollow Rd, where it goes from heading west-west-south, to heading north.

Once we get a major subdivision approved, the property could accommodate up to 18 homes, tucked away in the trees at the base of the hill. We'll start with a minor subdivision for four homes, including mine (the Sterling & Cheri Allan family of six).

Over on the East side, shown earlier in this footage, is actually a small water fall of about 12-15 feet (when there's water, e.g. during a downpour). We didn't discover that until after purchasing the property. It will be a great area for meditation.

Here's a rough sketch of the proposed road path and first four home plots on the property. We may straighten out the road rather than have it jog upward around half way across. It means longer driveways.



Our house plans are essentially completed, though I'm sure we'll have to be making some modifications as we prepare to apply for a building permit.

But it will be a while before we're able to start building, given the hoops we need to jump through, getting our minor subdivision proposal presented and approved, getting water rights transferred.

In my last report a couple of months ago, I said that we were under contract on a piece of land up a canyon south of Levan. However, the county of the property we had made an offer on in Levan requires 160 acres to build one home because it is a watershed area. That doesn't lend itself to community; so we backed out of that piece.

Now we have the property and are very busy attending to all the hoops the various government agencies want us to jump through in order to build on the property, including:
- Transferring water rights to the property
- Subdividing the property
- Satisfying the Wildland Interface requirements
- Obtaining surveying and land engineering
- Perc testing for the eventuality of septic systems

All of these things need to be satisfied before we can get a building permit.

Given that it is obvious that we will not be able to get going on building our home any time soon, we opted to dump the bulk of our 1031 roll-over into purchasing land and water for this Safe Haven Villages community project.

We're running into significant resistance on the idea of compost or dry mulch toilets, grey water recycling, and rainwater capture for culinary use after filtration, etc. These are considered "experimental" systems, and Central Utah Health Dept. says they don't have the knowledge base or budget to be able to handle scrutinizing these or cleaning up in case of a failure, so they have adopted a policy to not allow any experimental systems. However, it does look like there may be a way to apply for a waiver, so we're pursuing that. First we need to get the state to sign off on our systems.

For someone who has never been through any of this process before, this has created a significant learning curve for me. Trying to keep track of what agency does what, and who said what, has been challenging. Because we're in unusual territory, it seems that every person I talk to gives a different answer.

I can see why the state and local authorities have regulations in general; but I can also see that sometimes improved ways of doing things can be difficult to get past the regulations that are designed for typical systems.

My wife, Cheri, also wrote up a blog report today along these lines.