Subdivision approved; well & road in; greenhouse construction questions

It's been more than half a year since I updated this blog. Quite a bit has happened.

On November 23, the Sanpete County Commissioners approved our Safe Haven Villages at White Hill minor subdivision plan for the first four lots; and on December 1, we submitted the signed documents to the County Recorder.



And on November 12, the well drilling operation was completed, with 15 gallons a minute flow at a depth of 150 feet (happened to be the drilling contract minimum). Now we need to install a pump, run the piping up to the subdivision and install a holding tank.

Also during that time, Tom Crisp finished our road into the minor subdivision. We also had him rough in the road to the back end of the property.

These things gave us the green light to submit our house plans for approval; but we've been holding off for several reasons. First, we don't have the funds yet to begin construction (awaiting one of the free energy technologies we're involved with to come in). Second, after spending last Summer building two sheds using the cob and rammed earth bag construction, and seeing how labor intensive and slow it is, we are very reluctant to build our home using those methods.

One of the compromises we're considering is to pattern our home after my parent's solar home. http://AllansTIME.com/SolarHome/ is one of the first links that pulls up in Google for a search for solar home, and has been since I built the page more than a decade ago. It's an amazing design. Last winter, as an experiment, they never built a fire in the fire place. The home has no furnace. They said it got a little cold at times, requiring a sweater and extra clothing, but was tolerable.

Today I learned that the home we're renting (we transferred the value of our previous home to buy the land for the project), will need to be vacated in the event of societal meltdown, to make way for the landlord's family; so the urgency to get a survivable home built for our family is boosted. Our personal survival, therefore, could be seen as being contingent on at least one of these free energy technologies we're involved with coming through; which will be good news for a lot more than just us, as it creates jobs, hope, and survivability for the rest of the planet as well -- power to the people.


Greenhouse Conundrum

Meanwhile, the big, ongoing project has been to begin building the greenhouses, under the direction of Grow Utah First (GUF), which has a lease agreement for 20 acres. They've got about 400 feet of greenhouse framing nearly done and are getting ready to start installing some of the plastic covering.



While I am in agreement with many of the concepts GUF is pursuing, I am in disagreement with some of the actual methods being used to implement the concepts. GUF has not produced any kind of a blueprint to show the finished design. The closest thing to any kind of a plan has been a few cross sectional sketches.

We've been helping them a step at a time without having the end result clearly known.

The roof angle is only a 12-pitch; and the spans between rafters are between 6 and 12 feet. GUF thinks that running taught twine at around 8-12 inches apart will be enough to hold up the plastic during a snowstorm, and that the inside heat will melt the snow fast enough to prevent build-up of weight to the point of breaching the plastic.



This seems ludicrous to me. We get some pretty hefty snowstorms here in central Utah. The heaviest snowstorm of the lightest winter would be enough to collapse the plastic.

Those of us involved in helping with the project need to have confidence that the end result is going to be plausible.

I'm been pushing GUF to get their plans into adequate, written form, to be reviewed by people from various relevant disciplines, including engineering, building process, greenhouse solar gain, and gardening. Supposedly, they may now finally be in process of doing this.

One of my purposes in composing this entry is to see if there might be some people out there who could provide some guidance for us.

Some of the principles to bear in mind that we are seeking to implement in the greenhouses are:
• Sustainable building practices.
• Partly underground, to tie into the earth's more constant temperatures.
• Suitable to the central Utah climate and latitude.
• Year-round growing capability.
• Commercial operation, for larger scale growing.
• Impervious to local animals (deer, rabbits, rodents).
• Able to open for periodic freeze-out of bugs.
• Commercially viable.

We would like for this to be a model to demonstrate "grow local" principles.

One of the challenges we face is that our soil on the property is not at all good for growing and will need to be augmented. This is something that is true of many places around the world. People have land, but the soil isn't great.

I'm not a grower, so I know very little about things along these lines. But I do have common sense, and what GUF has been doing doesn't seem to have enough common sense to it.

In discussing this with my Dad, I've drawn up the following proposal for what I think is a better greenhouse design that implements most of the above principles (the variation being that it calls for masonry or cement to hold the walls).



Click image for enlragement

I'm open to suggestions. Feel free to chime in.