Extreme Desert Conditions Dwelling

Disclaimer: Before you try to build this in extreme desert conditions, take note that I am a 14 year old who lives in Canada, so my knowledge of deserts is limited, and should not be taken seriously, therefore, if one decides to build this house in extreme desert conditions, and roasts to death inside this contraption, I am ineligible to sue or blame for the unfortunate accident as this design has not been tested in Extreme desert conditions, and is just a conception.

There, hope that clears all the messy stuff up. First let me say that this Instructables could have been a lot better, as I built the entire thing in Tinkercad, taking screenshots the whole way, and then, like a dummy, deleted them all while I was uploading them onto Instructables. Then I had to pull everything apart haphazardly and try to take shots again. I designed this for the 2024 Make It Resilient challenge. The dwelling is designed to let humans live comfortably in extreme desert conditions. It is also designed to use as least electricity as possible, and I tried to make it out of as many sustainable materials as possible. The site I chose to build this dwelling is outside of Al Aziziyah, Libya, where the hottest record temperatures have occurred. I stupidly deleted that picture too, but I found it again. The red circles indicate where good places to build would be, as we need to keep in mind transportation, and there are lots of roads around that area. So with that, lets dive in.

The link for the design is here: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/0pWbsCzRR3h-funky-robo-migelo/edit

Concrete

Heavy Equipment such as cranes, bulldozers, and excavators

Steel Beams

Aluminum Sheets

Piping

Other materials used for building structures

Because we want this place to be cool all the time, we will be putting it underground, so you would first dig a hole about 13-15 feet down, with a width of 25 feet, and a length of 35 feet. The house will be 20 feet wide and 30 feet long, so not exactly huge, but more like a hotel room I guess. Next we would pour a concrete pad at the bottom with a thickness of about 5 or 6 inches, as this is about standard for most buildings. The best way to dig a hole this size would probably be to use a excavator to excavate a hole bigger than the house, then shore up the walls with wood or something. You would need to add rock or something hard for the concrete not to sink.You will also need more holes and trenches deeper for pipes, so I guess you would have actually done that before adding the concrete, but I added them later.

Then add stainless steel beams. Because they are strong and recyclable, they will be the the beams holding our walls up.

To keep the house cool, we will run pipes through the walls. These pipes will carry cold water around and around the house. These pipes would be made out of durable PVC plastic. The big box with the pipes coming out of it is the cooler tank, which would be made out of stainless steel, as it does not corrode. The water sits in this tank and cools before it goes through our house. The red tank is a pump, as the water has to travel up to go around the house two times. The pipe coming from the top of the cooling tank is to fill it with water, or for a clean out. The pipe coming from the pump is just for wires.

Ventilation for a big metal cube underground is pretty important, unless you want to suffocate. I just found a fan design, placed them around in the walls where I thought air would need to move most, then put a hole in the wall and put a grate over it. The fans suck air up into a duct that goes up and into the ceiling, where they join and come up above ground into a white conduit that releases it. The reason it is white, is because white reflects heat, so heat won't enter through there as much. You would also need electricity to power these fans, and if you remember, I said this house would try to use the least amount of electricity as possible, and so far that is our second thing that needs electricity, along with the pump. I put 4 fans in.

Waste management and water are equally important and essential to our comfort and survival. Now, because we are trying to use the least amount of electricity as possible, I think the best waste management would be a septic tank, which is showed in the pictures above. It is the large rectangle with the green cylinder protruding from the top, and the white effluent pipes coming out the side. The pipes would be PVC, and you can see them coming down and connecting to each other. The pipes coming up through the floor are for sinks and a toilet. The septic tank would be just like a normal one here, concrete, and 1,500 gallons at least.

Next we have water, and because we are trying to use the least amount of electricity as possible, We will have a water tower above ground, and because it is so high above the sinks and toilets, it should provide high water pressure and no need for pumps. The tower would have to be filled up at least every week, so you could probably easily run a water truck out there. The blue pipe that goes into the wall is the water pipe, and it might be good to make this out of PVC or metal. The tank itself would be made out of stainless steel, like most water towers, and would have some sort of protective coating on the inside. You would need to add a filter somewhere inside if you were going to drink this water, which is what I had in mind. You would want a toilet that uses as least water as possible, but also works well, as it might be a while before a plumber can truck out into the desert.

Now we need electricity pipes to carry the wires around the house. The pipes are yellow. You would want lights that provide good lighting, but use little electricity, as there are no windows when your house is underground. We now have three things that use electricity: Lights, Fans, and a Pump. I don't think it really matters what kind of lights you use, but LED's would probably work fine. We will be using solar panels to make electricity, so nothing that consumes to much electricity.

We will now work on air conditioning, without electricity! I researched a ton about this, and found out about a ancient method of cooling houses in the desert. Wind Catchers. These were tall rectangular, cylinder, or octagonal towers with slits in the sides. As wind blew over the tower, it would go down inside it, underground and into a Quanat, basically a old sewer. As the air went over the water, it would cool down, losing it's heat, and be directed down into storage rooms, or up into houses.

I built a large octagon for the wind tower and made it white, then directed it down into a large concrete tunnel, which would be filled with water on the bottom, then it goes up into the house through grates in the floor. Next, our handy dandy ventilation system would draw the cold air up, making it circulate around nicely. The pipe coming from our little Quanat is just for cleaning and filling. The placement of these rowers depends on where wind comes from most, but I just put slits on all sides, in case wind changes. The grates in the floor might also need little levers to close them, as it gets freezing cold in winters and nights.

We should now have everything inside our walls, and can cover them. The walls would be made out of Aluminum, as it is recyclable, cheap, and sustainable. You could use pins to sort of snap the walls all together, or use Tungsten Inert Gas welding, or TIG welding, which is the most popular choice for aluminum welding.

Now we have gaps in between the walls, and we will fill these with insulation. I hummed and hawed over this for a while, and originally settled on Fiberglass insulation, but that stuff is pretty expensive. But then, BRAINSTORM! Everyone knows that when you walk on the beach, the sand can be scorching hot, but then you dig a couple inches down and it's nice and cool, so it has a very low thermal conductivity. And what is the most recurring element of a desert. Sand! You could fill the entire walls with natural insulation, without spending a dime! The desert has so much sand you wouldn't even need to truck it in. It's pretty much perfect in every way. The best way to do this would probably be to fill a mixer truck with sand and pour it in. There is no need to compact it, as the air pockets in between hold cool air.

Next I added a ceiling, and on top of that I put solar panels for our electricity. The black box is where all the solar electricity goes down into the house. The panels would have to be industrial grade, as they sit in baking conditions all day, and would also need to be cleaned to insure effective usage.

I added a pretty blue door to be the guard for this house. You would want a thick door, to keep out heat in the day and cold in the night. No matter what we do, the door will still probably let the most heat in. Next we will fill in the hole, and call it a day.

And that concludes our build, I added some finishing touches, like attaching the pump to electricity, and now we are done. There are lots of pictures of above ground, and I attached the link to the design, so you could always go there and tear everything apart to get a better idea of how it works. I hope you liked it! Feel free to edit it on Tinkercad and provide more Ideas.