Rural and Semiarid Habitat

Many problems today are solved by overpowering them, such as cooling. Most people, when their house gets warm, turn up the AC. However, if they were to reduce the amount of heat they let into the house, they would not have to increase the workload or power usage on the AC. As I was working on this project, I was faced with two questions, one of which was: "What if extreme environment habitats embraced their unique surroundings to enhance human well-being?" This question is extremely relevant in the world today: instead of fighting our surroundings, we should be using them as best as we can to help us. The picture above is a top view of my proposed habitat, and it is designed to maximize sustainability while minimizing discomfort and while using the surrounding to its advantage. The second question was more difficult. It asked: "What did you learn through this process that you could apply to addressing a problem of the built environment in your own community?" As I was considering this I thought of the contrast between my proposal and what my community exhibited. The main differences were the lack of renewable energy, durable roofs, and energy saving devices. In other words, we need to collect more, use less, and last longer. Most of the techniques that I used in my design could be easily adapted to a normal home. (with a few exceptions)

This is the location that I have specifically targeted. While it looks green, this picture was probably taken in the spring near the monsoons: For most of the year, everything is dry in Southern Arizona. In fact, this Semi-arid region of the country is only "semi"-arid because of it's average rainfall; Arizona has a yearly average of about 7 inches per year. In fact, Arizona has a higher temperature average during the day and a lower temperature average during the night compared with Egypt's Western desert. In other words, you not only have to protect yourself from frying, you also have to protect yourself from freezing. Arizona has a yearly range from 10 degrees to 120 degrees. In addition to Southern Arizona's varying temperature thought the year, this Southern Arizona also exhibits other challenges to inhabitants of this area, ranging from drought to floods, dust to mud, fires to high winds, and the ever present sun. Other rare conditions are hail and snow. A greater obstacle to the inhabitants of my habitat is that this area is isolated: it may take over an hour to get to the nearest house, either by walking or driving. It also has very rough roads that would put a lot of wear and tear on any vehicle. Because of this it is uneconomical to buy food from town, and impossible to work there. Thus, it is essential for inhabitants of this habitat to be self-sufficient, producing everything that they use, with few exceptions. This includes producing their own food, gas, power, and water. I picked this area for multiple reasons. One reason is that it is near my house, so I have experience in the climate of this area. Another reason is that as I was considering the perfect location, I went outside and was instantly convinced; June temperatures are miserable, even in the shade. This is because it gets hotter right before it rains, and the humidity also dramatically increases.

A barrier of trees is integral to my design as they reduce the temperature during the summer, and increase the temperature during the winter. Trees also keep water in the ground and stop cold winds from blowing across the house and stealing warmth from the side of the house. Essentially, I am using the resources provided to reduce the extremes thrown against it. Also, trees provide a good source of smoking wood, as well as fire wood, from branches pruned off yearly that also create a healthier tree. The biggest trees in the far left picture are Pecan. These giants provide top notch smoking wood and are a good source of nuts. These are also used for shading the road. The second largest, making an inverted U around the house, are Oak. While these trees are slightly smaller and don't provide nuts, they are an excellent choice for a lawn; their wide-spreading branches provide shade for grass to grow vigorously. The next smallest, mostly in front of the house, are Mesquite. While many call them bushes, the trees have a very strong root system with wide-spreading branches, and they are excellent for lawns. These trees are also ornamental with their unique soft turns of their strong trunk. Their wood burns hot and long, is sought after for smoking, and makes durable and beautiful decor. These drought-resistant trees also provide hard beans which are a source of flour and a slow burning, sweet smelling oil. The smallest trees are sugar maple, providing not only a scenic background, but also a wind block and Maple syrup, a potential source of income. Bermuda hybrid grass is the primary ground cover near the house. It provides a soft, drought-resistant turf that is durable. Additional herbs should be placed around tree trunks, as they will provide an ornamental touch to useful and necessary plants. Mint, Oregano and Rosemary are some bushes that will look nice, but Thyme and other herbs will be needed for seasonings in the kitchen. The water usage of this area should be negligible- the annual rainfall is enough to keep the plants alive year round, and green during the summer months. The fourth picture is of our lawn with mesquite trees, clearly not bushes, during July. As you can see, not only is it decorative, it also provides shade. This area decreases by fifteen degrees or more compared to the sunny portion without grass.

The main power production for this habitat is solar on the roofs of the house, carport, and barn, due to the extremely high solar radiation in this area. While wind power is a tempting idea, it is unreliable, costly, and does not provide return except in the windiest areas. Water power, although it is cost effective, continually available, and cheap to maintain, is not an option; the closest stream is miles away and on Federal land. Nuclear and Geothermal are obviously not an option due to their high cost and overproduction of power for this use. However, solar takes advantage of energy that would be heating the house through the roof and turns it into something that runs lights, computers, and A/C. One setback is that it needs the sun to produce power, so it does not work at night or during long periods with clouds. (not very common in Arizona, but it does happen) To solve this I have a battery bank and an inverter that turns DC power to AC power. However, this transfer wastes a lot of energy, and in addition to 120 v AC being available in outlets, there will be separate outlets that give both 12 volt DC and 24 volt DC, and separate (red) outlet that is connected to a uninterruptible power source and will give emergency power in case of a power outage. However, batteries will not carry the house through long periods of no sun, or if repair is needed on the solar panels. To provide auxiliary power, a gas generator will be powered by the gas system mentioned later. In case both of those stop working, a third emergency diesel generator will also be in the system, but will not be used unless all other power has gone out. This is a triple redundancy system for resilience, and will be present in both water and gas in addition to power. I chose to have normal, auxiliary, and emergency systems because when one is isolated from others he needs to have diversified methods of producing necessary resources. I want to make this habitat to be able to take almost any situation and be able to fix it without having to use shortened resources, not just survive it.

The road is well drained and reinforced with AB, a building material that essentially turns the road into a mixture of gravel, sand and concrete by improving drainage, traction, and toughness. The steel carport is an essential part to this habitat, as it protects vehicles from damage of the sun and also provides solar power. The carport can hold up to five vehicles, from tractors to vans. The barn is also important, as it protects the inhabitants' second most important resource: food. This barn must be large enough to hold a cow, 4 steers, two calves, 30 goats and sheep, 4 pigs, 5 horses, and enough hay and grain for them to last the winter. Hay can be prone to fire, so thoroughly dry hay is of utmost importance. These animals are necessary for valuable meat as well as work animals. Another building is the shop; necessary for repairing or building tools. This should be built for working with tin, Iron, and wood. Another nice to have structure is a summer kitchen, but as this is not necessary I left it out of the drawings.

Water is the most valuable resource in Arizona, and with watering the animals, garden, and orchard, along with people, the numbers can get pretty large. However, these large numbers are not only necessary, they are easily within the range of capability from water collection off of the roof of the house, carport and barn, with little being pumped out of the ground. In order to keep the water level underground stable, much of the water used will be returned to the ground. 145,600 gallons of water can be collected off of the roofs previously mentioned. (20% safety margin included) 182,500 gallons a year need to be pumped at most, but a more accurate estimate would be 123,000 gallons. This is about 340-500 gallons a day, not very much as a standard pump can pump up to 30 gallons per minute, which would only take it about 10 minutes. In addition to the water collection system (main unit), and the well pump (auxiliary unit), the well also has a hand pump (emergency unit). However, both the water collection system and the well pump feed into 4 25,000 gallon tanks and 2 3,000 gallon tanks, so that I have 29.27% of water in storage that can last about 100 days in case the well runs dry which is plenty of time for the rains to refill it. In order to get the water to run from the tanks to the house I use a gravity-fed system (primary system). However, in case of a fire, I need high water pressure to jet the water to the flames. (more on this later) In order to have that pressure I have a gas-powered pump that runs off of the gas system (will talk more about later), but this gas system could be knocked out during a fire, so an emergency diesel pump kicks in automatically if the other generator fails. The water system also includes a leach field to put water back into the ground. As the water leaks through the holes in the pipe and through the ground, the ground purifies it and retains nutrients, thus enriching the soil, further benefiting the habitat.

This part of the habitat is just as important as the house. Just as the garden supplies fresh vegetables to the fridge, the orchard supplies fruit and jellies for the inhabitants' enjoyment. The garden will have raised beds, because it is easier to work on, and the soil can have better drainage and can be tailored to fit each vegetables' needs. Some of the vegetables grown would be, among others, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, rhubarb, blackberry (but not in a raised bed), strawberries, pumpkin, squash, peppers, and a wide variety of herbs to be made into teas and infusions that can reduce headaches and other ailments. The orchard, although only composed of ten trees, may produce more than the inhabitants are able to pick. I recommend 2 trees of each type: apple, peach, apricot, tangelo, and plum. These will have you canning for months, but their rewards are many. Another benefit of the orchard is chickens, as they provide fertilizer for and turn up the soil around the trees. They eat windfall fruit and grass (lowering their feed bills) and keep the bugs down, all the while providing you with eggs, another possible source of income.

While some designers eliminate gas from sustainable habitats, it is a valuable resource; not the standard natural gas or propane, but a renewable methane gas. This gas is produced in a methane digester by anaerobic bacteria at a temperature of about 100 degrees, perfect for most of the year in Arizona, and powered by animal waste. This digester produces its volume of gas a day, powering the freezer, refrigerator, water heater, and stove. It is even able to be stored and is low maintenance. To keep the temperature up during the winter, a tiny portion of the gas is diverted to warm the digester. This gas is highly flammable though, and is kept in a shed several hundred feet from any other structure, and grass is kept from growing near it. However, this gas cannot be produced on demand, and if the store runs out then the wood gas generator must be fired up. This generator burns wood or other wood-based substances in a limited air environment so that it lets off wood gas and heats up the next portion of fuel so that it is ready to start off-gassing as well, and the limited air environment keeps the wood gas from burning then. The gas is then channeled away from the generator, where it is filtered and cooled. Due to the high amount of nitrogen in the air, this gas doesn't have the same BTU/gallon as methane, but is a fine replacement short term. The emergency gas is propane. Although this is not a good alternative, it is doubtful that this will be used any more than once a year. This gas is vital as it runs everything from food storage to transportation since this gas can be used in its pure form in gasoline cars, and with a small portion of diesel in diesel vehicles. This is also the most destructive resource, so it is placed well away from any possible fire hazards.

I spent a lot of time planning the house for the comfort of its inhabitants. I placed the bedrooms off of the main section of the house, but I still kept them private by having a hallway that separated them from the living room. This hallway also has a bathroom attached, an attribute I find very useful in our house. The Master Bedroom has its own bathroom, closet, and door leading onto the 20' wide wrap-around porch. The kitchen is mid-sized, and both the dining room and the living room are off of it. In between the dining room and the kitchen is a bar, and the dining room can easily hold twelve people, although it would normally hold 5 to 8 people. The house can have up to eight people with bunk beds in the three other rooms, or five with one person in the three bedrooms. The wood storage area is built so that one can carry wood into the house without letting a bunch of cold wind inside, and it is also conveniently positioned near the masonry stove. The stairs which lead downstairs also have a closet. The pantry, along with three freezers, hold most of the food in storage. This is located downstairs as it has a mostly even temperature year round because the ground's temperature 5 feet down stays constant year round. (about 72 degrees) The processing room is for making different foods like jams, fruit leather, and other foods that take a lot of space. The great room is mostly just extra space that can be used for anything, such as a play room. The "cold tanks" are for storing either hot or cold water, and will be used for heating or cooling the house, depending on what time of year. (Will be discussed in greater detail later) Note: The 3D model makes it look like the rooms are small, but they are really a lot larger. Also, furniture varies from the top view and the 3D model to show different furniture arrangements. The low quality of the video is due to Autocad Architecture's low video quality recording.

While meat, vegetables, eggs and milk have been covered, the most common and most useful type of food has not been covered. Grains are the staple for many people, as it is in bread, soups, rice, oatmeal, pancakes, and many other foods. Although rice cannot be grown without flooding, wheat, field corn, sweet corn, popcorn, oats, barley, and sorghum can be grown in this region. These crops can be grown in different amounts based on what the different tastes of the inhabitants, but these grains are not just for human consumption, but also for the animals, such as chickens and horses. Other fields need to be set aside for hay, such as alfalfa, bermuda, and clover for winter. Crop rotation is also necessary for good yields year after year.

Although I made triple redundancy systems for resilience in most systems, A/C has only two types of systems, as the trees and solar panels reduce the heat of the house already. The first, and primary, system is the Swamp Cooler, and it is true to its name. It literally swamps the house with cool air. While with most A/C systems a running stove severely dampens their cooling ability, a swamp cooler blows all hot air out of the house in seconds. It blows a ton of air through a screen with water running through it, cooling the outside air by 30 degrees or more. However, the water contributes to its main drawback, humidity. While the swamp cooler is more efficient, it increases the humidity drastically, and the habitat's inhabitants will have to shut off the swamp cooler a week before the first rain. Once the swamp cooler is no longer operable, they will have to switch to a mini-split system. These systems run at a high efficiency, and have a cooling unit in every room with an outdoor compressor unit for 3 indoor systems. The one I have picked is built specifically for solar houses; during the day, when they have a surplus of power, they cool big water tanks in the basement, and during the night they use the cold water to cool the house. Heating also has two systems, one of which is a masonry stove. Masonry stoves have a high efficiency because they are able to burn wood hot and quickly, then store that heat in the bricks, some holding enough heat to warm the house for several days without starting another fire. The other system is also the mini-split system; they can do either heating or cooling, and can use their water tanks for that purpose as well, only they heat the water instead of cooling. An additional cooling source is the cool nights; by storing the temperature in the stone walls during the night the house should be able stay mostly cool for most of the day, especially when coupled with the extra large front porch.

Fire is a major concern in this area, and although fallen trees are not left out to burn, there have been several fires in the area, and wildfires are among worst. The fire spreads fast due to the dry grass, and the mesquite trees smolder for weeks with almost no signs. If the fire is not caught soon, it can grow out of control. The fire is also hard to notice. The smoke is not so strong as to be billowing, but it can be bad enough if you are in it. The flames don't rise very high, so even a well-developed fire might only be noticed by the burnt grass in its wake. One fire could not be seen from one side of a slight rise, but once over the rise you could see wasteland. Because of the importance of fire safety, I thought of different scenarios to try to test my fire safety plan. Inside the house I had smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. (in obvious spots) Outside the house I had fire hoses where you could pull a lever and it would pop out and inflate. You could then use this to either put a house fire out or to stop a wild land fire from reaching the house. This apparatus is also present at the well that contains the pumps to power the hoses, because if that is burnt, then you lose your most valuable fire-fighting resource.

These are some pictures of my working model of a wood gas generator. In the second picture, it shows the bottom of the can. The holes in it only allow a certain amount of air into the can at a time. The third picture shows the lid of the can, also with holes in it. This only lets a certain amount of wood gas out. In the fourth picture it shows the inside of the can with chicken wire. The chicken wire is to keep the wood and beans out of the holes in the bottom. When the fire is lit in the bottom of the can, it heats the wood above it so that it off gasses. This gas is called wood gas. When I put the lid on the can with a fire running inside it, the wood gas came out the holes and did not burn because the fire is only inside the can. I then got a lighter and lit it above the holes. When I removed the lighter, the flame continued, as it was now running off of wood gas. It was working better than I thought though, because I was going to try to put it out by blowing into the can. However, there must have been a lot of wood gas in the can because with the introduction of oxygen from my breath it sent flame up 3 feet or more. I did not try that again, and instead let it burn itself out. I tried using mesquite beans in the can, and although they burned, I could not get it hot enough for it to burn quickly, so the beans just smoldered. However, the beans show promise for a hot, slow-burning fire, and possibly as a replacement for oil in lanterns, maybe even cooking.

Construction, while complicated by hard to access location, shouldn't be complicated. The basement exterior walls are built with concrete brick filled with concrete, and the floor of the basement is a concrete pour, along with the porch floor. While these materials aren't close by or cheap, they will last longer and store heat longer than rammed earth, while requiring less maintenance. However, the exterior wall of the top floor will be built with stones collected from the area around it, improving soil quality, with concrete poured in on top of it. This will be achieved by building a wooden form that is filled with rock, larger is preferred. Then, after it is filled, concrete is put in to fill the cracks. After the concrete is cured, then the form is taken off and is built again on top of the previous pour, and the process is repeated. The interior walls are made of 2 by 4's with the standard 16 inch spacing centerline to centerline, then coated with drywall after the electrical has all been wired. The roof is made with 2 by 12 with plywood on top of that, then plastic paper, then tin secured with roofing screws. Fiberglass insulation will fill the gap between the ceiling and the roof, as well as in all the interior walls. Outside, the road will have a crown with ditches on either side for drainage. Then it will be coated with AB. The barn and the other buildings will be built after the house, and they should be pretty simple. The trees, however, should be planted as soon as possible so that they have as much time to grow as possible.

By embracing its unique surroundings, my design improves the lives of its inhabitants by reducing the workload for them to maintain it while creating healthy atmosphere for them to thrive. My design also improves the environment it is placed into with its trees; growing things provide food, shelter, and also helps to increase rainfall while keeping the topsoil down. Deserts in Africa are growing, but if people would plant trees around the desert, then the desert would eventually start shrinking. Due to the isolation of the location, the habitat has to adapt to any rough conditions, such as drought, fire, floods, snow and hail, or high heat. This habitat should not only be already prepared for these condition, but should also have the resources for the inhabitants to solve any problems that do occur. For instance, snow shovels are not included because they are never needed. However, if one was needed, the inhabitants could build one out of either wood or metal in the shop. Any materials or tools not able to be produced by the farm, such as diesel, however, are so little used that they could be bought during the quarterly trips to town. Overall, I will depend on the inhabitants' creativity, resourcefulness, and problem-solving to live comfortably. However, due to the reduction of harsh conditions, the 20% reserve, and simple reliability, problems should be few and far between. Thank you for reading my post, I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any more questions, I would be glad to answer them, as I merely scratched the surface of the information on each step.