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Timber-framed Cabin April 29, 2007

Posted by Graham in : Green Building , 2comments

Last summer I started the construction of a small timber-framed cabin here at Derryduff. Aided and abetted by specialist Sustainable Builder Dave Simmonds, we put the frame up and had the tin roof on in about three weeks work. A couple of months ago we started again, Dave doing most of the building with me passing him screws and cups of tea when I’ve been around. The past couple of weeks we have been joined by Vasco who is visiting from Italy and has also been doing great work.

The project has been progressing well. The internal dimensions are 5meters long by 3.6m wide for the main living space which will be fully insulated; and another 4.5m by 3.6m for the adjoining workshop area which will not be insulated to such a high degree. This makes a total indoor area of about 33.2 square meters downstairs; and the same again upstairs in a “half loft” (1m65cms high at the ridge); so a total of 66square meters for an expected total cost of 25,000 euros. I feel this is good value for what is essentially a very high quality and low-impact “mini-house”. The final coat will depend on when I actually stop adding bit- eg i plan to build a “lean-to” extension the entire length of the back of the building, which will also house compost toilet and showers. It also doesn’t include my own labour.

Design features include: raised footings on concrete blocks with threaded bar bolting the fame to the blocks;

split angled roof to provide 1m overhang for extra protection to the building; a steeper pitch to the front of the roof which is more suitable for solar panels; sufficient windows and a skylight for passive solar gain; and plenty of insulation: Warmcell (loose recycled paper product) insulation in the floor; 5inches of polystyrene in the roof; and loose, washed wool in the walls:

I bought a bale of washed wool (industrially washed in the UK- Im not actually sure where the wool itself came from) -230kgs for 230 euros (plus 72 euros delivery); I expect that to do the whole of the downstairs walls in the main cabin, and the thinner (3 inch) walls in the worklshop area, with some left over. This makes it one of the cheapest and most cost-effective materials used in the whole cabin, far cheaper that wool-insulation products, and easy to install if you first zig-zag string or cord of some kind across the studs using staples to hold it in and then fill in behind. The wool is a really nice material to work with (in constrats to the quite unpleasant polystyrene and foam!) and addsa really nice soft and , well, feminine feel to the inside of the building.

The walls will be covered in SasmoX sheeting, which will also add racking strength.

The exterior will be clad in larch boards cut from the Manch estate near Dunmanway.

Community Powerdown April 25, 2007

Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil , add a comment

I visited the Cultivate Centre in Dublin last weekend for the Sustainable Community Conference, part of the 12th Convergence Festival, which carried the theme:

“How can our towns, villages and even our cities transition to economically localised communities? Using the example of processes begun in Totnes, Kinsale and Cloughjordan this dynamic event will look at steps that communities can take to prepare themselves for living with less fossil fuel.”

This event brought together some of the localisation groups around Ireland from around Ireland that have formed over the past year, including Transition Towns Kinsale, FADA from Newbridge, and The Village in Cloughjordan, and others in the Powerdown Community.
 The keynote speaker was Dr. David Fleming, who had already presented some of his ideas on preperations for the coming energy crises the night before .

David is the author of Tradeable Energy Quotas and the as-yet-unpublished Lean Logic. He has the ability to explain a huge number of concepts and ideas intelligibly while at the same time presenting a very straight-talking analyses of what we are soon going to have to deal with:
“It’s going to fall to bits” he had told us, referring to the market economy- a result of the double-whammy of peak Oil and Climate Change. His presentation on “Community Transition” covered a lot of ground, and touched on some aspects of the transtion that are not often discussed.

The three tasks of community, he argued, are: -to provide reciprocity; -to cope with conflict; and thirdly, to avoid boredom. Fleming recognises that one of the challenging aspects of re-localising the community in a democratic fashion is to both adapt to the reduction in choice, as we learn to get on with a perhaps less diverse lifestyle with reduced mobility and the soetimes mundane or routine tasks of feeding ourselves and surviving; as well as the tedium of dealing with conflict which he sees as intrinsic to community. He also pointed out that the Peak Oil/Localisatiion movement is not immune to the well-known tendency of environmental groups to divide into factions.

David discussed many other issues that will face communities, including scale, reciprocity, having a common purpose, identity, and the need to accept what he calls “ironic space”- where we encounter and learn to live with “wicked problems” for which there is no solution. Presumably, the combination of crises humanity is facing may furnish some examples of these phenomena.

Like a forest that will go through different stages of succession from mature forest, to fire, to savannah and then regenrates to forest again while remaining a system at each of these stages, human society is will revert to an earlier stage. Fleming listed some of the “resilience conditions” required to sustain this transformation, including diversity, capability and conserved inheritence.

Above all, Fleming emphasised the extreme difficulties we will encounter as we try to build resilience into our communities There will be conflict, at times demorilisation, and a sense of betrayal. We will need to develop rigorous thinking tools and processes for conflict resolution. And we will need to work hard to develop solidarity.

The next speaker was Davie Philip of Cultivate who talked about The Village as an example of low-carbon integrated design. Davie is a co-founder of Cultivate where and tells me he has organised over 1000 events over the last 10 years. He emphasised how Peak Oil and Climate Change provide unprecedented catalysts for the environmental movement to move towards sustainability.

I was next, giving an outline of some of the key issues I believe we need to try to communicate in motivating change (which I will go into more in a later post) and an outline of David Holmgren’s Permaculture Principles and how they will be relevant for the Powerdown Community. John Harrington, who has studied with Tobjorn Latte in Sweden, gave an introduction to the Natural Step for Communities, giving a clear, compelling, science-based definition of sustainability and a practical strategic planning framework to help communities move towards a successful and sustainable future.

Next we were treated to a virtual presentation by Rob Hopkins - his inspirational presentation from the recent Soil Association conference in Cardiff on Creating Energy Descent Plans;

Jackson Moulding gave a presentation on Ashley Vale which is an inner-city community project in Bristol demonstrating self-build and environmentally-sensitive construction;

Alicia Falvey spoke about her experiences of living in Dutch Community Eva Lanxmeer in Holland, an inspiring place demonstrating community living, Permaculture and sustainable building, water and energy use.

Last but not least, Eamonn Parker from Newbridge gave a fascinatingaccount of the rapid progress and activities of the FADA (means “Long” or “Enduring”) group in Newbridge.

I first got to know Eamonn a few years ago through a common interest in Ken Wilber’s Integral Philosophy and it was really interesting to see his application of Spiral Dynamics in the community work that FADA is engaged with.

This small gathering of the Powerdown Community was hopefully the first of many networking events between localisation and Powerdown groups across Ireland, which are will surely only multiply as the reality of energy depletion, economic collapse and climate change becomes unavoidable.

Permaculture Garden April 14, 2007

Posted by Graham in : Gardens, Permaculture , 1 comment so far

The original idea of Mollison and Holmgren when they coined the term “permaculture” was the idea that it would be possible to garden and even farm commercially at least to some extent using perennial- and tree-crops that dont need the annual ritual of sowing seeds and raising seedlings. This has been practised for millenium in some parts of the world, particularly south-east Asia and some Pacific Islands as a traditional form of “forest gardening” whereby plants and trees with edible and useful crops were favored and encouraged over time, and replicated more recently in cool-temperate parts of the world starting with Robert Harts’ forest garden and brought up to date with David Jacke’s seminal Edible Forest Gardens

My strategy in Derryduff over the past six years has been to try to establish trees for timber and fruit first, with less emphases on the conventional vegetable garden. Beginners in gardening often put a lot of time and energy trying to grow more fussy things like carrots and lettuce, but never really get the easier perennials started. Right: trees, perennials, climbers, herbs and vegetables in the Zone1 garden at Derryduff

This spring after six years of tree-planting I can begin to see the results as I look across the land and see a scattering of blossom with the promise of fruit later. Some of the trees with potential edible crops include: -apples -pears -plums -cherries -cobnuts -heartnuts -walnuts -sweet chestnuts -bladdernuts -amelanchier (left, in flower)

-phyllostachys bisettii bamboo

In addition to the trees and soft fruit I have also been establishing a range of perennial crops that have potential for good yields and require very little work once established. These plants include: -rhubarb -Jerusalem artichokes -Globe artichokes -perpetual spinach -”potato onions” (a large shallot or multiplier onion) -Babbington’s leeks -alpine strawberries -Indian Lilly cana indica

I also am trying climbers including kiwis, grape vines, thornless blackberries, and Japanese Wineberries.

One of the most interesting plants I have just put in is the curious climbing tuber from South America Machua tropaeolum tuberosum which grows the size of a potato and can be quite productive. Since this plant prefers to have its tubers in the shade and climbing vines reaching into the sun, it seemed a good idea to underplant it with another South American tuber, Occa oxalis tuberosa

Here, I have used my own bamboo canes to make a simple climbing support for the Machua; an alternative would be to try growing them with a third tuber, Jerusalem artichokes, that could provide a stalk for the Machua vines to climb, thus completing a perennial guild of the traditional “Three Sisters” (corn, climbing beans and squash).

Permaculture on Clare Island April 9, 2007

Posted by Graham in : General , add a comment

Leading on from reminiscences about my early adventures in Ireland and how I came to settle near Westport, I now have the opportunity to return to Clare Island from 29th June-3rd July for a 4-day Introduction to Permaculture Course which I will be giving at the Clare Island Yoga Retreat Centre

The Yoga Centre is run by Ciara Cullen and Christophe Mouze and had not yet been established when I last visited - I guess 8 years ago or more? So I’m really looking forward to the trip not least because I planted about a thousand trees for Ciara over 10 years ago and have scarcely been back to see them since. This was on the edge of a nearly unique-for an offshore island- woodland remnant of birch, holly and a couple of oaks.

This course will be unusual in that it will therefore include a yoga class each morning to balance our energies and put us in a suitable frame of mind for observations in nature and looking at aspects of sustainable design and living.

The setting could hardly be more spectacular. Clare Island is a very special place, unusual amongst Ireland’s’ western islands in that it has a mountain- two in fact, from the top of which there is a panoramic view of Croagh Patrick and Clew Bay.

The Curse of Akkad April 8, 2007

Posted by Graham in : General , 3comments

“If this is global warming, let’s have more of it!” Gerard from the garage in Bantry said to me last week as he bought a copy of the new Sustainability magazine. The problem is, this is only the beginning of April and although it makes for great holiday weather, one wonders what it will be like in July. Will there be enough water? Will the roads start to melt? This is an El Nino year and the stage looks set for another record-breaking year of heat waves and hurricanes. With the publication of the latest report by the International Panel on Climate Change this week arriving during what seems like an exceptionally warm April- a heatwave I think we could say - I thought I might post a couple of reviews of books I read last year on the subject.

The Curse of Akkad

Field Notes from a Catastrophe Elizabeth Kolbert, Bloomsbury, 2006, 210pp

The Last Generation- How Nature will take her revenge for Climate Change Fred Pierce, Eden Project Books, 2006, 324pp

Climate change - or more specifically anthropocentric or man-made climate change - is here and now and beginning to rapidly change our world. Advances in the science over the last 10 years - which have provided evidence from the Arctic and Greenland ice-cores going back thousands of years - suggest an increasing likelihood that we will see abrupt and possibly catastrophic changes in the Earth’s climate within our lifetimes. (more…)

Reciprocal Frame April 1, 2007

Posted by Graham in : General , 4comments

This year’s building project at the Kinsale College- the first since I took over as permaculture teacher- is a reciprocal-framed roundhouse roughly the same size and style as my own in Derrydubh.

This will be an on-going project over the next year or two and will provide us ultimately with a multi-fuctional building which could be used as a classroom or workshop, meeting place, and as a changing rooms for the drama students during their performances. (more…)