The Nauhaus Idea Repository

Well House Rising

Darren — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:55:28 +0000

With winter’s icy fingers starting to prick us here in Asheville, the Nauhaus team prioritized protecting our water supply by building a well house. To the rescue came Andy McFate, a local craftsman whose fine work can be found here. It took a total of 3.5 days of hard and, at times, muddy, work, but the house finally rose. Check out the pix to see its evolution.

First, begin by deconstructing hill – made easier or more difficult, depending on your perspective, by the torrential rains the prior day.

Hill, deconstructed.

Next up: The foundation. This well house was built for the long term. This aint no fake rock cover.

Do this:

The Foundation

Not this:

Ye Ole Fake Rock Well Cover

Step Three: Frame It.

Framing it up.

Finally, finish it off with a roof, insulation on the inside and, just as importantly, cedar shakes covered with Rainforest eco-friendly sealer to match the Nauhaus. Awesome job, Andy!

Finis!

Frost!

Darren — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:02:21 +0000

Even with a nice coating of ice this morning, the Nauhaus remains toasty inside:

10.30.11 Indoor/Outdoor temps

Chilly nights are here… or are they?

Darren — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:08:44 +0000

Yikes – Fall temps seem to have set in literally overnight. Brrrr. Ahh – but here inside the Nauhaus, with its amply thick Hempcrete walls along with a multitude of insulating tricks, it’s quite toasty — all without the benefit of any heat source (other than a few carbon life forms).

Temperature: 10/20/11: 8:30 a.m.

Here we see that while it is a brisk 43 F outside, it remains 69 F inside (along with 62% humidity). The lighting on the picture needs an apology and you have to figure the inside/outside thermometer is only so accurate, but regardless – the numbers speak for themselves. We’ll continue to check back on how these temp variations track over the coming winter months…

Welcome, Visitors!

Darren — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 22:07:48 +0000

One of the unexpected benefits of living in the Nauhaus has been the proliferation of visitors – a mix of familiars and strangers – who come to admire the finished product.

Joy Cramer and David Madera visit the Nauhaus.

Most recently, David Madera, (who, as head of Hemp-Technologies.com, provided some of the raw materials for the Nauhaus), stopped by accompanied by Joy Cramer, the Deputy Minister of Housing and Community Development for the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Canada, it turns out, is increasingly looking to renewable materials like hemp to rethink how it goes about tackling the notion of green building. We wish them the best of luck!

What do you do with a…?

Darren — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:54:48 +0000

OK, so one of the more interesting let alone heavy) remnants of the construction process were these ancient clay segments of sewer line which have been slowly sinking into the Earth.

Ye Ole Sewer Pipes

We Betas came to ask ourselves: what can be done with these? Planters, like those in the front garden? Compost bins (but how to turn them over easily)? Pillars to anchor the greenway? Well, we’re open to your suggestions. For now, we applied some creativity of sorts and erected a chimnea-style fire-pit for the Fall evenings to come….

Chimnea, Nauhaus style

Windows!

Darren — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:38:45 +0000

Doing our best Beta act, we just completed the work shouldered by the Alphas to paint and hang the windows to the so-called “dining porch.”

The white / dark combination looks good, especially from the inside. Still might need to do a few touch-ups to the dark…

Dining Porch Windows

Construction continues…

Darren — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:49:03 +0000

One of the biggest surprises we, The Beta Family, have enjoyed since moving into the Nauhaus is how it has plunged us deeper into nature. Specifically, with our bird friends, whose songs drown out all but the most obscene man-made whirrings. The air is often filled with the staccato caws of bluebirds, the Star-Trekky phaser bursts of Cardinals and the plucky chirps of the Chickadee. The loudest contributor, however, is perhaps a pair of Wrens who have been industriously building a nest in the rafters of the front porch. Here’s a quick snapshot of one hard at work:

Carolina Wren at the Nauhaus

Carolina Wren via iBird app

What’s interesting is that we assumed these loud little suckers (their own machine-gun bursts echo nicely throughout the house when the windows are open) were House Wrens. Not so. In fact, thanks to a handy iPhone App that we highly recommend called iBird ($4.99 at the iTunes store), we quickly ascertained that our housemates are Carolina Wrens and that they like to build several nests to confuse predators. Sounds smart, but didn’t the Wrens get the memo about the house being done with construction?

GROOF: It’s an eye-catcher

Darren — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:06:20 +0000

As we, The Beta Family, begin to acclimate to our new surroundings at the Nauhaus, we have begun to notice some peculiar behavior from our neighbors from time to time. Specifically, they tend to stop and point at the house – sometimes from within their SUVs – often not realizing we are sitting on the porch in the foreground. We have forgiven them, though, since the living or green roof, GROOF, is an eye-catcher to be sure.

The Nauhaus Living Roof in early summer

Introducing: The Beta Family

Darren — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:52:33 +0000

Greetings from the Nauhaus

Hello all -

Greetings from the Nauhaus. As a brief introduction, we are the Beta Family – though you can call us Steph, Darren and Maggie (our mutt of unknown lineage). We have dubbed ourselves the Betas since we have taken up residence in the Nauhaus while the Alphas – Jeff, Jeannine and Jackson – have moved further north (for now) to tackle new challenges. As we’ve settled in over our first few weeks, we can’t stop smiling at how lucky we feel to be living in such a beautiful and peaceful place. We’re also humbled by all the blood, sweat and tears that were shed in its construction. We hope to honor every contributor’s hard work by sharing bits of our experiences in living at the Nauhaus while making our own contributions to its evolution as well (we’ve started that endeavor in the garden). We look forward to keeping in touch.

More Chicken Talk

beejay — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 06:40:58 +0000

Here are some answers to those questions Jeff

1. and 2.

A chicken needs a minimum of 3 square feet. MINIMUM. But they thrive in much roomier environments. They do prefer roosting at least 18 inches of the ground.

Many people forget to make the coop comfortable enough for them to get in and out of and move around in. You want to make sure it’s high enough that you don’t have to be inside hunched over and that it’s wide enough for you to move around in comfortably. Also, you want to make sure that you set things up to make your life as easy as possible. That means being able to access the nesting box to easily get the eggs. It also means placing the chicken coop in a place where you have easy and quick access to water, feed, and electricity if necessary

Allowing an adequate level of space per bird also helps keep the humidity level in the coop to a minimum.

Build your poultry house to prevent possible injury to your birds. Remove any loose or ragged wire, nails, or other sharp-edged objects from the coop. Eliminate all areas other than perches where the birds could perch more than 4 feet above the floor. Remove perching areas such as window sills, nest box tops, or electric cords whenever possible. These extra measures could eliminate any injury to you or your birds and may prevent damage to the coop, as well

With chickens, always provide 6 to 10 inches of perch space per bird.

Nest boxes range a lot, the most common that achieves high rates of success is 12x12x14 (dxhxw). There is some playing room here but they need to be single bird sized and not bigger (secure feeling).

Side Notes

Some things to consider are securing the floor area so that no animals can dig under and reach the chickens. Also, you don’t want any fencing too wide. In fact, it should be small enough to prevent snakes from getting in.

Because of the importance of keeping things clean, you want to make cleaning your coop as easy as possible. Some things to consider are painting all of the walls, inside and out, and using linoleum flooring.

I have some plans drawn up for our meeting tomorrow and I think that there shouldn’t be a door from the shed into the coop, I think they should share a wall but have separate doors.

Ample air movement without a draft is essential. Fresh air brings in oxygen while excess moisture, ammonia or carbon dioxide are removed the stale air moves out of the house. Dampness and ammonia build-up are a sign that there is not enough ventilation. For small coops windows or vents on one side of the house usually provide plenty of ventilation. Well-ventilated houses must also have plenty of insulation and a good vapor barrier. Failure to insulate or ventilate properly causes moisture to accumulate on the walls and ceiling in cool weather. Poultry can handle cold very well if they are dry. However, cool and humid conditions can create many health problems. Locate openings on the side away from prevailing winds. The south or east side is usually best. A sliding vent on a cupola would work well also.

There isn’t a very good way to have this completely automated unless we rig up a timer than can water on a schedule that would take a long time to calibrate. So the best way is going to be running a hose from a sink/faucet in the yard into a 5 gallon size bucket every week or two. It should be pretty low maintenance. Below are some good possible options.

Option 1

The parts list is:

1 5 gallon bucket with lid

1 new oil pan

some 1.5″ PVC pipe, some fittings, PVC primer and cement, some gasket material, and a valve

To fill it just turn on the garden hose, open the valve and pour water in. The pipe is big enough to let the air out while you are filling it. When you get it full just close the valve and you are done.

The total cost was about $15 and the step-by-step construction with photos is on the blog link below. (a bit of a strange blog albeit)

http://bitmaps-misc.blogspot.com/2009/08/easy-fill-chicken-waterer.html

To heat the water during the winter so that it doesn’t freeze requires only a 3 or 5-gallon aquarium heater run to the tank which costs $10-15. There is also the method of heating a tile box below the tank with an incandescent light bulb

Option 2

Basically the same design only with the Avian Aqua Miser attachment nipples on the bottom of the bucket, with the bucket suspended beak high. This could possibly be easier because it might be easier to keep the water from freezing if it isn’t in an open trough.

Place the bottom of the waterers and top lip of the feeders at the birds’ back height. This will keep the feed and water clean and prevent wastage. When possible, place the waterer in the outside runs. This helps to keep the humidity level lower inside the coop.

For this problem I have a solution in the plans I drew up specific to our site plan. It basically entails an access to the nest boxes from the outside of the coop through a swinging lid. Below is a similar idea.