Building a House, Once Again!

Like in Barkheda, our first priority here also is to get the place of stay ready and habitable before beginning with any other activity. We’d built a stone house there with a clay tiled roof supported on wooden structure. Building it and staying in it threw up numerous learnings. We’d like to retain some practices and modify a few.

One change as we approached this subject this time around is that the urge to adhere to generally accepted environmentalism has reduced to near zero. I realize that the prescriptions often disregard ground realities and are also irrational. So, if there is an environmental concern, I’d like to re-invent the wheel and think afresh, rather than accept something as environmentally friendly or otherwise on the basis of generally accepted theories. The prime factors for decision making therefore are functional utility, cost and aesthetics (in that order or priority).

The Layout

We began with our dream design of having a central courtyard and rooms on all sides. Even with small rooms, the total area for this design was working out to be in excess of 2500 sq ft. This size seemed beyond our capacity to maintain well. A maximum area of 1000 sq ft is convenient and possible to keep clean and usable. The house needs to be small enough for us to maintain and big enough to accommodate 4 – 5 guests, apart from meeting the storage and utility requirements. After numerous iterations, the design we arrived at included a room of about 25’X12’ including an open kitchen, kitchen storage of 4’X12’, a bedroom, covered unwalled area on all 4 sides, an open to sky short front yard, and an open to sky backyard. Since the house is in the middle of a farm, sunlight is not blocked from any side. The front of the house faces the east.

Building Ground

The entire land is a flattened field with black cotton soil – extremely unsuitable for building on. Our land is on one side of a 25 acre farm of the friend from whom we purchased it. There is a lake in his farm. Adjoining the far end is forest land. Rain water seems to flow towards our part of the land and therefore the need to get the building ground at an elevation. Digging the lake gives us murum, which basically is red forest soil with lots of rocks. We dug up the lake and created an elevation of about 5’ in an area of close to 2000 sq ft. House built on this elevation takes care of various issues and gives a nice elevated view of the mountains on one side and fields on others. 

Walls

Naturally available building material like mud, stones, etc. score over manufactured & processed ones like burnt bricks, cement, etc. both on functional utility as well as cost. We chose mud over stones for walls because our experience with stones was that it is too time consuming and also turns out to be expensive. The traditional houses in the neighbouring villages are really beautiful. People nowadays don’t prefer traditional housing, unless there are budget constraints. Thankfully for us, the skill of building a mud house is available. We figured out that traditionally walls were built with chowka a sun-dried brick, roughly four times the volume of a regular brick, with significantly higher amount of straw in the mud mixture. The same mix is used as mortar to join the dried bricks. While this made sense, it was very difficult to find people, who’d make them for us. After a lot of search and patience, we managed to come across someone, who’s agreed to take up the job. The job is a little over half done and should be done in a few days. The next job on hand is to find a mason. This shouldn’t be too difficult. Mud walls need to be protected from rain. That is why we will have the roof slope extending to at least 4’ on all sides. This will give us usable covered unwalled space and also protect the walls.

Roof

Locally made clay tiles on wooden frame is what is commonly seen in this area. But getting such a lot of wood will be a challenge for us. Also there is quite some maintenance required for local tiles. So, after evaluating various options, we zeroed in on using asbestos sheets on iron frames. The sheets will be covered with straw to keep the house temperature pleasant during summers as well as winters. Both seasons are extremely severe here. Bamboo was an option we explored for roofing, but couldn’t find suppliers and workmen.

Floor

The most beautiful part of the local houses is the mud flooring. The surface below is rammed hard to ensure that it isn’t easy for rats to dig holes and tunnels. The next layer is kneaded mud with straw. Once dry, it is smoothened by scrubbing the surface with a smooth stone. So well is this done, that the entire floor seems like a single tile. We too hope to get similar work, when we reach that stage. We might use stone flooring in the outside area, which may get wet during rains.

Water

Our water source is going to be a hand pump in the front yard. This option ensures that water need not be stored in large quantity, obviates the need for plumbing and taps. Pumping water as and when needed will be a good physical exercise and will force optimum usage. We haven’t checked if the water is potable, but even if isn’t, there is another borewell close by, which serves us drinking water at present. All domestic used water will be directed to the farm.

Electricity

State electricity isn’t available in this location. The option therefore is to rely on solar power. Power for domestic use isn’t much and a 250 watt solar panel should be sufficient. But considering that we might need to operate a pump, we will have to go for higher capacity solar facility. The tricky issue is the inverter. Our highest power consuming gadget, the Oven Toaster Grill (OTG) needs a minimum 2 KV inverter. The price of inverters above 1000 VA increases exponentially. We may have to restrict usage of the OTG.