Photos of the Hobbit House

Photos of Hobbit House

How to Build a Hobbit House for $100

HOW TO BUILD A HOBBIT HOUSE FOR $100 DOLLARS

Low cost housing is one of the cornerstones of civilization and handcrafted building projects have long been one of my passions. The day I discovered earth bag construction was the day that I knew I could turn a dream into a reality. My currency of construction is recycle, barter and goodwill and the results far exceeded my expectations and, I suspect, all building codes relating to insulation and structural integrity.

The end result is a twenty foot diameter building half dug into a south-facing hill. Although unfinished, the inside temperature never went below 0 C despite outside temperatures in the minus twenties – and that was without the woodstove on. Here is how I did it.

A south-facing hill is essential as this allows you to take full advantage of passive solar heat. A steady temperature of 55 F comes from geothermal heat; this is because it is partially underground. An understanding of geology, drainage and soils helps to avoid potential water problems. Ideally, the site will be on the upper 2/3s of the slope; this gives wind protection and avoids the cold air that gathers on low ground. The fill from the digging is dumped around the high side, this makes it easier to fill and position the bags of earth.

I traded backhoe time with my neighbour for hay and he excavated a thirty-foot gouge into the hillside. The front door faces east so the morning sun shines through the round window and two big rectangular windows face south to maximize passive solar heat. I would have preferred the excavation to be eight-feet deep, but we hit limestone bedrock at five feet. No problem, the beauty of handcrafted buildings is you adapt to circumstances. I simply added more earth to the north side and this gave the building a slightly higher profile.

The earth bags could structurally support the roof, however, I prefer to overbuild and the posts of the wood frame are aesthetically pleasing and useful to anchor shelves etc. I used a line to mark a twenty foot diameter circle and divided the circumference into eight sections. Using a digging bar I bust down eighteen inches into the bedrock for the cedar posts. These were then set in concrete. The centre post is 18” diameter and the outer ones 12”diameter. All the posts are braced so that they are stable during construction.

The extended arm of the backhoe is used to lower the 8” diameter cedar logs that connect the outer posts to the centre post. There will be only space for three or four of these logs on top of the centre post. The remainder lay across the first ones. All of them are spiked together using twelve-inch nails. If these nails are not available you can make them by cutting ¼” steel rod to length.

Nail 6” diameter cedar poles to the radial logs. These poles are twelve inches apart. A bird’s eye view of the roof now looks like a spider’s web. The entire roof is now covered with 1” by 6” oak boards; these were recycled from a paddock fence.

The entire roof is first covered with two discarded farm tarpaulins; these protect the good tarp from being punctured by the corners of the oak boards. A trampoline deck and an abandoned inflatable raft were added to cover the peak for good measure. Now place an undamaged good tarp over the entire roof, I was fortunate to buy one at a yard sale. It is necessary to have a wooden edge around the rim to hold the soil which will cover the roof. Rather than nailing this in place and puncturing the tarp I used ‘deadman’ construction technique to hold the timber in place. Place timber around the rim and nail the ends together (I used old cedar fence rails), then add another circle of timber four feet in from the rim. Join the two circles of timber together with timber. The weight of the soil prevents this timber frame from moving. Before adding the soil, I covered the tarp with a thin layer of old hay; this is an added precaution in case a stone in the soil might puncture the tarp. Instead of using regular topsoil, I covered the roof with 18” of ‘black gold’ worm compost. This is easy to handle and greens up in jig time.

Water goes where water wants to go and it can take the poetry out of construction. After the initial excavation I left the site for a year and even after spring run-off there was no trickle of groundwater seeping into the site. Following standard building practice, I dug a small trench around all but the front of the building and laid 6” ‘O’ pipe, this will drain any sub-surface water away from the structure.

Next, the door is fitted between the east-facing section of the wall. Hobbit houses traditionally have round doors, mine is a triangle with rounded sides. The door must be wide enough to allow a 5ft wide mattress through. Deft work with the chainsaw and three curved cedar logs created the door. So far the work has been relatively straightforward, I don’t mind admitting that filling and positioning the bags for the walls is hard work. It takes 900 bags and they weigh up to 110lbs each. I would plan my day so that I would only build the walls for half a day at a time. It takes about four days to do each of the eight sections. Before starting you need to make a pounder. Set a spade handle in an eight-inch tub of concrete; mine weighted 38 lbs and with energetic thumping pounded the bags into rigid rectangles.

My horse farm friends donated the feed bags which otherwise would have gone to the landfill. Each bag is filled with the sub-soil and rubble from the excavation. Wedge the bags between the posts and pound them tight. It is easier to fill the bags in place rather than have to haul them into position. Stagger the joins as you would with a traditional block wall. Two of the east-facing sections of wall and two of the south facing sections will have window frames. The bottom of these frames is about four feet above the ground.  To build the frame for the round, or rather, oval window, I found two tree limbs that had the same curve. Then I cut a grove in them to fit the plate glass (originally it was a glass table top). Fitting and position this window was the only time that I needed a second pair of hands. There is also a 12” square frame for the woodstove pipe and a length of 2” plastic pipe for the electric cable from the solar panel breaker box.

It is easiest to build the back walls first and by the time you get to fit the bags around the door and windows you will be an expert. When the wall is two feet high, pound steel rebar through the bags, three for each section. Continue to do this every two feet in height. This really strengthens the wall. The handle of the pounder is about four feet long which means it gets increasing difficult to pound the bags. The flat side of a sledgehammer does a reasonable job of pounding until the wall is within two feet of the roof. The final two feet I do with straw bale construction. Instead of trying to fit bales, I double bagged loose straw and wedge these bags into position. They are held in place by sandwiching them between 9 gauge wire fasten to the posts. The wire is made taut by drawing it together in two places with bale twine.  Any remaining gaps are filled with smaller bags of straw. The outside of the walls are backfilled with rocks as the walls are built.

The inside of the walls are covered with wire mesh (as used for rabbits etc.), this holds the plaster in place. First, staple the wire mesh to the posts and then fasten it to the bags. I made large washers out of aluminium and hammered  4” nails into the bags at an angle, this worked effectively. I filled the small cavities between the mesh and the ends of the bags with strips of fabric, this saves on the amount of plaster required.

One ton of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere for every ton of cement that is manufactured.  I should have used an earth plaster, instead expediency drove me to the dark side, winter was coming and there is no easily accessible clay on site. The plaster was made from a hydrated lime and mortar mix of approximately 2:5 ratio. This worked well and easily adhered to the wire mesh. The first coat just roughly covered the wire and after this had dried I applied a smooth finishing coat. Later this was whitewashed with hydrated lime. Next summer I will apply an earth plaster to the front of the house, in the meantime the bags are protected from the sun with landscape fabric.

The floor was levelled and polythene vapour barrier laid down, this was then covered with four inches of limestone screenings. Eventually a wooden floor will be built over this. A wood cook stove stands on the north side with the chimney going out the wall and AC electricity comes in from a 250 watt solar panel outside. A second smaller solar panel trickle charges a 12 volt marine battery and this powers the satellite radio. So far, I have only built the bed: next will come bookshelves and a table. I plan to move in early January, 2016.

Third Week Stompin´To Santiago

Astorga. The first week is one of attrition as many are sidelined with injuries. The second week the tribe gels and the evenings vary from crazy spontaneous dinner parties to subdued serentity of monestries and the calming influence of nuns. Then the trail winds into a city and pilgrims are unleached. Too much wine exasperates the blister wobble. It is now week three and walking thiirty km shouldering ten kilos goes almost without thought as one tunes to nature´s frequency.

Sinners, Saints and Keroracs.

I woke up this morning,
I´d turned into a centiped,
This ain´t no Kafta,
It´s Santiago we´re after,
10,000 feet, 500 miles,
We are a giant centiped,
Stomp, stomp, stomp,
Sinners, saints and Keroracs,
With kilos on our backs.

First it is Logrono,
Then it is Najara,
Mario´s doing the cooking,
And tonight it´s pasta and paella,
We walk for Jackio, we walk for Jackio,
There´s tinto in the jar.

Travellin' Slow

Logrono, Day 6

Church bell, cow bell, rooster crow,
I´m on the ancient Camino flow,
I squeeze all the juice outa life,
By travellin´slow.
Some folks find romance,
And make their juices flow,
I just got bed bugs lay eggs inside my soul.

The patio bar in Los Arcos,
Could be an outpost of Red Cross,
Spavins, splints and tendons scream,
For some the end of a dream,
Dawn unfurls and the trail is once more a string of perigrino pearls.

Bunk-bed Blues

Lorca, day 4.

It´s three o´clock in the morning,
Finally there´s no snoring,
The bunk bed´s made in China,
The woman above me spent too much time in the diner,
When she moves,
I shake with the bunk bed blues.

I tipple a jar,
In Hemmingway´s bar,
Now it´s up hill and dale,
Every perigrino has a tale to tell,
We live in a magic mystic spell.

I woke up this morning with blisters on my mind,
My good feet gone and left me,
A long, long way behind,
Now I got those lowdown walking blues.

Canino de Santiago - take 3

Pamploma, Spain.

I got those walking blues and am walking across Spain and Portugal instead of biking Route 66. The bus pulled into Pamploma at 1.30 am. I attempted to find a hotel room, happily failed. Walked into the bar district, throngs of Saturday night revellers, backtracked across park skirting the zombies lurking on benches. Found the way marks for the Camino. Crossed another park on edge of town, slept under huge pine tree sheltered by boughs sweeping the ground. Soft fragrant pine needles. Slept in until 8, it was a bed money can,t buy. Later bussed to St. Jean Pied de Port in France and hooved it across the Pyrenees the next day.
In idle moments I mash icons on my phone in hopes of waddling onto the Web, to no avail.

Patagonia'd

Patagonia’d

“No problem, there are always beds here,” said the email reply to my reservation request to a hostel in Santiago. This was my fourth bike trip and I arrived brimming with confidence. Only instead of samba, it was the sound of shuffling slippers. The hostel had morphed into an old folk’s home eight months earlier. The next morning I used a compass and my noggin in lieu of a street map to meander out of the city of six million, laughing at now easily someone had duped me.

I travel for the sheer animal pleasure of adventure or functionlust as the Germans say. Destination was secondary this time, I just wanted to see over the hill and chat to the folks on the next table. The thousand kilometers down the Pan American highway to Porto Montt was a perfect warm up before the wilds of Patagonia. The cycling cognoscenti veer away from motorways. I just wanted a road, any road, and for the next two weeks enjoyed the gritty rumble of  a juggernaut highway – swinging in to ramshackle diners for scrambled eggs and laundry-white bread rolls or the fruit stands built of recycled roofing steel and plywood overflowing with crates of produce. Two bucks would buy a kilo of cherries or strawberries. I would wobble along the shoulder eating out of the plastic bag swinging from the handlebars, trying to ignore the farm workers across the fence encased in white hazmat suits.

My fellow travellers fell into three groups: the long haul truckers, families in flashy SUVs and indigenous locals waiting patiently at the numerous bus shelters that lined the route. These bus shelters were my dining room. The ability to cook a hot meal anywhere and anytime is prerequisite. My alcohol stove made from a beer can was the best stove I have ever had. The shelters were perfect for a quick cuppa. Sipping Red Rose tea, I would intone “only in Canada... pity”, to the smiles of incredulous onlookers.  

Camping was another skill I had nailed. I always found a secluded niche to sleep undisturbed, respite miles of barbed wire and padlocked gates. In late afternoon, I would scan hedgerows for an opening, and then drop myself and the bike behind bushes or amongst the towering weeds. I slept under the stars, a tent was not necessary. I revelled rolling down the highway fast, light and cheap. The downside is that I met no fellow adventurers; they swarm to the hip hostels in the tourist meccas that are only a short cab ride from volcanoes, rafting and ‘hard rock cafe’-style waterholes.

Dossing on a South Pacific island had long been a dream. Chiloe, geographically at least, achieved that goal. It is famous for mystics and gaudily painted wooden churches. I took to back roads and explored the coast, the loose gravel and steep hills made it a tough slog. Steady rain, rickety wire fences, brambles and gorse made my South Seas paradise more Galway than Gauguin.  A comment in a travel guide describing the beach at Canoe on the west coast as the finest in the world, had me intrigued. Twenty kilometers of thundering surf with a lone couple hunkered down to observe the winter solstice; it could have been the 19^th Century. The wet campground and cold shower dampened my enthusiasm. There was a desolate ‘heart of darkness’ feel to the place. Black clouds the next day encouraged me to move on. 

The problem with high tech adventure clothing is that it enables you to keep going long after you should have stopped. By mid-morning, I was soaked to the skin from the rain and the rooster tail of water from the front tire. Luckily, I found, first a steak knife and then a jumbo-size plastic coke bottle; within minutes, I had fashioned a front mudguard. I grinned like a sailor who had plugged a reef-gutted hull. Chill set in by late afternoon despite the heat generated pushing the bike uphill. Then the road disappeared. It had been a double lane divided motorway. First, it shrunk to two lanes of muddy gravel and then down to a twelve-foot wide cutting through a hill. Traffic lights instructed drivers when to go. This was my moment to shine, for 22,000 km monster trucks ruled the Pan Am highway, finally, the mountain bike triumphed. I pushed past the waiting vehicles and into the cutting hoping the water was not too deep, lifted my legs high and sang – “Raindrops keep falling on my head...”

A campground by the beach in Quenllon was home for the next few days as I waited for the ferry back to the mainland. Once again, I was the only guest. Then there was the roar of motor bikes, four heavily loaded dirt bikes peeled in amongst the cabanas. Three were German and one Swedish, all four had their hair shaved on one side; the two men were officers on supersize oil tankers. Their girlfriends looked stunning in yoga pants and body armour. The leader carried a sleek air pistol; he would fire at the helmets of the other riders to communicate. In Santiago, they had bought the bikes for $2000 each and now they were tearing across Patagonia in days rather than weeks. I looked at my bicycle and thought to myself – there has to be something I am just not quite doing right.

 I began bike touring because I was so inspired reading about cyclists and their adventures. On Christmas Day I am wandering through Chilten, it is the deserted and still half-destroyed (mudslides from a volcanic eruption) when I am hailed by fellow cyclists. We sit on the front step of an empty building eating sandwiches and swopping stories. The Tonners are a retired couple from Alberta; they are cycling across the continent and are here for a couple of days while Roz’s gashed leg is stitched, she is 62.

Total freedom is tough, I have the means to go anywhere and every fork in the road is a worry. There was a big one coming up, I could swing east into Argentina and loop back through the lakes and vineyards. Instead I continued south in the rain. The road follows steep-sided valleys; waterfalls cascade down the rock walls, the valley floor is dense temperate rain forest. The annual rainfall here is three meters and this was a wet year. By the second day of rain, everything except the sleeping bag was soaked. The next day the road disappeared and the Bic lighter no longer sparked. Three long stretches of road were torn up and the exposed hillside cascaded down as mudslides flooding the road. I manhandled the bike through a mudslide and over a fallen tree. Motorists behind me cheered. I turned and yelled, “adios amigos.” An hour later, they rushed past, drenching me with water from the flooded potholes. 

 All day I pushed the bike up and over a mountain pass, only to find the downhill surface so rough I had to push the bike over rocks and through flooded sections. My fingers were bone white and once I fell off for no reason. A lookout shelter provided some protection for the night. The dinner special at Chez Hughie was oats a la deluge.

The next morning I found that I was only 5km from a village. I stocked up on food and dried from wet to damp. Another fork in the road was approaching. I could continue south to Coyhaique or to Porto Aysen on the coast. I opted for the coast and within days was back in 30c sunshine and more bags of fresh fruit. I stormed back up the Pan Am highway to Santiago with only a minor hiccup from a bout of food poisoning. After a few days in the city I biked to the coast and then north, stopping at beaches along the way. I was disappointed not to find campgrounds; I needed somewhere safe to leave the gear so I could enjoy the beach. Dante would love Chile; in the far south, you battle wind all day, in the middle, everything is soaked and in the north the relentless burning sun drives you to seek shade- oh, and then there are the constant reminders of tsunamis, earthquakes and smoking volcanoes. Perfect for a Bilbo Baggins.

The final day biking was a memorable twelve hour day. A dawn start enabled me to summit a pass before the heat made it a struggle. Then I am flying down the 11km of switchbacks through cactus country. I left the freeway at the city’s edge and had to use the compass to wind my way through the barrios to downtown Santiago. At a traffic light, Carlos, the owner of a touring bike rental business catches me and offers to buy my bike. I agonize over the pros and cons, and the emotional bond from shared adventures. I sell the bike, shoulder my pack and walk across town. It is late by the time I get to the hostel – only to find the city have padlocked it. I follow directions to another one, it’s full. The next one does have a bed. I came for adventure and 3500km later I can say I’ve been Patagonia’d.

Chilten and the Tonners

The adventure continues...

Christmas day sidewalk party with Canadian couple biking the continent. I moved on that afternoon while they had a gashed leg to be seen to. Found camp sites in dense wet bush. Average rainfall here is three meters and I am told it has been unusually wet. Four days of rain and totally soaked and my panniers also. Stretches of the road are under construction and mix of washouts and loose rock. A landslide blocked the road and caused a long back-up for vehicles. I manhandled the bike thru the mud and over a tree - adious amigos, I yelled back to the stranded trucks. High enegy food and steep climbs kept me more or less warm, but a fall for no reason and finger tips bone white had me concerned. Then the Bic lighter was too damp to spark. I pitched the tent in a look-out shelter. The next day found a place to stay and warm up, but could not dry the clothes. Biked 120km in 8 hours to the coast and was lucky to arrive an hour before the ferry left for Porto Montt. The train north no longer runs and the bus company wont take the bike, I peddle north. Cover over 500 km in four days, then get the runs from bad fruit juice. Small town bus terminal sells me ticket and I am en route to Santiago. Here for three days to get organizes and re-fuel. Tomorrow I leave to find campground on the coast.