Project Landship

Created 2024-07-10

I wrote the following a few months ago, when the idea of building this website was just starting to bubble up in my brain. A fair amount has happened since then, including a successful garden (good) and several unexpected repairs (not so good).

My partner and I recently bought a house on 0.76 acres, about a third of which is protected wetlands. The house and property will need a fair amount of work to make it more resilient to the increasingly extreme weather patterns that climate change is causing, and still more to achieve our solarpunk dreams. Like most good things this will be a process of gradual change over many years.

I might be a little presumptuous calling the house a landship or earthship because I have no intentions to become fully self sufficient and I don't think this house has much chance of being a fully passive masterpiece of eco-engineering. It's a model I want to aspire to, though, in the ways that I can. I'm incredibly privileged to own a piece of land (at least as far as any of us can own land) and a building that my partner and I can do what we want with. The best we can do is be good stewards of that land by reducing our ecological footprint, promoting biodiversity, and living and building as sustainably as possible.

The house is around 2,000 square feet across three floors, including a somewhat finished basement (more on that later). It has an enclosed former porch on the North side and a large family room addition on the East (back) side of the house. It is at the bottom of a hill on a dead-end suburban road, surrounded by trees. The main structure was built in 1968, the addition was probably added in the late 90s. Central air with a natural gas furnace, A/C. The clothes dryer and water heater are also gas.

As I mentioned above, the plot is 0.76 acres, about a third of which in the back is protected wetland. The wetland area has a storm drain outlet and several converging and diverging streams. It is separated from the yard by a row of hemlocks. The rest of the yard is bordered by a cypress hedge and rows of some type of other small conifer. The south side of the yard is a large space of open lawn, with a somewhat dilapidated shed. There is currently a 24' diameter pool and deck behind the house that we intend to remove - the decking at least will be excellent reusable material for garden structures and repairing the shed.

Here are some of the current plans/visions/ideas for the house in the next indeterminate amount of time:

  • Plant a garden (I'll do this one for sure)
  • Install solar on the house and shed
  • Remove the pool and replace it with a fire pit area and more garden
  • Plant fruit trees
  • Electrify as much as possible: heat pump, induction stove, heat pump dryer and hot water heater
  • Improve water management in the basement to the point where it could be refinished
  • Turf/green roof on the living room (now we're getting ambitious)

Since I wrote this I've done the following:

  • Begun deconstructing the pool decking and used some of the wood to build raised garden beds.
  • Planted a garden in the side lawn area which is doing very well (I picked my first tomatoes today, as well as 6 cucumbers and a zucchini)
  • Planted two apple trees, Honey Crisp and Baldwin varieties.
  • Replaced the ailing sump pump and built a battery backup for it.