5 Best (and Worst) Places to Build a Home or Village

so there you have it the five best and worst places to build a house or village [Music] so where are the best and worst places to build your house or village from the permaculture perspective i had a ton of comments asking that question after my recent video called this farm design can heal the planet linked here above so here's my response and i hope it helps number five at the slope break the slope break is where the slope changes from steep to gentle we find many examples of traditional villages towns and settlements placed there for a number of reasons first off the slope break is often the change between two different ecosystems whether it's between forest and meadow are places where tree crops are grown and where field agriculture happens for subsistence farmers and hunters being at the break between these two types of environments gives access to two totally different ecosystems with different plant animal and soil types so you can hunt game and collect mushrooms in the forest in one direction and grow corn and squash in the other it's also the highest place in the landscape where it makes sense to collect and store water so you have the yields and the materials of the forest above a water supply at the settlement level and flatter land down below in the valley for crops perfect right but what about the worst place in this landscape if you watch my video permaculture design for wildfire defense linked above then you'll know that placing a house at the top of the hill or ridge is the worst place in terms of wildfire danger because fire travels up so if you're at the top of the slope then fire can travel up to you from any direction you also have to build a long and possibly steep meandering road to the top and you'll need to pump water and haul everything you need to this high point okay yes you're right the view is beautiful but you can make a nice trail going up there and have a comfortable bench to enjoy the view from if you're building a fortress or a castle then the high ground gives you a strategic advantage but we're really talking about normal people here number four the sun facing side okay this one is for people who live in temperate climates where you have a winter season which gets cold if you're in the tropics go ahead and skip to number three i've previously discussed passive solar design in my video how to build a permaculture neighborhood linked above the sun is an incredible source of heat and light if your home and village are placed in the correct location with the correct orientation in the northern hemisphere this is on a gentle south facing slope with the house oriented within 20 degrees east or west if you're in the southern hemisphere just flip the directions toward the north instead of south see if your home is elongated to the east and west then in winter time when the sun is low on the horizon it will strike the biggest side of your house for the maximum amount of heating and natural light like i said you can shift the orientation 20 degrees in either direction and still pretty much get the full effect then in the summertime when the sun is directly overhead you'll have overhangs shielding your south facing windows and the smaller east and west sides of the house will be the only part that's exposed to the direct sun where you can plant trees for shade now the worst place to put a house in terms of passive solar gain is at the base of a steep north-facing hill or cliff this house will be dark and dank throughout the long winter possibly with mold problems as well as underground seepage from moisture on the north side i'd like to point out a notable exception to this rule though because if you live in a more arid area the north slope may be where the water source is and you have to sacrifice your solar access for water access and that's a legit choice to make [Music] when placing a house village or town along a river you have to understand how a river flows because you need to know what land will go under water and what will stay dry during a flood event so i'm going to give you a quick fluvial geomorphology 101 that's a good word right i want to preface this short lesson by saying that nature is really variable and the unique geology of a particular area may not follow these rules so chill this is a general lesson that covers most but not all landscapes also important to note people have massively manipulated the natural flow of water in many areas so the natural pattern may be obscured see a river bends and it deepens and scours the channels at the outside of a bend and then deposits silt and debris on the inside of the bend sometimes creating a sand bar that you can see a river bends back and forth in different directions so alternates the direction of the curve on a river bend there's usually a high side and a low side the high side is on the outside of the bend and the low side is on the inside of the bend so when the river floods it floods the inside so you see how my town of corvallis oregon is placed on the outside of the bend in the willamette river and then when we go further downstream we find the town of albany on the outside of the bend and further down the town of independence and then the capital city of salem all on the outside of the bend so the best place to place a house or town on the high side of a river on the outside of the bend the worst place you guessed it inside the bend otherwise known as the floodplain [Music] speaking of water flow let's look at another great location for a home or village and that is number two above the confluence of two streams in my travels i have observed a lot of old homesteads indigenous villages and ruins placed in this position on terrace or hill above the floodplain yet overlooking this wonderful triangle of land which consists of good alluvial soil that was deposited here during past floods one nice thing about this position is that you can intercept the river flow up higher and bring it to the top of the good farmland in an irrigation ditch to water the lands below now this triangle of land is often an opening within a more hilly and forested landscape so it's a clearing which is open and sunny for farming so our little village here is above the flood plain above the cold air drainage and has a good vantage point over the whole area so down from there these two streams come together and they flow into a more narrow valley or canyon speaking of which we come to our next bad location which is in a narrow valley or canyon in a narrow canyon there are a number of disadvantages first there may be poor access to sunlight because of the steep hills on all sides second in a major flood there's nowhere else for the water to spread and even if your house is out of the flood plain the access road may not be third in the event of a wildfire depending on the wind direction a fire can rapidly move both up and down the canyon or tight valley so overall it's a pretty poor location although in a very arid landscape a canyon bottom may be the only place where there's water so there are exceptions and now for number one we're going to look at the best place to place homes in relation to each other which is to cluster them you see a lot of times when people get land and want to have some sort of community or development they have this idea that each home has its own little valley where they can't see any other people and everyone has their own private little kingdom where they can look out onto unspoiled nature but the more people spread out in this fashion the less unspoiled nature remains intact and the amount of roads pipes and other infrastructure multiplies when people spread out so each home needs its own laundry facilities energy systems storage areas workshops communication networks and a lot more this pattern multiplies the amount of resources necessary for living and the amount of environmental impact but when houses are clustered then all of the infrastructure is lessened and there's the opportunity to share resources and utilities there are less roads less pipes less wires which lowers the cost of housing and the cost of living for those involved when we look at any traditional village around the world we see this pattern and it's only the car with quick long distance travel that's made it possible for people to maintain lives spread out so remotely from each other but the environmental cost is tremendous if we expect the planet to maintain its growing population we have no choice but to enter a lower energy use future so returning to our roots of clustered housing is definitely the best choice so there you have it the five best and worst places to build a house or village [Music]

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 842,980

Keywords: real estate, permaculture homestead, permaculture design, flood plain, permaculture design course, permaculture design principles, permaculture design basics, permaculture design for homesteading, flood plains and floods, flood plains geography, permaculture design for water, permaculture design examples, floodplains and levees

Id: 0Trz6NvsUQQ

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021