Built Field


The Built Field covers the recurring patterns and design solutions relevant to retrofitting detached houses and the other physical systems that support suburban households. This is an obvious starting point for many who want to make their place a better longterm prospect.
Retrofitting is less costly than new construction, allowing permaculture downshifters to focus on food production, water systems, home-based livelihoods and community resilience rather than sinking all their efforts into state of the art eco-housing.
The first chapter, How to assess a property, aims to help you evaluate an exiting property, whether it is the one you are already living in or one you are considering moving to. It is arranged as a series of questions to guide you through the assessment process, and a simplified checklist of these items is available to help you assess all these factors and patterns.
Warm in winter, cool in summer tackles the issue of thermal comfort with ideas for keeping the people in your household cosy. This leads naturally into Wood energy with options not only for heating indoor spaces, but also for cooking and hot water.
Electricity is a touchy topic with many in society regarding it as an essential service rather than a high quality energy source that should be used for specific functions. In this chapter I explore this idea and provide some thoughts on household electricity generation, as well as some substitutions to allow households to reduce their consumption.
The ability to undertake Water harvesting and storage is critical to household resilience, but I also cover the pros and cons of using mains water. In the garden, this can be supplemented with household wastewater, with human waste supplying further nutrients through composting toilets: these topics are covered in Greywater and human nutrient recycling.
A self-reliant household eating a local diet with a lot of home grown produce will need good Facilities for food: storage, preparation and cooking spaces. Retrofitting for bushfire defence looks at the practical, physical things we can do to our buildings and surrounds to make them more resilient to bushfire threats, whilst Storage of stuff tackles the issue of prioritising, organising and storing all the equipment, tools and other objects we might need for a self-reliant household.
Retrofitting for shared living discusses infrastructure and changes to physical spaces that could assist you to increase household size and density whilst still maintaining privacy.
The Built Field covers many general patterns that might be useful for your living space, but it does not provide specific details. For example, I don’t tell you how to install a safe and legal flue pipe for a wood stove however the patterns I outline should help you review and decide on the best options for wood heat and/or cooking to make your place more comfortable, affordable, productive and resilient in the future.
Built Field Introduction
Furthermore, in an energy descent future, you are likely to find yourself living in a building that is not suited to the stresses and shocks that will occur. New, appropriately designed housing stock will not come onto the market for the following reasons:
· Energy descent will happen too soon and too fast for significant new construction.
· The shift to larger extended family and shared households will reduce need for new housing stock.
· The likely collapse of property values will dramatically reduce finance for new construction and major retrofits.
· Retrofitting of unneeded commercial building stock will keep up with new housing needs even assuming immigration and population growth continue.
4. How to assess a property
This chapter provides you with an overview of the largely non-living patterns of land, energy, buildings
You can use the analysis in this chapter to select properties for
If you are an early adopter of
Keeping all these patterns and their relative merits in the head
In this chapter
- Where is it located?
- How much sun does it get?
- How is the street arranged?
- How vulnerable is it to natural disasters?
- What services are available?
- What am I allowed to do there?
- How much are the rates?
- Is the building easy to retrofit?
- What’s on the site and how’s it arranged?
- What resilience assets does it have?
- Introducing the
Retrosuburban Real Estate Checklist - Vision
Resources
Derek Wrigley’s Making your home sustainable: a guide to retrofitting (Revised ed 2005) gives a very comprehensive overview of Built Field retrofitting options including descriptions and further diagrams on many of the patterns outlined in RetroSuburbia – and more.
The government website ‘Your Home’ has extensive material on buying and renovating (as well as new builds) with a focus on energy efficiency and sustainability, albeit from a mainstream perspective. Good overviews of different building materials and systems with extensive references and (unusually) the names of the authors of the articles. You can read online, download
Michael Mobbs’ Sustainable House 2
Rosemary Morrow’s A Good Home Forever: Downsizing for the future (ebook) gives an overview of her retrofit of a brick veneer home. Available here.
suncalc.net is an interactive website showing you sun angles at different times of the day and the year wherever you are in the world.
State land data websites such as land.vic.gov.au (Victoria) and
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-5 ‘The Hulbert Street Community’
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-6 Shani Graham’s story ‘Take a street and build a community on Perth’ as a TedXPerth talk
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-7 An overview of David Engwicht’s work
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-8 examples painted intersections
retrosuburbia.com/case-studies ‘A Good Home Forever’
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-17 Holmgren ‘Reverence for the Bunya Bunya’
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-19 Mike Sandiford’s article ‘Has the death spiral for Australia’s electricity market begun?’ (2014)
retrosuburbia.com/reading Holmgren ‘History from the future’
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-22 ‘The healthy home’: retrosuburbia.com/book/4-22
retrosuburbia.com/book/4-23 ‘Asbestos in the home – what you need to know’
land.vic.gov.au & arcgis.com examples of online resources to help you assess appropriate places to live
5. Warm in winter, cool in summer
While thermally efficient housing may be a critical energy descent issue in North America and Europe, it is not so critical for fit, healthy people living an
Strategies for thermal comfort come from both the Built Field and Behavioural Field, but they are covered in this chapter for convenience. Keeping the permaculture principle of Use slow and small solutions in mind while developing strategies for thermal comfort is important. Going with a fancy solution – for
In this chapter
- Insulation and draft stripping
- Passive solar retrofitting
- Attached greenhouse
- No air conditioning
- East and west facing pergolas
- Water tank thermal mass
- Shadehouse
- Passive solar, active humans
- Managing personal comfort
- Vision
Resources
Nick Hollo’s Warm house, cool house: inspirational designs for low-energy housing (2 nd ed 2011) covers a wide range of options, including many focused on retrofitting existing buildings.
‘Heating and Cooling’ at Your Home give a useful overview of options but with an emphasis on appliances rather than behavior change.
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
roofventilationblog.com.au reviews of the various commercial options for active roof ventilation:
retrosuburbia.com/book/5-9 Hinter ‘Getting to the core of insomnia’, and other work from the University of South Australia’s Centre for Sleep Research, unisa.edu.au
6. Wood Energy
Using wood to heat the house, heat water and cook is one of the easiest,
Wood heat connects us to our ancestors, uses woody waste and bypasses corporate controlled and government regulated sources of reticulated energy. The technology can be manufactured in a basic metal engineering workshop, or even on-site at home from natural and waste
In this chapter
- The other solar energy revolution
- Sustainable wood supply
- Minimising pollution
- Wood burning options
- Wood processing and seasoning
- Wood ash, charcoal
and creosote - Vision
Resources
Will Rolls’ The
Baker, Tim The
Ianto Evans & Leslie Jackson’s Rocket Mass Heaters (3 rd ed 2015) is the original book from the pioneers of low tech,
Pivot Stove and Heating
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/book/6-1 Egger et al Biomass heating in Upper Austria Green energy, green jobs available
retrosuburbia.com/book/6-7 Taylor et al Residues to revenues
retrosuburbia.com/book/6-9 Telford ‘Cooking and heating cleanly with wood’
shamic.com Shamic Sheetmetal
nectre.com Pecan Engineering
wiseliving.com.au ‘Wise Living Products’ brand
retrosuburbia.com/book/6-18 Wisner ‘Rocket Mass Heater Permitting’
pftas.com.au Pellet Fires Tasmania
retrosuburbia.com/book/6-22 ‘Pellet Fuel’, by the largest importer of pellet heaters, Pellet Fires Tasmania
retrosuburbia.com/book/6-23 Lambert Inorganic Constituents in Wood and Bark of NSW Forest Tree Species
7. Electricity: special energy for specific functions
Electricity is a very
Because most renewable energy sources can create electricity more easily than they can be used to replace liquid or gas transport fuels, most renewable energy optimists see a bright, all-electric future. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions may be driving the shift to electricity powered by renewables, but few householders
In this chapter
- Managing demand
- Autonomous or grid interactive
- Solar access awareness
- Other power options and substitutions
- High tech and low tech CHP
- Vision
Resources
The CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook: how to save energy, save money and reduce your carbon footprint (by John Wright, Peter Osman & Peta Ashworth, 2009) is a comprehensive but easy-to-read overview of not just options for household electricity but reducing household energy use in general.
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/book/7-5 Michael Mobbs’ ‘
pvwatts.nrel.gov PVWatts® calculator covering factors involved in placement and usage of solar panels
okofen-e.com OkeFen Pellet Heating CHP
8. Water harvesting and storage
Water is even more essential to daily life than food, but most Australians take drinkable tap water for granted. Reticulated mains water that is notionally healthy to drink, available at pressure, in almost unlimited quantity 24/7/365 for a cost of $1–2 per kL is one of the services that
Essential drinkable and potable water is a small fraction of total household water needs, but we can embrace opportunities to reduce demand simply by changing our
In this chapter
- Calculating rainfall and runoff
- Understanding and
modelling water demand - Autonomous or not
- Pros and cons of water sources
- Rainwater harvesting and storage systems
- Vision
Resources
The highly recommended ‘Tankulator’ is the Alternative Technology Association’s online tool for rainwater capture, storage
SmartGardenWatering.org.au is a particularly useful website for
Brad Lancaster’s Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond (2008/2013 Vol 1 & 2) are a comprehensive overview of all things rainwater, with a particular focus on earthworks (including small scale such as redirecting water from street curbs as featured in RetroSuburbia).
Art Ludwig’s Water Storage: tanks, cisterns, aquifers
Rainwater Tank Design and Installation Handbook (2008) was developed by the
Mobbs (2010) and Wrigley (2005) – see Chapter 4 resources – both have good sections on water harvesting. Mobbs is particularly relevant to those in higher summer rainfall areas.
Nick Romanowski has written extensively on aquaculture from small ponds to commercial-scale setups from an Australian perspective. All his books are packed with useful information and are easy to read. For smaller
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/book/8-2 Commonwealth of Australia Guidance on the Use of Rainwater Tanks an example of government information with a focus on the conventional approaches to health and safety
tankulator.ata.org.au Online water use calculator ATA Tankulator
retrosuburbia.com/book/8-4 Discussion forum showing the wide range in mains water-use figures
retrosuburbia.com/book/8-5a Michael Mobbs (2007) ‘How to disconnect from Sydney Water for less than $300’
retrosuburbia.com/book/8-5b Michael Mobbs (2015) ‘Sydney off-grid champion wins rain tank battle with council’
retrosuburbia.com/book/8-6 Michael Mobbs’ brief description of their water system
retrosuburbia.com/book/8-9 Brad Lancaster’s comprehensive directions on diverting water from street
tankulator.ata.org.au comparisons on tank materials
retrosuburbia.com/book/8-15 ‘Study: Most plastics leach hormone-like chemicals’
retrosuburbia.com/case-studies ‘A Good Home Forever’
9. Greywater and human nutrient recycling
Centralised sewerage reduced the noxious
Using clean water to dilute and transport human waste through an expanding network of pipes is a very expensive way to waste valuable resources. At the beginning of the last century, leading American agricultural scientist FH King
While mainstream sustainability in Australia has increased awareness about the need to reduce the waste of clean water through excess toilet flushing and washing, most people are unaware of the more fundamental long-term problem of critical nutrient loss through this disposal process. The food supply chain is currently sustained by depleting phosphate rock reserves and energy intensive nitrogen
In this chapter
- Passion for humanure
- Regulatory obstacles
- Safe humanure and greywater
- Reuse and treatment of greywater
- Commercial solutions
- Vision
Resources
Oasis Designs is the website of Art Ludwig, Californian water harvesting and greywater reuse innovator and author. Extensive information including excerpts from his excellent book Create an Oasis with Greywater.
The 3 rd edition of Joseph Jenkins’ classic text The Humanure Handbook is available for download at a small charge from his website.
‘Josh’s House’ Greywater System Factsheet pdf download provides information about nationally approved and professionally installed household greywater systems used in Josh Byrne’s sustainable house in Fremantle.
Ecoburbia hosts tours and can
Kelly Coyne & Eric Knutzen’s Making it: Radical home ec for a
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/book/9-1 TEDxCanberra talk ‘A challenge to live sustainably’ by permaculture educator Nick Ritar
retrosuburbia.com/reading Holmgren’s local energy descent story ‘History from the future’
retrosuburbia.com/book/9-5 Port Hacking Protection Society Inc. (1997) ‘Avoiding Another Tragedy of the Commons; the Bundeena Maianbar WaterCycle management study’
retrosuburbia.com/book/9-7 Milkwood’s system using composting toilets on permaculture courses
retrosuburbia.com/book/9-8 Composting toilets at yourhome.gov.au
retrosuburbia.com/book/9-9 Alexander ‘Composting Toilets Made From Wheelie Bins’
lanfaxlabs.com.au Lanfax Labs website, a wealth of information about the chemical composition of laundry soaps and their impact on soil structure and health
retrosuburbia.com/book/9-16 Art Ludwig’s ‘
10. Facilities for food
This subject crosses the Built, Biological and Behavioural fields even more than most. Household food preferences and harvesting habits feed the processing and preserving activities of the kitchen, which is the heart and soul of any self-reliant household. I have included it in the Built Field to
In this chapter
- Principles of food storage, processing
and preservation - Outside food processing areas
- Inside kitchen
- Food storage infrastructure
- Vision
Resources
The Melliodora cool cupboard design is outlined and explained in the Melliodora (2 nd ed 2005 ebook) in the ‘House update’ section. Available here.
Michael Mobbs’ Sustainable House Chapter 10 ‘The Refrigerator’ has useful information on integrated kitchen design to
Richard Telford has written about converting a freezer to an efficient fridge at his blog. His popular post has recently been updated ‘”Super Fridge” the upright freezer conversion: Take 2’
See also resources under Chapter 29 ‘Sustaining and sustainable diet’
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/book/10-6 Richard Telford ‘The ‘Super Fridge’ (upright freezer conversion)’
11. Retrofitting for bushfire defence
In Chapter 4, How to assess a property, I discussed avoiding sites more prone to natural disasters. This chapter is focused on what can be done to retrofit buildings to reduce vulnerabilities to natural disasters. Chapter 33, Household disaster planning, then addresses the most important
In this chapter
- Suburban bushfire hazard review
- Retrofitting buildings for bushfire safety
- Retrofitting gardens for fire safety
- Managing adjacent public land
- Vision
Resources
Joan Webster’s The Complete Bushfire Safety Book 3 rd ed (2000) is a comprehensive guide to making your house and property more fire resistant, creating a fire plan and psychologically preparing for fire – all backed up by experience and research. Her Essential Bushfire Safety Tips (2012) covers the basics of this information in a much shorter
David Holmgren’s The Flywire House: a case study in design against bushfire (1993/2010) gives plans for a suitable house for bushfire prone areas. Also gives an outline of fire
Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) calculator: balreport.com.au
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/case-studies Abdallah House
balreport.com.au Online BAL calculator
12. Storage of Stuff
Australian houses have always been large by world standards, but we currently have the dubious distinction of building the largest houses in the world. The rising cost of land drives banks, builders
If you have a self-reliant lifestyle you will find that the demands on available indoor and outside space increase due to:
· more people sharing a house to reduce the costs of living and bolster resilience
· more time spent at home engaged in productive activities in the kitchen, garden
· the need for storage space for bulk food, preserves, firewood, water, tools
Luckily, the current combination of large houses but small households means there is a lot of ‘fat in the system’ that can be more efficiently used.
In this chapter
- Balancing
hording and decluttering - Renting storage space
- Borrowing public space
- Borrowing private space
- Undercover spaces and eave storage
- Mezzanines
- Racks, stacks, shelving
and crates - Sharing stuff
- Reducing stuff
- Vision
Resources
Annie Leonard’s short film The Story of Stuff was made over a decade ago and has been very successful in getting people thinking about consumption patterns – both their own and wider society’s. Her 2011 book of the same name expands on these concepts.
Links
These links are taken directly from the footnotes in the book – we have put them here for easy access when reading the book. It is best if they are viewed in the context of the chapter.
retrosuburbia.com/book/12-1 Wilson ‘How big is a house? Average house size by country’
storyofstuff.org Annie Leonard’s short movie ‘The Story of Stuff’
ceciliamacaulay.com.au Permaculture decluttering
freecycle.org, au.ziilch.com, ozrecycle.com Networks where useful items can be exchanged for free
retrosuburbia.com/book/12-12 Holmgren ‘Jack Monaghan 1924 – 2016’
retrosuburbia.com/book/12-14 Gleny Rae Virus’s Carrot vs Bike
openshed.com.au online scheme to connect individuals to share or hire tools and equipment
