I am Flower, I live in the center of Lyon with my partner and our dog, moreover we are expecting a child. We have a project to build an ecological house autonomous in water, electricity and heating. I know it's a complicated project but we really want to achieve it and we are aware that it could be long and tedious, hence the fact of planning a lot of things upstream.
We are neither in the building that's why don't come in search of knowledge ^^
For the house, we would like to use natural materials if possible. The goal would be to have natural ventilation of the rooms, good insulation.
For the insulation, we had the idea of probably covering the house with earth. ("Hobbit" link below). We saw that the use of straw and heat was also good. Is using these materials and sufficient? Or is it too much? Is there a better way to do the insulation?
We already have some ideas for house ideas, I put the links below:
But many questions still arise concerning these houses, can kerterres for example be built larger? Or do they risk collapsing quickly?
Are there other buildable houses like this?
In terms of the land, we saw that it was possible to build on agricultural land but that depends on a lot of legislation. Since we are going to adapt our house to the land, we do not know if a specific quality of land is needed to build this type of house.
As for the autonomy in electricity / water, we are well aware that these will arrive a while after the construction of the house. But we are taking all the leads there. We obviously know the possibilities of solar panel / Wind turbine (small) to try to be independent in energy. It depends on the weather but it's a start.
Regarding water, apart from being close to a stream possibly allowing it to come using pipes thanks to the Archimedean thrust or even recovering rainwater, we do not do not know other ways. Do not hesitate if you have any ideas.
If you have links, leads, contacts of people who could help us on this subject, do not hesitate. We are really upstream of the project and are looking for as many leads as possible.
Thank you in advance.