giant Walpini home

Think a getaway spot could be done with the use of a big walpini that serves as shelter from the element, growing year round, and visual concealment?

Anthony Coffee : Ideally, we want the Glass front of our Walapini to meet the winters sun Angle at a 90º allowing the greatest amount of light to be absorbed,and the
least amount to be reflected, As part of your goals is to diminish your Amount of visibility ! This will be a problem, in fact if not actively screened against your Glass
Frontage will be exactly like a lighthouse, extremely visible at certain times from (changing) Angles !

Early Green houses used to start off with clear glass early in the growing season, later in the season the glass panels were often 'white washed' to help prevent
over heating of the green house, While a combination of white wash and a camouflage net would reduce your visibility, you are still stuck with the use of white wash
as your only color or markedly reduce the quality of the light your plants need for your plants ability to grow !

Your best shot at being able to disappear into the back country is too pick a spot not likely to be of interest to hunters,campers,hikers, canoe~ists, Then YOU increase
your visibility going and coming from your Walapini !

The only other thought I have to share is smaller is better, you need less resources requiring upkeep and materials and fewer trips in and out !

A late thought says that dug in on an adaptable hill side directly on the shores of a small pond might make a searching plane or 'copter pilot think that light flash was
coming off of that body of water. If the surrounding area was swampy/boggy so much the better !

Good luck and good hunting ! Big AL

Great response thanks !!

I always thought that a home built like a beaver lodge would be awesome!

Miles : Great thought! If I was trying to top you this would be a failure -but you have to agree- its a neat Cordwood house !


http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/8f/ed/8b/8fed8b0c6f66804b03d3851135c5f74f.jpg

For the good of the Crafts ! BigAL

BigAL, have any other info on that house in the photo?
that thing is wicked cool.

siu-yu man : I have only ever seen two pictures of this build which is a cord wood mini-house made to look like a stack of cord wood !
There is the more common picture of the structure lit from within, with a type of drop-down shutter that allows looking outside, and the
other photo that shows the shutters with their drawn on log-end look alike pictures, that make the whole structure look like nothing
else but an outdoor pile of staked logs !

My wife and I considered a cord wood house ( this appears to be the true heart of this type of construction), as well as other under ground
structures, and have plans on living in a yurt 9 months of the year,v then moving where the weather suits our clothes!

I can only suggest that a google search for ''Cord wood houses''-''pictures'' this may allow you to track the original source, then you can
clickon the page of the article from which the picture was posted !

If you have good luck in your search please do share your results with us !
For the good of the Craft ! Big AL

Sending you a P.M.

My acres are in town and straddle a county road, and everyone knows all that fill dirt that showed up in the last two weeks is for a walipini, so I guess I will just have to go with a mean dog, some seriously thorny hedging, and practicing my aim. I am dealing with a high water table so building upwards with a huge berm and lots of thermal mass items (urbanite, people are loving I am taking concrete as long as it's busted up into football sized or smaller chunks). I do plan on adding a few bits to allow that in case of bad times I could move in there... earth bags, urbanite, just bought a backhoe, and hope. I learned from Y2K when my better half got all wound up, on how to build hidden food storage areas, will just have to do the same again. I also like to grow the insanely hot peppers, nice idea Rick Austin had about them, though I have some moral about it, on the making that stuff into defensive spray.

I think I need to dig twice thinking about it. Put in my walipini and hide myself a bunker I can hole up in. Around here we have enough power outs during cold that disguising a place as a stack of wood would get you found out when people start looking for burnwood. So that is one drawback to disguising your place as a cord of wood....