Main Dwelling

This record is the permanent house treated as a position on the land rather than as a building. The walls, the glazing and the heat store each have their own entry; what this one covers is where the house goes. That matters more than it sounds, because the dwelling is the point every other placement is measured from - the shortest walk, the most watched ground, and the first thing every service has to reach. Get the position wrong and good construction does not fix it, because the errors are in the ground and the air around the house rather than in the house.

Three things decide a house site: water going away from it, water coming to it, and air moving past it. Ground that falls away at 2 to 5 percent drains without eroding, with at least 5 percent right against the foundations, and the floor wants to sit about 1.2 m (4 ft) clear of the highest water table. The well usually decides the rest, because the well is normally near the house. A sealed deep well is kept about 90 m (300 ft) from anything that could contaminate it, 30 m (100 ft) at the barest minimum, while a shallow well drawing from sand or gravel wants 300 m (1000 ft) and 90 m at minimum - and either one uphill of any animal yard or manure store, so nothing drains toward it.

Animal housing sits 90 to 120 m (300 to 400 ft) from the house under ordinary farmstead planning. Prevailing wind is not the whole of the odour question either: on calm humid days the low ground carries smell a long way down a drainage line, so a house below the animals is an error no distance corrects. A windbreak planted to windward is the pairing with real numbers behind it, reported to cut winter heating fuel by 7 to 25 percent. The hazard peculiar to building into the ground is radon, a gas that seeps out of the rock and soil below and enters through cracks, floor drains and sumps; houses in contact with the ground, or storing heat in rock, tend to hold more of it. It is cheap to test for, and the result decides whether the answer is a vent, which can cut levels by up to 90 percent, or a fan drawing air from under the slab, which takes out 97 percent or more and costs accordingly.