balance by debspoons

Eco- Architecture and Permacultural Planning is currently seeking dynamic interns and volunteers to join our dedicated team of permaculturalist, designers, sustainable planners, conservationists, journalists , self builders and others.

you are suitable for volunteering or developing a personalised internship for Eco-Architecture and Permacultural Planning CIC if you want to:

• improve your writing and reporting skills and develop valuable skills,
• use your photography and/ or video skills to develop materials so you are more marketable,
• put your writing, editing, blogging and research talent to good use for an environmental cause,
• gain valuable experience in a Social Enterprise Organisation,
• become experience in development, planning, sustainable lifestyles,
• put your digital media and social skills to work
• research other media and simultaneously add comments directing readers back to Eco-Architecture and Permacultural Planning CIC.

We can make a variety of arrangements to fit your goals, interest and educational situations. Best of all we are virtual.  No need to move to volunteer or intern for use. you can work for us from your dorm room, or from your dinning room, you can work from any locations around the global as long as you have good internet access and the discipline to work virtually.

We are always looking for contributors ( photographers, writers, videographers) and have a list of articles that we’d like written. Your contribution level can vary from one or two articles to 10-20 articles. If you have a great idea that you would like to develop feel free to pitch this to use.

We are also looking for interns, inters must commit to working a minimum of 20 hours per month for Eco-Architecture and Permacultural Planning CIC, and we prefer a part time or full time commitment of 40-80 hours a month you will learn heaps! for interns we require a 6 month time commitment. Interning for is is prefect for your college gap year, to gain valuable professional experience or to fulfill internship requirements for your area of study. We also welcome mature interns, those exploring different career paths and who want to gain experience or those who are retired.

Volunteers must commit the same amount of work as interns with one exception, what we call ” piece work. ” Piece work can mean committing to edit one or more articles a month, committing to writing one or more quizzes a month, committing to reading other articles on the internet for “X” number of hours each week and commenting on them and thus, directing readers back to Eco-Architecture and Permacultural Planning CIC . Those who commit to “piece work” are expected to volunteer for a minimum of one year since their work load is often light and specific.

General Requirements:

1. A passion for the environment, permaculture, self build, planning, sustainable living, and conservation 
2. communication skills
3. ability to work independently as part of a virtual team ( you better love SKYPE & Email)
4. a basic understanding of permaculture, sustainability, planning, climate change

As part of  Eco-Architecture and Permacultural Planning CIC you will join a diverse team with passion for our vision. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact  Sophie Christopher- Bowes Coordinator: sophie@eco-arch.co.uk

Jeffrey Gale proposes the development of garden-centred sustainable communities in the form of small-scale ‘eco-hamlets’ 

Writing in the February 2008 issue of Town & Country Planning*, Peter Roberts referred to the need to learn from what has gone before in creating new settlements. Pioneer thinkers like Ebenezer Howard, George Cadbury, Titus Salt et al. all wished to provide ideal working, leisure and housing environments for the populations of their planned new settlements.

All the population’s needs were to be locally provided for; they could walk through gardens or parks to their places of work or to take children to their school, and handy food shops, sports facilities and community centres were beautifully integrated into the complex.

Current tendencies towards lighter industries and self-employment make this kind of planning even more feasible and very apt in the UK, especially when climate changes make a re-appraisal of planning philosophies so urgently needed. If planners are serious about sustainability, they need to face the fast-developing reality that the UK cannot go on importing most of its food and oil for much longer.

Localisation of food and energy production must become an urgent priority. This could be achieved by local authority and central governmental promotion of food- and energy-producing settlements such as the eco-hamlets proposed here.

Indicative layout plan for an eco-hamlet

The land around the houses would then be available for food production – fruit and nut orchards, integrated with biodiverse grain crops.

Not only is home-grown food likely to become an increasing necessity, but gathering home-produced food crops for daily meals is a source of great pleasure for children and adults alike, and time spent in gardens and parks in such pleasurable nature-contact activities and in quiet reflection would help greatly in countering the spiritual alienation generated in the over-frenetic world of work, shopping, and media concerns.

Permaculture design, involving planting a well balanced mixture of biodiverse perennials, such as fruit and nut trees, bushes, herbs and vegetables, would have a fundamental role here. Not only would it yield edible gardens that are beautiful to look at, but it would also be ideal for a time-scarce population, as maintenance of perennials is very low (usually needing little attention except the occasional addition of organic compost) and the digging requirement is minimal once the garden is established.

Eco-hamlets would be made up of clusters of about twenty to thirty-five eco-homes. Each cluster would have a community dining and social room, with attached kitchen and serving bar, to encourage residents of every age to come together for shared meals and social gatherings. It could also be used as the base for leisure activities and for community gardens and other co-ordination activities. A children’s play area and crèche, communally supervised by rota, would be another essential element.

The dwellings themselves would have south- facing living rooms and roofs for solar-gain and solar panels; high insulation; and conservatory-style verandas added where possible, from which warm air would be conveyed by ducts to rooms on the north side.

A small-scale, specially designed and strategically sited low-cost biogas plant would be a vital addition to each cluster. As well as collecting sewage from short-flush, warm-water toilets, around 70 per cent or more of source the material for the anaerobic digester at its heart would be green garden and kitchen wastes (the most methane-gas-productive fuel), fed through a shredder cylinder into the semi- underground tank (which would be insulated to at least 400millimetre thickness).

The output – mostly methane and carbon dioxide – would continuously feed and power a large gas or converted petrol engine linked to an electricity generator. And a further outlet would feed a delta to distribute slurry over lift-out perforated alloy trays above a graded filter bed, so supplying good-quality garden compost.

The present Government’s policy of creating new ‘eco-towns’ sounds all very well, but it could very easily slip into road-centred planning, with very little provision for integrated food production, really affordable self-build housing, and social cohesion.

The eco-hamlet approach to planning outlined here enables acceptable housing densities to be integrated with food-productive permacutural gardens and on-site renewable energy generation systems. It is applicable in both rural and urban situations and is as relevant for the expansion of existing towns as it is for Government-backed eco-towns. The ideas underlying eco-hamlets attempt to address several escalating problems in addition to providing a way of tackling the pressing question of housing provision:

• the modern urban population’s lack of contact with Nature or with gardens;
• personal spiritual alienation, often rooted in rampant consumerism and feeding distorted human values and reducing the opportunities for co-operation outside the family home;
• global warming and climate change;
• and a lack of racial or cultural integration.

Most people have now become dependent on the use of the car – a habit that they would feel lost without since one cannot rely on public transport networks. Families with children are especially reliant on their car to fetch weekly shopping and take children to school. But eco-hamlets would be garden- rather than car-centred – and these gardens would be largely devoted to food production.

Eco-hamlets would be designed without internal roads, as cars would be kept strictly to the edges, left in parking and garage areas next to peripheral access lanes. Each resident would have key access to a bank of lock-up, supermarket-type trolleys stored at the garage areas, and the trolleys would be used for the carriage of goods to houses via footpaths.

A biogas (methane) powered minibus or shared cars could run shuttle trips to town, schools or the supermarket. Fire and maintenance vehicle access to homes would be by ‘green lanes’, mowed, gravelled and minimally flagged (entry to which would be controlled through coded lock- posts).

This plant would thus complete the cycle of waste conversion to provide energy to fertilizer – and its presence would also help to raise awareness among residents of the vital ecological circle of our lives. Children in particular can learn much about the realities of life and long-term healthy sustainability by living in this kind of environment.

Other energy systems, like solar panels, can be grant-aided, especially where the hamlet project is proposed by a housing association, co-operative or community land trust.

Regarding affordable homes, there needs to be active encouragement by local and central government for self-build projectsas a better alternative to rented accommodation, especially in areas of high unemployment where rents often have to be subsidised by Housing Benefit. Helping people to build their own dwelling as part of a self- build team usually involves enabling them to learn new skills, which can potentially help in reducing unemployment.

It is exciting for people to help shape their own home; and designing and building to higher than normal eco-standards would allow energy bills to be radically reduced. To summarise, the main advantages of the eco- hamlets as proposed here are:

• The way of life they would offer would be enjoyably educational and suitable for all ages, and poorer people could gain access to much more fulfilling ways of living.
• They would offer radical reductions in air and noise pollution, as well as major reductions in energy and food bills.
• They would promote localised food growing, which will quite soon become essential, and not just a pleasant hobby.
• Similarly, their use of on-site renewable energy production makes sense in any context – distant power sources are inefficient, as well as vulnerable to extreme flooding, sabotage or breakdown.
• Footpath-approached homes are safer and quieter than roadside ones.
• Huge savings could be made by the exclusion of roads from the living areas and by dispensing with connections for distant electricity and gas supply and wastes disposal.
• Fewer roads and hard-standings would reduce flood risks.
• The biogas plant associated with each cluster of eco-homes would provide electricity and fertiliser, as outlined above, and make advantageous use of otherwise biosphere-damaging methane emissions.

In short, this kind of ecological holistic planning is environmentally and socially sensible. Car-centred planning is a dangerous anachronism in this twenty- first century. The eco-hamlet approach also brings people together in productive gardening and in home energy generation, so neighbours are seen, and see themselves, as part of a team, rather than as competitors for the latest, most shiny cars parked by their houses.

Jeffrey Gale is an eco-architecture designer, based in Totnes, Devon. He is contactable at jeffrey.gale@virgin.net. The views expressed here are personal.

Note:* P. Roberts: ‘Learning from the past for the eco-towns of the future’.Town & Country Planning, 2008, Vol. 77, Feb., 102-3

Town and Country Planning Association:
www.tcpa.org.uk

To the Editor, TCPA Journal

If planners are serious about sustainability, they need to face the fast-moving reality that the UK cannot go on importing most of its food and oil much longer. Localisation of food and energy production must become an urgent priority.

This could be achieved by Local authorities’ and Governmental promotion of food- and energy-producing Eco-Hamlets in both rural and urban situations.

This approach to planning enables acceptable housing density integrated with food-productive permacutural gardens and energy systems.

My designs for Eco-Hamlets have no roads, as cars are left in garage areas next to peripheral access lanes. Lock-up trolleys enable goods carriage to houses via footpaths from these.

Fire and maintenance vehicles can access homes by “green lanes”, minimally flagged and gravelled. So the land around the houses is then available for fruit ad nut orchards, integrated with bio-diverse vegetable and grain crops.

Sewage and all green garden or kitchen wastes are fed into my specially-designed small-scale low-cost Biogas Plant(s). This produces methane to pwer a large gas or converted petrol engine, linked to a generator continuously producing electricity as well as garden compost. (Permacutural design is always organic in plantings.)

Other energy systems, like solar gain and panels, can be Grant-aided, especially where the Hamlet Project is proposed by a Housing Association, Co-op or Community Loans Trust.

This approach also brings persons together in productive gardening and home energy, so neighbours are seen as part of a team, rather than competitors for the most shiny latest cars parked by their houses!

The Eco-Hamlet includes a Community Dining and Social Room, with Kitchen for shared meals and musical events. A rota-supervised children’s play area and crèche is another essential.

The best kind of Eco-Hamllet would be Self-Built, as each resident can tailor their house according to their needs and budget.

Jeffrey Gale,
Eco-Architecture Designer
Totnes, Devon
May 2008

Bee on flower by Sweetcrisis

Beneficial creatures:
Ground Beetles, useful predators of slugs, aphids and caterpillars.
Hoverflies, can eat up to 100 aphids a day.
Hedgehogs, eats caterpillars, beetles and slugs.    
Rove Beetles (Devils Coach Horse), predators of soil grubs, insects and slugs.

Ladybirds, larva eats 500 aphids.
Wasps, many solitary wasps are beneficial against aphids and caterpillars.
Centipedes, eats all types of small insects.
Earthworms, pull organic matter into the soil and open up the structure of the soil aiding drainage.
Bats, night feeders of nocturnal flying insects.
Frogs, toads and newts, prey on slugs, flies and other insects, needing a pond in which to breed.
Lacewings, adults and larvae feed on aphids, but a chamber to protect them and their eggs.

Lady in green nature by Sweetcrisis

Slow-worms, legless lizard up to 30cm long, eats slugs that feed on young plants. They are a protected species, look after them.

friend by africa

Here are just some ways researchers have found gardening helps improves childrens sense of self-worth:

• Exposure to insects such as worms helped small children overcome their fear;
• less confident children, give them a gentler, less pressuried route into learning where bright flowers and vegtables replaced the whiteboard as teaching tools;
• waiting for crops to grow taught the value of patience,
• public praise for school gardens, for example in assembly, generated a sense of pride. 

The housing market has experienced boom and bust cycles for the past 40 years. These distort housing choices and increase risk. They drive mortgages arrears and repossession rates, curtail house-building capacity and increase inter generational inequality. So, even if there were a massive fall in house prices  unlikely in an ear of ultra- low Interest rates- there is, as in the rest of the economy, no quick fix.

The government’s funding for lending scheme and NewBuy seem to have removed some barriers. but full return to housing health requires much more. One strand of thinking is allow housing associations  which have traditionally focused solely on affordable housing for low earners, to expand their remit.  The strategy is widening of their scope to help those in their 20′s and 30′s, labelled “generation rent” , because they are trapped in tenancy at the mercy of sometimes exploitative landlords.

There has been some easing of regulatory constraints to allow housing associations scope to invest in a new type of affordable housing. Presently deemed to be 80 per cent of going market rates. But the sector argues that some of the larger housing providers such as L&Q could do much more, if given more freedom by government to develop new funding models and sharply increase borrowing to finance rented housing options.

It is a step in the right direction and chimes with a growing belief in Whitehall that the private rented sector needs to be developed. Everything points to a new era of sustained growth in the building of better- quality housing for rent. That will be a paradigm shift and will hit at least the heart of the nation’ love with home ownership. Aaron Morby is editor of Construction Enquirer.

house for sale by artur84

Continued

The main players:

The 2008 global credit crunch brought the housing market and house building industry down to earth with a thud.

Diggers were stooped in their tracks leaving half -built sites. New mortgages disappeared almost overnight and house-builders found themselves counting the costs of sky-high borrowing used to fund the purchase of land during the boom years. In the 20 years to 2003, the cost of residential land in the UK increased by 808 per cent on average, according to Halifax, while house prices rose on average 306 per cent. For a while, many of the country’s largest house-builders looked as if they were facing ruin because of write-downs on optimistically valued land.

Is soon became apparent, however, that the house-builders were deemed too big to fail. Banks nursed them through the worst and a spate of share issues helped raise cash to keep companies going. The seconds-biggest UK builder, Taylor Wimpey, resorted to offloading it huge US business to raise the cash to put itself straight.

Four years into the new economic reality, most of the big house- building companies are on their feet. Predominantly south-east-biased groups, such as Berkeley Homes and Permission, are bouncing back with souring profits.

But major house-builders are reticent when it comes to a return to high volume building, particularly when the market remains fragile and uncertain. The new preoccupation with profitability has seen levels fall below 100,000 new homes a year, the lowest since 1920′s.

This has put builders firmly in the line of fire, with housing pressure groups and charities claiming they are choking off demand to raise prices while the country is in the throes of a housing crisis. As many boast big land reserves, they have also been accused of land banking- sitting on land while prices recover- and booking the increase in value as profits- at a time of dire housing need.

Since the 2007 peak, average UK house prices have fallen by around 12per cent, according to the Land Registry. The fears of most economist that this was not a big enough correction to stimulate demand have been borne out.

Part of the problem stems from swift government action to lower interest rates in the wake of the credit crunch. This has lessened the pain, kept mortgage payments affordable for exiting owners and explains why repossessions and forced sales are running at less than half numbers seen in the bad times of the early 1990′s. At the same time, the squeeze on lending and demand for bigger deposits has opened a yawning affordability gap. Now, only the independently wealthy or those lucky enough to be able to turn to the “bank of mum and dad” can hope to get on the housing ladder.

Transaction volumes, a fundamental indicator of the market’s health, are at rock-bottom, as illustrated by annual mortgage lending figures, which in 2012 equated to just over a month’s lending at the 2007 housing peak.

Young people have a mountain to climb if they are to own their own home. On average across England, somebody in their 20′s wanting to purchase the average £175,260 first-time-buyer home, would need to save a deposit of £35,000. First-time buyers saving half of their net income- after paying council tax, rent, energy and water bills- would take more than 10 years to raise a deposit at current average prices. In London, where house prices have continued to grow in the face of demand from overseas buyers, it is an astonishing 24 years.

To make matters worse, the flow of first-time buyers in the decade ahead will be hit as graduates defer purchase because they are shouldering £40,000 or more of debts from college fees. UK house prices, reckons the IMF, are up to 30 per cent higher than they should be, measured by British income levels. With the government flack over a new “locked-out” generation, and criticism for cutting social housing budgets, policy- makers have been working overtime to find ways of kick-starting the housing market. There has been some, quite justifiable, criticism of the governments slowness to act. At the end of last year, it was published its long awaited housing strategy. This draws together a raft of fresh measures aimed at stimulating demand, particularly among first-time buyers who remain the key to increasing the volume of transactions.

To free up more surplus land new housing, the government is committed to releasing formerly used land, owned by central government, capable of delivering up to 100,000 homes by April 2015. So far, it has offloaded enough land to support the building of an estimated 33,000 new homes, although progress is slowing on less attractive sites for housing. It is also reforming the planning system to accelerate major housing projects through the new National Planning Framework.

Nick Boles, planning minister, backed by David Cameron, the prime minster, has also grasped the nettle of debating the release of greenbelt land. There is even talk of obtaining land to build several new towns.

To combat local communities’ understandable resistance to building new homes on their doorsteps, the government has launched the New Homes Bonus. This aims to encourage local authorities to grant planning permission for new houses. Councils or committees that take part will receive matching council tax revenue on each newly-built home for six years. Dubbed a “housing bribe”, it has yet to prove its effectiveness in combating “not-in-my-back-yard” attitudes, but it moves the debate about releasing land for the next generation in the right direction.

The governement has also set up a £570m Get Britian Building Fund to deliver loans to help finance stalled house building sites where it has proved too difficult to raise finance to get them restarted. Another new fund known as Build Now, Pay Later gives house-builders alomost risk-free building as govenment land is handed out free of charge until the first homes are sold.

These initiatives are still in their infancy and have yet to yield a surge in building. Latest result from builders such as Barratt, Bovis, Bellway, Persimmon, Redrow and Taylor Wimpey show caution is still the order of the day, with private housing completions edging ahead by less than 5 per cent. Even this gain is being offset by the fall in social housing brought about by big cuts to public spending budgets. There is frustration in government circles that taxpayers’ money being ploughed into easing the house-builders risks is being wasted as completions stutter. However, the central issue for most builders is competing in a market in which house movers with the wherewithal to buy are thin on the ground. This is why they prefer to talk about stimulating demand. The industry has high hopes for a new governemnt-backed scheme called NewBuy, which allows buyers to get a 95 per cent mortage on a new home. Thisis offered by most of the major house builders.

Reseravtion rates in the first theree weeks of 2013 using NewBuy are running at their highest since the scheme was launched last March. Well over 100 people have reserved a new home each week, continuing the upward trajectory in take-up. In total, about 4,500 people have reserved a new home.

Another scheme know as FirstBuy, also requires only a 5 per cent deposit and offers a 20 per cent equity loan, effectively enableing the buyer to buy at 35 per cent equity, which is likely to be extremely popular.

Yet, there is a call for more radical action. Last June, Vince Cable, business secreatart, siad there were some intretsing ideas for governement  guarantees that could trigger a considerable volume of housing investment, replicating the reovery model of the 1930′s an leading, hopefully, to a virtuous circle of increased afforadability and increased private demand.

Going forwad, the government is creating a debt guarantee scheme for up to £10bn to support increased building of both affordable homes and homes for private rent. This has yet to get started but shows openness to radical moves. A key area will be as big expansion of the private rented sector. The government wants to encourage a wider range of investors to build houses for private rent and has commissioned Sir ADrian Montague to review the barriers to greater investment  To this end, there are plans to create a Build to Rent Fund to stimulate the supply of new, private housing for rent and to provide opportunities for institutional investment. Aaron Morby

windchimes by arvind balaraman

Our garden faces west so we get a north west wind. We have places a wind chime in the garden facing a West wall. The wind chime catches the wind, and create a beautiful sound.

Wind chimes is an art and a science. The windchimes that we have in our garden is a tuned wind chime, these have been tuned by the craftsman that created them. Our tuned windchime is made from metal rods, but you can get tuned windchimes that are bamboo or wood.

Each rod has been tuned to create a specific note. Our windchime has been tuned to create a soprano which tinkles softly in the wind.

Creating a space that reflects the sound of the natural world, if often linked with movement. The linkage of being inside the home but also a awareness to the patterns of nature. Wind chimes are a bridge between indoor and outdoor worlds.

until next time.