One of my clients recently bought 20 acres of land in the humid subtropics. As you can see, the land is beautiful, lush, and green, with diverse topography (i.e., not flat) and a lot of potential:
He bought it primarily to establish his self-reliant homestead, where he could live off-grid, enjoy nature and the abundance he produces while spending his days in a workshop.
The challenge?
It’s bare land, and now he needs to design it from scratch, i.e.:
-> determine where to place the infrastructure – house, driveway, workshop
-> create a water system to provide enough water for his needs – ponds, tanks, water harvesting channels
-> determine where to place his food growing systems – gardens, food forests, greenhouse…
In this post, I wanted to workshop “live” one of his main challenges – where to locate the house and, in turn, the main infrastructure area.
Given that it’s bare land, there are many potential options (at least to the uninitiated designer). So, let’s start putting some criteria and constraints around this issue and see where it takes us.
For my client, George, one of the major concerns is privacy, or keeping a low profile.
This means that the house shouldn’t be visible from the road. Thus: far enough from the road and/or some sort of topographic protection from the eyes of nosy folks driving down the street/road.
He would also like to enjoy great views, given that he has the luxury of making that a priority.
Those two things (further from the road/topographic protection + great views) give us some pointers on where to start looking. Now let’s add more filters.
From a permaculture design perspective, choosing the ideal location for the house comes down to three things: accessibility, terrain, and sectors (outside energies that we can’t change but rather only mitigate or enhance.)
The ideal is that the house is not too far into the property so that it has a shorter driveway that’s not costly to maintain, and that it has a suitable building site that’s not too steep and hard to build on (some slope is desirable actually, but not too steep).
Also, we want to maximize the positive outside energies coming into the site (solar access, great views, and soundscapes, light breezes..) and minimize/mitigate the negative ones (strong winds, noise, pollution…)
When we add those filters on top of what George would like, we can surface out potentially one or two such ideal locations.
In George’s case, we chose this area marked in red:
It’s not that far from the main road, but it’s still not visible from it because it’s behind the highest part of the property (notice the contour lines – concentric circles, outlining the hills/humps and the saddle-flat area, in between them).
It is on a slight slope, 5% max, with plenty of flat area in the saddle above for ease of access and other infrastructure components or a saddle pond..
It also has beautiful views looking and E-SE towards the lush green landscape and morning sun. Cooler winter winds are coming from the north, and he has some topographic protection from it.
With no noise, pollution, wildfire, or flooding concerns, this building site will serve him well.
He can enjoy his privacy as he watches the epic sunrises from his terrace overlooking the wild landscape buzzing with relaxing nature sounds.
Can you hear it?
Ok, so I hope that this has helped you better understand how to think about choosing the ideal location for your house.
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Talk soon,
-William
