Design Dev for this home for homesteading is wrapping up and I am moving onto putting together the drawings for construction. Here are some views of the exterior in 3D. I have not yet really selected the exterior finishes so these are showing siding by default.
FUNCTION IS PRIORITY
Why have I not chosen finishes yet? The house must have a functional aesthetic. The overall form and use of the house is where we spent the research and design on. The view can show plain empty white walls and I would still go with it since I believe that the character of the house meets the purpose I set out to find.
- capture prevailing wind and use it to keep space cool in the summer and warm in the winter
- provide comfortable interior spaces using passive methods
- provide spaces that cater to homestead related work and production
- design in solutions to improve security of the home
- optimize for sun path for selected location
- designed for ease of future maintenance and DIY home repairs
- flexible to build in phases and to expand beyond current complete design
- support ageing in place and serve as a forever home
- design in potential short term rental use (AirBnb or VRBO type income sources)
- designed to be flexible as a multi-generational home
- designed with option to include a tornado shelter
- includes considerations for being built off-grid (solar, septic, rainwater harvesting)
- abundant outdoor living space
- captures the flow of activities for homesteading and food production
- captures the flow of activities from arriving at home from commute to going to bed to rest
- designed to stay warm considering the colder winters we have recently had in Texas in 2020 and 2021
With the above solutions included, the finishes can be tweaked from here. We can add all sorts of details, panels, add stone veneer, do board+batten. The combinations are plenty, and at that point it won’t have any adverse effects to the function of the home. The finishes can be purely, honestly a pursuit for how I would want the house to look.
Here are images taken from the corners of the house, showing it in summer sun-my main concern for my climate and location. This is actually showing late afternoon sun, which comes in at my current home at an angle which I wanted to address. My high noon solar exposure is actually pretty easily resolved with this design, so I am showing a worse case scenario for me: what it looks like later when the same hot summer sun is at about 6pm or so and starts to heat up the west side of most homes.




There you have it, a quick rundown of the benefits designed into this home as seen from the exterior. There will be a separate post explaining the thinking behind this design as seen from the floor plans and interior spaces. I’ll also include a summary of these benefits in a downloadable package in the below link.
PERMACULTURE HOME FOR HOMESTEADING – DESIGN DEV EXHIBIT PACKAGE
My goal at Alt-Ark is to Make Homes More Permaculture, to help you build that permaculture home on the homestead.