
Building a hut with a tiled roof, underfloor heating and mud and stone walls - sanjeetsuhag
https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com
======
bane
This guys' videos are amazing. If anything should convince you that humans are
a uniquely terrifying species it's these videos. Walking into the forest with
nothing more on that a pair of shorts and a brain, he makes fire, tools,
building supplies, ceramics, and entire living structures. The technology he
produces by himself is _almost_ on par with many pre-industrial revolution
societies where metals (even though they had them) were too expensive to waste
on building shelters.

For example, if he designed things a little differently, this would pretty
much be what the average Korean, now one of the most technologically
sophisticated civilizations in the world, lived in up until the late 20th
century [1]: tiled roofs, wooden framed houses (they interlocked with notches
instead of twine), raised floors with underfloor heating (still copied in
modern apartments), earth packed exterior walls. If he had time to pulp wood
and make paper he could do interior finishing, and the addition of maybe 1 or
2 precision metal tools he could square off wood work even better and maybe
even produce nicer floors.

In many civilizations, metal cookware was simply seen as more durable
alternatives to ceramic cookware and even followed similar design motifs [2],
it can sometimes be difficult to tell from far away if something is a bronze
or ceramic pot they often look so similar [3]

Pre-industrial revolution, human-scale technology can get pretty impressive,
humans managed to settle an entire planet and all of its climates with not
much more than the product of their hands, some ideas and a little patience --
basically what this guy has done. If aliens were to kidnap a thousand pre-
Industrial Revolution random humans from around Earth and dump them off on a
suitable, but empty world. They'd have it all colonized and populated in
probably 10,000-20,000 years. That's not even geologic timescale.

Terrifying.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanok)

2 -
[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=ancient%20chinese%2...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=ancient%20chinese%20ceramic%20bronze&tbs=imgo:1)

3 -
[http://www.users.qwest.net/~rjbphx/BigPicture/PotteryGild.JP...](http://www.users.qwest.net/~rjbphx/BigPicture/PotteryGild.JPG)

~~~
logfromblammo
The thing that terrifies me is that the law in many industrialized countries
would consider the structure that he built to be unfit for human habitation,
due to multiple severe building code violations.

100 years ago, it would have been an acceptable dwelling, or even desirable.
Thanks to the pace of progress, in just 50 years, houses built to _today 's_
standards might be considered too primitive for human habitation.

And you have to wonder what is going to be invented before then that will make
us look at the homes we are living in right now and think, "How did I ever
live in such a backwards, primitive building?"

We might not even realize the importance of it right away. If you think about
an indoor flushing toilet, it doesn't seem all that remarkable, but now every
residence needs to have at least one. Grid power wiring isn't all that
glamorous, but every home has it. The thing that changes everything might be
_boring_ at first glance.

And that's terrifying. A human can see a device with the power to change the
entire world and still say, " _meh._ "

And also aliens would probably need to kidnap at least 10000 in order to
maintain a stable breeding population. Otherwise, the humans would have to
establish some pretty strict rules against monogamy and inbreeding, _and_ the
aliens would have to carefully select a very diverse group to begin with.

~~~
xienze
> 100 years ago, it would have been an acceptable dwelling, or even desirable.

I don't think a mud hut was ever considered acceptable in any moderately
advanced country back in 1915.

~~~
andallas
Thank you, if people kept agreeing with him I was about to have an aneurysm. I
have a rental property in upstate NY that was built in 1895 and is at least a
century ahead of a mud hut. I'd argue several centuries, but I guess it
depends on which civilization you are comparing it to.

~~~
logfromblammo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_structure)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cob_(material)#Modern_cob_buil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cob_\(material\)#Modern_cob_buildings)

[http://www.sotaconstruction.com/project_details.asp?id=42](http://www.sotaconstruction.com/project_details.asp?id=42)

Even mud hut technology has advanced well beyond huts. The "greenest building
in Pennsylvania" is a glorified mud hut with underfloor heating. It contains
more than just one century of advancements over the most basic earthen
construction.

And perhaps you haven't seen the sort of houses that people lived in, even as
late as the 1930s, in some parts of the country. Let's just say there is a
good reason why pre-manufactured homes are popular in certain places. Upstate
New York may not exactly be a representative sample for the housing conditions
in 1915.

------
kragen
I've enjoyed this guy's videos a great deal. I haven't watched this one yet,
but the blog post is excellent.

It might make you wonder why people have historically been so poor. So here
are a few points to think about:

1\. This hut took a highly skilled polymath 102 workdays to build, using a
little capital he'd previously built up (the celt.). The opportunity cost in
the modern economy is about US$60 000. How long does it take you to save up
US$60 000? Now, consider what kind of house you could build with US$60 000 by
means of the economy, or with 102 days building with robots.

2\. The vast majority of people in human history have been systematically
excluded from access to both the knowledge and the material resources needed
to carry out this project. If you had the knowledge, you could always build a
hut like this — but the neighbors, who are organized into an effective violent
force with a hierarchy of coercion, would be likely to raid you and take it
away, even though most of them are low in the hierarchy and are therefore not
allowed to live in a luxury house like this themselves. _Most people still
live like that_. Now we call the people who do most of the raiding "police",
and they have bulldozers.

3\. And yeah, food is expensive when you have to plant it, and historically
speaking, groups that have planted food can support denser populations with
greater productive capital (mills, houses, tools) and more stratified social
orders, all three of which make them militarily stronger, so they gradually
pushed the groups that just gather it into the poorest and least fertile
territories.

This seems like a terrible situation. How can we fix it?

~~~
lmm
> 2\. The vast majority of people in human history have been systematically
> excluded from access to both the knowledge and the material resources needed
> to carry out this project. If you had the knowledge, you could always build
> a hut like this — but the neighbors, who are organized into an effective
> violent force with a hierarchy of coercion, would be likely to raid you and
> take it away, even though most of them are low in the hierarchy and are
> therefore not allowed to live in a luxury house like this themselves. Most
> people still live like that. Now we call the people who do most of the
> raiding "police", and they have bulldozers.

What? No, there is no need to posit systematic exclusion - keep Hanlon's Razor
closer to heart. Deliberate destruction of value does happen but it's rare. At
any point in history most people have to work hard to get a nice house not
because that's objective fact, but because "nice" is defined by what people
can afford.

> 3\. And yeah, food is expensive when you have to plant it, and historically
> speaking, groups that have planted food can support denser populations with
> greater productive capital (mills, houses, tools) and more stratified social
> orders, all three of which make them militarily stronger, so they gradually
> pushed the groups that just gather it into the poorest and least fertile
> territories.

The most valuable resources go to those who make most efficient use of them
(military strength has very little to do with it - in the long run it's all
about productivity). Isn't that exactly what we want?

~~~
jacobolus
Deliberate destruction of value and systematic exclusion are the norm in
peasant societies. If you’re a noble, you treat the peasants living on your
land as chattel (even when they aren’t explicitly slaves), and assault, rape,
steal, or kill with abandon. If the peasants start saving up some surplus (of
food or money or whatever), you take it, because to not take it would threaten
your power.

As one example, a case I know about because I’ve talked to people who were
there: in rural southern Mexico, which was mainly a plantation economy up
through the 70s, the casual theft/rape/murder of indigenous peasants by
landowners was common even 50 years ago. But the same was/is common in rural
peasant societies everywhere in the world, say, all over Europe 200 years ago
(more recently in some parts), or the American South up through at least 1900.

------
IgorPartola
My family once built something like this. We used ready-made roofing
materials, but the rest was branches and small tree trunks, dried grass, and
clay. The process went something like this: dig a hole until you hit clay. Put
four posts for the corners such that the hole is in the middle. Put up a basic
slanted roof and put straight branches over it, nailing it all together. Put
grass and mud mixture on top of that and let dry, then cover with roofing
material. Now you have a shady place to work! Keep digging clay out of the
center hole and store it. Put more posts where walls will go. They don't have
to be super close: 1-2 inches apart is just fine. Mix clay with water and
grass again to make mud. Fling it against the newly created walls and smooth
it out with a board. Wait to dry. Repeat form the inside and out until you
have a solid 6-8 inch wall and none of the wood is exposed. The door was
another ready-made item but technically didn't have to be. Once the four walls
are up and the door is installed, create a floor and a hatch into your new
cellar.

We then expanded this one room, adding three more. We built a wood burning
stove in one of them using clay bricks and another stove outside. Once you can
stay at a place like this work goes much faster. There is a huge advantage to
using clay as the main material too: it keeps the inside very cool, and it is
very cheap and easy to work with.

Then we got even crazier and bought a bunch of bricks. We laid the foundation
of a brick house around the mud hut, then built up walls around the mud hut.
Once the walls and the roof was up, the sledge hammer took care of the mud hut
and the materials were carried out the front door.

Edit: oh, and we had no power at this location, so we did all of this using
only hammers, manual saws, screw drivers, and a manual drill. Almost all the
nails and screws were salvaged.

~~~
dennyabraham
It sounds like a fun project. How did it hold up against rain?

~~~
IgorPartola
It held up great. The clay cured enough in the sun to not be bothered by it.
It stood for 3 or 4 years IIRC. After that we built the brick house around it.

The reason we built this was because we got a plot of land to farm, but it was
a ways away from where we lived, so we needed some shelter to stay there
during the summers. Another requirement was that it had to be resistant to
people trying to break in to steal stuff (it was).

------
degenerate
I found the wattle and daub hut video
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKkHqlx9dE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKkHqlx9dE)]
(the first one uploaded by this guy) to be the most mesmerizing because it
doesn't jump-cut through time so fast. If you have 11 minutes of adolescent
curiosity laying around, it's really fun to watch.

------
ersii
I can highly recommend watching the 14 minute long video at the top. The video
in itself is in my opinion very well done, but of course the content is what
is incredibly spectacular.

------
aet
If you like this, you will also like the documentary "Alone in the Wilderness"
\-- see [http://www.dickproenneke.com](http://www.dickproenneke.com)

~~~
bengali3
dont miss the preview clip.
[https://youtu.be/z7jxFbscIJY](https://youtu.be/z7jxFbscIJY)

~~~
aet
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss)

------
nly
The scary thing you don't appreciate with regard to roof tiles is the sheer
weight above your head. We recently had our house completely retiled with
pantiles[0], each one weighing a couple of kilos, and the timber frame
construction holding it all up makes me nervous even now.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantile)

~~~
WalterBright
Living in an earthquake prone area, I refuse to have a tile roof.

------
maliker
If this is interesting to you, you might also like
[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com).

~~~
skc
I love this just for their in depth coverage of alternate energy sources.

I've been looking for more content on that topic, anyone have any good links?

------
switch007
Might be useful for us Gen Y'ers because we certainly can't afford a real
house. ;-)

~~~
kryptiskt
Presumably you can afford more tools than a Celtic stone axe though.

~~~
kragen
It's not Celtic; it's a celt. You've been tricked by a homoglyph!

~~~
jessaustin
"celt" has an interesting etymology. A medieval scribe miscopied the Latin "
_certe_ " ("indeed") as " _celte_ " ("using a _celtis_ or celt") in Job 19:24,
and based on the context everyone figured a "celt" must be a tool for carving.

------
thomasfoster96
Things like this really make me wish we were still hunter-gatherers.

Then I remember I'm on my phone and I'm actually far happier not having to
hunt for dinner every night and constantly maintain my leaky hut.

------
arxpoetica
Where is this guy working from? He mentions a humid climate in his latest
post, but no geography.

~~~
sunwooz
I believe he said he lives in Australia.

~~~
thomasfoster96
If he says he's from Australia then he'd have to be somewhere along the
eastern side of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland - that's about the only
place you'd find that sort of rainforest.

------
jqm
How does he vent smoke from the lighting fire/torch inside the house? The
under floor heating is cool, but I would have made a fireplace w/ a chimney.

~~~
DanAndersen
In an earlier video (linked elsewhere in the comments), he built a fireplace
with chimney. I think his goal is to make sure he's showing something new with
each video.

------
SagelyGuru
Great video! You can see that this guy is not at all work-shy. It is only
because I am absolutely on his side that I say this: he should have considered
making angled edge roofing tiles as well. The sides of his roof look like the
tiles will just fly off at the first significant blow of the wind.

------
bcheung
If you guys find this video interesting you might want to check out the MMORPG
called "A Tale in the Desert". It involves building up the entire world from
small primitives.

------
spking
This is like real-life Minecraft in survival mode.

------
pauletienney
Do you know any other good video about that kind survival / low tech buildings
? I would love to watch more. Thx

------
OldSchoolJohnny
You can't use green wood to build anything you expect to last and you
certainly can't just shove it into the ground and expect it not to rot. It's
interesting intellectually but completely impractical.

~~~
ChuckMcM
It is a bit more nuanced than that. I agree you have to understand how your
building materials will age but it doesn't necessarily make things
impractical. In a rain forest, green wood lasts a lot longer than you might
expect. There are villages in the Amazonian rain forest with similar
construction (not tile but mud and thatch) which have lasted for a while. In
part because the wood cures slowly, and in part because things like the roof
are typically replaced periodically.

It would probably be worthwhile for him to watch his materials over time and
adjust as needed in terms of prep but I expect his 'hut' would certainly last
the season and maybe two or three.

Given that he has his kiln set up, he is now in a position to actually build
bricks for a more permanent structure, presumably that is his next video if he
is working through the Big Bad Wolf hand book (hut made of sticks, hut made of
mud, hut made of bricks :-)

------
SQL2219
And he did it without the interweb!

~~~
eric_h
I suspect that he used the interweb to determine how to fashion many of the
things he put together.

~~~
joshrotenberg
Which, in my opinion, doesn't at all minimize how amazingly cool this is.

~~~
eric_h
It certainly does not.

