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  • From: Darren Doherty <darren@permaculture.biz>
  • To: permacultue discussion list <pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org>, Permaculture List <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, "SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU" <SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU>
  • Cc: Penny Livingston-Stark <penny@regenerativedesign.org>, w@quailsprings.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] [Pil-pc-oceania] Flywire House
  • Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:33:31 +1100

G'day,
Thanks David & Su: I lent my hard copy out some time ago so and it hasn't
been returned so this is a fantastic gesture especially given the time of
need of this kind of information...

Beautiful day here at Rainbow Valley Farm: Joe's birthday and we
planted a Schizolobium
parahybum in the subtropical garden below the education centre in honour of
the occasion followed with a good feed of a neighbour's pork, RVF mashed
potatoes, sauerkraut, apple sauce and mashed spuds....Trish is doing great
and has a great team in residence and unyielding community support in spite
of the trials she has had and continues to face.

Again thanks for the publication,

Darren

2009/2/18 David Holmgren <ds@holmgren.com.au>

> Flywire House is now available as a free download from the Holmgren
> Design Services website <http://www.holmgren.com.au>. Please use and
> freely circulate this link to others (in preference to circulating the eBook
> itself) to help get permaculture as part of the general discussion in the
> community about bushfire and help inform the rebuilding process.
> David Holmgren
>
> We have been planning to reissue the Flywire House (that Darren
> mentioned in the related thread Tinder Box ecology) as an ebook, so
> will get that done as soon as possible. Flywire House was originally
> done with Maggie Fooke as an entry in the Boral Bushfire Resistant
> House design competition in 1983. It was rejected because it was on
> more than one piece of paper and involved landscape and
> infrastructure design in addition to a passive solar house design
> suitable for construction by the project home industry. The design
> was used as part of information display by the Dept of Planning that
> toured the bushfire affected regions of Victoria. The case study site
> was a property of a friend, Eric Dodge at Officer who was burnt out
> on Ash Wednesday despite his best efforts. Some aspects of the
> design were implimented on the site but a house was never constructed.
>
> Nascimanere published the design as a case study booklet in 1993.
>
> Deb's confusion (in the Tinder Box ecology thread) about the Wyndham
> house documented in another case study Permaculture In The Bush (also
> out of print) is the opportunity to make some hindsight interpretive
> comments on these projects. I would agree that the Wyndham house
> (that I designed in 1979) would not rate has a highly bushfire
> resistant design while I believe the Flywire House design would
> perform as well as the best of current designs. A few differences and
> similarities between these designs are worth noting.
>
> Both involved an permaculture approach to bushfire resistant design
> integrated house site selection, earthworks, building design and
> construction methods, water storage and delivery systems, shelter
> design and species selection and garden design to maximise the
> beneficial effects of appropriate vegetation and minimise the adverse
> effects. Both incorporate an irrigated zone one and two system of
> food gardens and orchards free of eucalypts and other sclerophyll
> vegetation. Both involve on ground house construction.
>
> The differences include substantially different levels of hazard
> mostly due the very steep slopes on the Officer property. While the
> forest type on both properties was very fire hazardous, the steep
> slopes and exposure demanded avoiding the most fire prone ridge top
> position. We did not feel that a bunker was necessary on the selected
> site but incorporated one to illustrate how the design could be
> adapted to even more hazardous sites.
>
> The Wyndham design was informed by early permaculture design against
> bushfire documented in Permaculture One, including Bill Mollison's
> experience of surviving the 1967 fires, saving his own house and
> several others while many more burnt down. Mollison's house was not a
> good design and perhaps that and other stories about the relative
> ease of saving a house made me less hardline about bushfire resistant
> design principles. The Flywire House project was informed by the
> my own extensive research and observation and personal experiences of
> close colleagues in surviving fires at Officer, Mt Macedon and Aireys
> Inlet. While CSIRO research on 2000 houses showed that the presence
> of an able bodied person is by far the most significant factor in
> determining the chance of a house surviving, Eric Dodge's experience
> of being unable to save his old ramshackle house and sheds despite
> being well equiped and organised probably had a profound influence on
> my thinking and design work. Similarly a visit to the burnt out shell
> of a highly bushfire resistant house (constructed on a precipitous
> ridge top in dry sclerophyll forest at Mt Macedon and unattended
>
> during the fire) was a sobering experience.
>
> Lastly the Flywire House project was an entry in a competition so the
> design was skewed towards giving a greater weight to these issues
> that might occur for any normal design. It is easy after such major
> fires to get in gung ho design responses that demand money and
> resources for systems that may or may not function when the very rare
> catastrophic fire arrives.
>
> Both the Wyndham and Officer designs informed the design of
> Melliodora (case study in print an available as eBook). I see the
> Hepburn house and landscape design as more bushfire resistant than
> the Wyndham design but still with more vulnarabilities in the
> building (the clerestory) than the Officer design. But when you take
> into account the relatively lower hazard nature of the Hepburn site,
> I think it would be the most fire safe of the three.
>
> Which is good because we have lived through 20 summers in this place
> and from the beginning have had a fire plan that involves no
> evacuation under any circumstances. Which puts me in the same boat as
> my 82 year old neighbour, who's place I would assess as more fire
> safe than ours but on a more exposed position.
>
> While I remain confident as ever in our house as a shelter of last
> resort, last Saturday brought home to me new vulnarabilities created
> by further building and assets to protect than were in the original
> design and how 10 dry years and unprecidented hot dry weather was
> turning some of our fire protection plantings into fire hazards. It
> was also a wake up call about the most obvious aspect of fire design
> that often conflicts with other permaculture design imperatives; Fuel
> levels in stressed and aging pioneer shelter species (especially
> acacias), litter, small areas of uncut dry grass and grain stubbles
> and branch mulch around trees have developed to dangerous levels
> despite previously adequate management. We are now doing that extra
> cleanup which is of course so much more difficult in summer than
> winter and if there are not drought breaking rains this winter we may
> need to review our policy of zero burning for fuel reduction to avoid
> large amounts of uncomposted litter. As the climate shifts further
> so do we need to constantly re-evaluate our designs and our situation.
>
> David
>
>
> --
> David Holmgren
> co-originator of the Permaculture concept
> Holmgren Design Services
> Ph + 61 3 53483636
> Email info@holmgren.com.au
> Website http://www.holmgren.com.au http://www.futurescenarios.org
>
> Melliodora (Hepburn Permaculture Gardens)
> 16 Fourteenth St,
> Hepburn
> Victoria
> Australia. 3461.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pil-pc-oceania mailing list
> Pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org
> http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/mailman/listinfo/pil-pc-oceania
>
>
>
> --
>
> David Holmgren
> co-originator of the Permaculture concept
> Holmgren Design Services
>
> - *Ph* * + 61 3 53483636*
> - *Email* info@holmgren.com.au
> - *Website* http://*www.holmgren.com.au* *
> http://www.futurescenarios.org*
>
>
> Melliodora (Hepburn Permaculture Gardens)
>
> 16 Fourteenth St,
>
> Hepburn
>
> Victoria
>
> Australia. 3461.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pil-pc-oceania mailing list
> Pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org
> http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/mailman/listinfo/pil-pc-oceania
>
>


--
Hooroo,
Darren J. Doherty

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  • Re: [permaculture] [Pil-pc-oceania] Flywire House, Darren Doherty, 02/18/2009

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