Tools from the Country Land
Kit
Before you travel to an area...
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Get a feel for climate, community and opportunities in a rural area before
you visit. Get a comparative image of several places and what it would be
like to live there.
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Research land and building prices at a distance. Compare costs at several
locations.
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Chart the sunpath at your current home, measure the height of your trees
and determine the pitch of your roof.
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Layout a preliminary floor plan for a house or cabin you would like to build.
When you visit a new area...
When you visit property...
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Determine the best building site based on soils, sun, water, privacy,
weather exposure, and natural landscape features.
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Chart the path of the sun at the chosen building site so you know what times
of the year and what times of the day each part of the house will see the
sun.
Before you build a house...
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Let the site show you how layout your rooms to interact with the sun, the
outdoors, and where to put your entry and park the cars. You develop a general
floor plan based on scaled activity spaces included in the kit and elements
you bring in from other plans you like. (You can use this preliminary plan
as a basis for a custom design, or to narrow down a stock plan search.)
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Visualize the final homestead layout including roads, future buildings, gardens
and orchards.
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Review construction techniques for building a house that uses low-cost natural
energy systems such as passive solar heating and convective cooling. (These
are the techniques that really work. They come from 20 years of practical
design and building experience.)
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Review the healthy house guidelines. Things to improve the indoor environment
and materials to avoid.
Other design and building tools in the kit....
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Use the inclinometer to determine land slope, layout foundations, and find
the best place for a road. You can also use it to determine the height of
trees, the pitch of a roof, and to do simple surveying.
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Use the included scaler sheet to take parts from any magazine plan
you might like and use it together with parts from the planning section of
the kit. This lets you refine your preliminary layout with ideas you've collected
elsewhere.
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Country Land Kit main page
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Orders