Where to start in a portable Homestead-1st Step is Flooring

The first step is to determine and establish flooring right for your environment and lifestyle...

Our Little Portable Homestead
"The Turt"
More than a tent, and not quite a yurt,
"it's a Turt!" said one of the neighbors.
...and so it became, The Turt.

Greetings Sacred Earthlings!  If you have visited the land lately you may have noticed the extra large military tent. We are one of TerraSante's newest Living Laboratory Experiments. A family of 4 is building a kit for a fully functioning, self sustaining, and completely off grid 3 bedroom portable house. Once it's complete it can be moved to any desired location, on or off grid, and leave little if any carbon footprint behind. Solar and or wind power is sufficient for LED lighting, and a mid-sized energy efficient refrigerator. Propane is used for an RV size gas stove with 3 burners and a small oven, a heater for winter months, and an on demand water heater for showers. Though during the summer months water is heated in solar water heaters, or on the fire, and most meals are cooked out on the fire and BBQ. Water can be hauled in and recycled through a wood chip biofilter and then used for the portable gardens. Making this a fully functioning, off grid, spacious and comfortable, portable homestead in a box!

Platform example.

Within this 512 sq ft tent you can partition it out with rooms and lofts and around whatever suits your family or lifestyle. This is where the possibilities are endless! If you have the means to do so, you can build a tent platform, with(as seen to the right) or without a knee wall, and then cover it with the canvas tent. One good builder’s guide for this option can be found here Tent Platform Building Plans, and the specs can be adjusted for the dimensions of your tent.

Rocket Mass Stove Heater and bench.

Another route is to place the tent directly over an earthen floor with a thermal mass rocket stove heater and bench.

This was our first choice since we have worked with cob before, and got to experience living in a cob house that also had one with a bench in it. The bench is heated by the stove pipe running through it, and then it will keep radiating heat for several hours in the night, as demonstrated in this diagram.

Rocket Stove Mass Heater Diagram.

We loved that because the fire wood was free, and with the bench we didn’t have to get up at 2am to relight the wood burning stove! Free heat all winter! This is a great option if you plan on parking your tent there for a while, and have access to free firewood. Then when you move you can wash away the cobb with a water hose, and keep the internal parts for the next location.  There are also plans to build one that can be completely disassembled and reassembled found here Portable Rocket Mass Heater plans.

This year we didn’t prepare our fire wood for the winter, and the cost of propane is less than having to buy your own firewood.  For this reason we have included in our kit a propane heater, and a heat lamp for each room. As we continue adding to our kit we will be finding alternative power sources, and at that point we may add a small wood burning stove. Most wall tents even come equipped with a stove pipe opening with a gasket in the roof. Our tent has two, one for each end due to its size.

Here it is before we put up any partitions,
we used thick woven blankets for the floors.

Our first build didn't have the stove, but we did start with the earthen floor. The first step was to level out the dirt, then wet it and smooth it over as you would any concrete floor, and let dry. Once it's dry it hardens like a soft concrete, then you can cover it with carpet or area rugs, and sweep the surface as needed. Then we tried to create a barrier between the dirt outside, and in with a trench filled with gravel and lined against the tent wall with roofing tiles that we found nearby.

Being that we live in the desert, the dust here is never ending whether you have dirt floors or not, so this was not an ideal living space for functional comfort for a mom with kids that have toys everywhere. Everything I owned became covered in desert dirt, and got worse every time you would walk through.

Pallet platform.

The next time we put the Turt up we chose to put down a platform. We still leveled out the dirt as best as we could, and then we laid down a layer of pallets that we found for free. Then we are covering those with plywood, and paint or carpet in some areas.

Then it's on to the next step...partitioning walls for rooms!