Alternative Building - Living Houses

Nørre Snede

cedar

built in cedar wood

clay

blue mussels on the roof.

the round corners show the use of straw.

                                                                                                                    

In a parcelling in the southern outskirt of the town Nørre Snede in Mid Jutland is an interesting building project of sustainable houses. Living houses. Materials like straw, clay, cedar, blue mussels etc.

blue mussels on roof

In the local plan for the parcelling "Skovdalen" is  determined that the buildings must be built according to sustainable principles. The building must in material-production, establishment and daily use affect the environment as little as possible, evaluated from a comprehensive accounting.

It is not allowed to use impregnate wood, glass fiber- or rockwool products and other materials, which can affect the environment.

The heating must be CO2 neutral, like: passive solar heating, non-polluting heating with straw, wood etc. Primary heating sources must not be based on fossil fuels or electricity from the public net.

Local sustainable sanitation must be established by the help of root zone systems, sand filter, willow-cleansing systems or alike effective cleansing systems, which comply the existing environment requirements. The amounts of wastewater, which have to be cleansed, can be  minimized by the use of composting toilet and/or WC, which use grey wastewater. WC can also be established by using collected rainwater.

Several property owners can join in establishing a common solution.

The Grundejerforeningen (property owner union) establishes local sorting and collecting of waste and a possibility for local recycling.

The starting point is that pesticides, insecticides and fungicides must not be used in the area.

The present town Nørre Snede lies upon a large hillside, but the Iron Age people built their village downside the hills. 
  
From the new building area in Skovdalen you've got a view to the place where an Iron Age village was found in an excavation some years ago. The longhouses in Nørre Snede were a little smaller than the wellknown houses from the Iron Age village in Vorbasse. ( the biggest was 36 meter long)  Each longhouse stood in the middle of a square fencing together with one or two small buildings, and the farms were placed in long rows. The stables were in the west end of the house, the living section to the east, which is contrary to the usual Iron Age house There are six building stages of this village, where they have moved the village to the next place,close to the previous - and the houses are the same from ab. year 400 until the 600s.




photo: grethe bachmann