Build Your Own Micro Climate.jpg

Renovation of a car shell for it to become a useful shelter in your garden!

One of the components of Orbital Permaculture is a your own movable microclimate - whether it is a renovated deck chair or a renovated old car - the same principles apply. It does not have to be weather proof if you have a shed to put it in. Your garden will take on a different shape when you would like a circuit to follow the sun and a shade tunnel for avoiding the sun. Orbital Permaculture builds on normal permaculture but threads zone 0 and componets in and out of other zones in a new and dynamic approach with numerous positive spin offs.

Why consider Orbital Permaculture?
  • There are many people in the world without basic shelter - what is the lowest cost and low environmental impact shelter they could be provided with?
  • Shelter is essential for physical health, mental health and community health.
  • Many indigenous peoples with great skills and cultures have been left with no viable shelters and food supplies in which to shelter their culture and have lost touch with their environment and food supplies.
  • Many many people in the rest of the world might have obtained a shelter but then have to spend a lifetime paying it off.
  • Many people are forced to live and work in locations they do not like, are forced to commute enormous distances and have an enormous environmental impact.
  • Many people have lost touch with basic science, health, fresh food, energy, music, nature and happiness. They need to start thinking about these things again because they are all linked and essential to quality of life.
  • Modern western communities and their unsustainable techologies are mass dumbing down large populations in the face of rediculous economic, environmental and political disasters and if we are not careful the progress towards a sustainable existance by permaculturalists will all be lost.
  • Protection from UV exposure and contaminated or biting insects in your garden is important to allow appreciating it up close for more time and full benefit.
  • Every bloke needs a shed but they are expensive, and too hot or cold most of the time to read, write, listen, watch and relax - there must be something better.
  • Buildings over a small garden shed size need a building permit and buildings are always full of compromises in relation to the size of windows to the relative position of trees. These compromises on cost and layout often make these buildings difficult to defend against flood, fire or storm damage.
  • This sort of permaculture does not have a fixed rigid layout on a flat plan - it needs considering and designing in 3 dimensions and time to degrees never considered before.
  • These projects could become commonplace in many communities if they take off and draw together many of the "treads" discussed on this site on each project.

Steps to applying Orbital Permaculture.
  • Basic portable seating and passive solar shelter type arrangements as shown in the video.
  • The first prototypes are proposed to be not much larger than a wheel barrow and easy to move and configure to comfort in any garden.
  • The next versions of these shelters move on wheels or rails through a specially designed garden to accommodate a moving shelter. Vegetation can be used to facilitate air heating by wind breaks and air cooling in shade tunnels.
  • Learning to adjust and make your own micro climate and not muck up world climate. Feeling and understanding micro climates might help people understand larger climate issues before it is too late.
  • As inefficient cars are decommissioned, would it be possible to renovate these into comfortable garden appreciation platforms that are moved through gardens?
  • Large custom made moving buildings might be able to be constructed and even multi-storey versions of circular gardens could be stacked on one another with very little weight and cost.
How to get involved - Discussion threads are proposed on the following topics
  • Prototype Design on Sketchup - What materials should be used? What are the new ways plants can be used to create micro climates for a moving building?
  • Eventually Prototypes will be constructed and raced where the race involves reaching a series of milestone cabin temperatures in a garden.
  • The Theatre or Film Production - "Permaculture Deckchair" or what ever name wins the thread poll - Imagine a stage production where the stage is a back yard and careful lighting is used to simulate the angle of the sun. Characters interacting with characters leaning over the fence learn as the garden and the devices in it evolve. I think renovating a car and moving it around on a solar circuit on the stage by hand might be really effective. (example picture attached). A sketchup version of the stages scenes could easily be assembled and converted into an animated video.