Desert Habitat

I designed a habitat for extreme desert conditions in Tinkercad and then built a model of it in 1:24 scale. The main challenges of living in the desert is temperature and water.

To keep the habitat cool in the day and warm at night it has a geothermal system that pumps water from deep underground into the house. The habitat is also mostly underground, because the ground temperature stays more consistent than the air temperature. Another way the habitat is kept cool in the day is with the reflective roof.

To conserve water the habitat has a composting toilet, that doesn't need any water to flush. In addition to that, all gray water from the sinks and shower go to the greenhouse to be used to water plants.

Materials

• foam board - two 20x30in sheets, 1/4 inch thick (or cardboard)
• paperboard
• paper
• clear plastic (sheet)
• plastic coated wire (I used the wires inside an ethernet cable)
• graph paper
• aluminum foil

Tools

• pencil
• craft knife
• scissors
• markers
• hot glue
• glue stick
• Tinkercad

The house is small and has a bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen/dining room. There is also a greenhouse attached through a tunnel in my design in Tinkercad, but to simplify the model I left it out. To make the structure of the model, I cut out pieces of foam board with a craft knife according to the diagram above. The model is in 1:24 scale.

Since the structure will be mostly underground (to use the cool ground temperature and avoid the sun) there are only two windows in my design. Both windows are in the living room area. To make the doors and windows in the model, I cut them out of the base pieces. I then glued plastic into the windows.

For hot water in the house I used an black outdoor water tank to let the outdoor temperature heat the water, so there will only be hot water in the house during the day. The water used for showering and washing hands/dishes will be sent to the greenhouse to water the plants. There are no pipes for the toilet because this design has a composting toilet. To show the location of the pipes on the model I drew them on the walls with marker.

This design uses a geothermal and radiant floor heating/cooling system to regulate the temperature. This will heat the house at night and cool it during the day by pumping water from the house to the ground and heating/cooling it with the ground temperature. To simplify the model I only show this in the bedroom and bathroom, but it would go through the whole house and into the ground. To show the geothermal system in the floor I glued wires to the paperboard in a serpentine pattern. For the flooring, I glued on graph paper to represent a ceramic tile floor. This is to help hold and evenly heat or evenly cool the floor with the geothermal system. The tile will also feel cool to the touch because of how quickly the tile conducts heat away from your body.

For the composting toilet, I put in one big pipe going down to a composting chamber. The composting toilet will allow for less waste storage, produce compost for the greenhouse, and use less water than a regular toilet. To show where the composting chamber, water tank, and pumps would be I used cardboard to make boxes. There are two pumps, one for the geothermal system, and the other for pumping grey water to the greenhouse. The water storage tank will hold drinkable water for the shower and sinks. A pump inside the water tank sends the cold water to the sinks, shower, and outdoor water tank.

Because this habitat is in the desert, which has wide amounts of open space and lots of sun, the best way to generate electricity is through solar panels, This habitat will need about 10 standard residential solar panels (60 cell). These power the pumps, fridge, lights, and electronics.

To build the stairs I cut a stair pattern into foam board, then cut two 1 3/8 in pieces of paper. I folded the paper accordion style to fit on the stair cut out. I then glued the paper to the foam board. The stairs will go in the section cut out of the living room and kitchen base.

There are two roofs to this house, one is flat and the other is slanted but not fully connected to the house. The flat roof would be well insulated to prevent heat conduction from the air. The slanted roof is reflective to keep solar radiation off of the house. The model only shows half the roof, for the flat roof I glued on a rectangle of foamboard that covered about half the top of the model. For the slanted roof I cut a longer rectangle and glued on supports that were cut at a 30 degree angle to create a roof that was at a 30 degree angle.

To put the model together I hot glued all the foam board pieces together. I then glued in the paperboard with the wire pipes and attached a piece of plastic on top to make a flat floor. After this I put the flat roof on and then the slanted one.