Why We Started Building Homes (And How We Do It Differently)

Most home builders approach a site by clearing it. What gets built after that rarely has much relationship to what was there before, or to what the land actually needs. In this video, we walk through a completed Symbiosis build in the Texas Hill Country and explain how we approach development differently, starting with water, working through site placement, and making decisions at each step that allow the home and the land to function as a connected system rather than in opposition to each other. We cover how roof area and gravity inform where homes are sited, how a 65,000-gallon rainwater harvesting system was sized for the boom-and-bust rainfall patterns of this region, and how wastewater leaving the home is filtered through a septic system and directed toward native plantings rather than lost underground. We also get into native landscaping selection, natural building materials, and what it means to design a property from the top down when you are both the builder and the ecological landscaper. This particular site is a custom build, and we recognize that the specific systems shown here are not designed for direct replication across tract housing or large-scale subdivision development. What does translate is the underlying approach: siting structures around water movement, closing the loop on resources that would otherwise be wasted, and treating the native landscape as a functional part of the project rather than something to be replaced. Those principles can be adapted to almost any scale of development when they are built into the planning process from the beginning. Development in Central Texas is accelerating. The question is not whether land will be built on, but whether the people doing the building are thinking carefully about what that means for water, soil, and the ecosystems that remain. To learn more about regenerative land practices and ecological building in Central Texas, visit our education hub: https://www.symbiosistx.com/central-t... Support us on Patreon:   / symbiosistx   Want Symbiosis to build systems for you? Learn more here: https://www.symbiosistx.com/ Join our newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/symbiosistx/youtub... Follow us on Instagram and TikTok:   / symbiosis.tx     / symbiosis.tx   We Are Your Regenerative Land Management Specialists Symbiosis offers the benefit of years of hands-on experience, a wealth of lessons learned, context-specific creative problem solving and high quality customer service. Our specialty is taking all of these complex elements and combining them in the most beneficial and efficient way possible. https://www.symbiosistx.com/