“Ok, the Rocket Stove heated, Cob Sauna is on!! There is a client who will pay me to build one, which is GREAT! ‘Cause it means I’ll actually have the time to build it, and see it finished in a timely manner. I’ve delivered the urbanite for the foundation today, I’ll be prepping the parts    Read More →

Here’s another beautiful custom home design by Whole Tree Architecture.com. We covered their work in a previous blog post on Whole-tree Building that was very popular and so I decided to expand on this topic some more. You can think of whole-tree building as maximizing the trees that nature gives us to create rustic timberframe    Read More →

Ken Kern traveled the world in search of innovative building ideas and reported his findings and ideas in The Owner Built Home. In my previous blog post about Kern, I said I would highlight more of his ideas. Well, here are three more ideas in addition to the Plunger Pile Floor System. Imagine hundreds of    Read More →

Straw/clay has been in use for thousands of years with great success. The focus of our blog is obviously earthbag building, but we’ve decided to include coverage of other natural building methods to broaden our horizons and reach a wider audience. It’s good to know a whole range of building ideas so you can obtain    Read More →

“A wonderfully informative reference on vernacular styles, from adobe pueblos and Pennsylvania barns to Mongolian yurts and Indonesian stilt houses. This small but comprehensive book documents the rich cultural past of vernacular building styles, from Irish sod houses to sub-Saharan wattle-and-daub huts and redwoods treehouses. It offers inspiration for home woodworking enthusiasts as well as    Read More →

“The building of homes with adobe is a centuries-old tradition in the state of New Mexico, long preceding the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. The indigenous peoples of New Mexico had used earth for their dwellings for centuries, and the later Spanish arrivals were quick to adapt the indigenous earth-building techniques to their own purposes.    Read More →