Kelly Hart

Wat Huai Thaeng Rice Hull/Clay Bricks

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From Phillip, one of our readers: We went to see this temple in N. Thailand. One structure was made of adobe and rice hulls bricks. The whole village helped in the project. It had 2 floors. Ground floor was dining hall. Second floor was apartment for senior monks. We also saw a toilet built separetly. … Read more

Spectacular Tiny House Truck Made From Salvaged Materials

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Adam and Sian have built an amazing off-the-grid tiny house on the back of a beautiful old Bedford truck. Their home is powered by solar, and is constructed almost entirely from salvaged materials.

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Rice hull concrete for cool room insulation

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UC Davis designed a CoolBot cool room (excellent project for homesteaders!) using rice hull concrete for insulation and a CoolBot controller to keep farm produce fresher. The cool room paid for itself the first year and even helped make a good profit for local farmers. The rice hull concrete was poured into forms to make insulating wall boards. This blog post will briefly summarize the outcome of their project. The full report is available online for free and can be found by searching for the title of the report: Cool room insulation – UC Davis D-Lab

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SpaceCrete (Formless Vertical Concrete)

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This method allows concrete to be pumped into place to build walls without forms. Redimix concrete is delivered to the jobsite, then thickeners and accelerators as required are injected and intermixed in the pumping line, to give the fluid concrete the zero-slump-with-workability properties that you can see here.

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Family tests Rotterdam self-sufficient home within greenhouse

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When Helly Scholten was offered the opportunity to spend three years living in a home inside of a greenhouse on Rotterdam’s docklands, she immediately volunteered her family. Scholten, her partner and two teen daughters moved into the experimental home and immediately began planting the four greenhouses surrounding and atop the home in an attempt to grow enough food to feed their family.

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