Root cellars are great to help preserve some produce through the winter. When most people think of a root cellar, they picture a large underground room, often with an entrance somewhere in the yard separate from the house. But building a root cellar requires space and resources that are not always available to homeowners. Here … Read more
Greensburg, a farming community in southwestern Kansas with a population of 900 rebuilt “green” after a tornado barreled through at more than 200 miles per hour and nearly wiped it off the map in 2007. Now Greensburg gets all of its electricity from a wind farm, has an energy-efficient school, medical center, city hall, library, … Read more
Imagine a community where every home maintains a comfortable temperature without the use of electricity, built with local materials and aligned to maximize passive solar. These houses are also incredibly durable, having survived thousands of years. The Sky City village in the Pueblo of Acoma, atop a mesa 60 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico … Read more
This new home of 29-year-old Shelby Howland, owner of Village Carpentry and Landscaping in Goshen, Indiana, is being built with hempcrete. The house is not only a place to live, but is a pilot project for the future of his family business. The 1,600-square-foot, two-story home has been in the works for the past nine … Read more
Liz Hatch is building an Earthship in Greensboro, Vermont. Surrounded by a mass of scrap tires, cardboard and piled fill materials, she said “All this stuff, a lot of it, is just garbage.” She had been trying to live sustainably in her 19th-century Massachusetts home, converting it to geothermal energy. “I have wanted to minimize my … Read more
In February this year Claude Carter and his wife Andrea Pindan suffered the loss of their temporary mobile home to a tornado. Just three years earlier their previous house had burned to the ground. Now, after three years’ work, they are finally moving into their new earthbag home, which they built themselves. They live in … Read more