Many gardeners are familiar with Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening system: raised garden beds of any size divided into square foot (300mm) grids. It’s a very popular gardening system and he has sold over one million books. With this method you can grow five times more plants in a given space with less maintenance. You’ll … Read more
I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Paul in Chiang Dao, a district north of Chiang Mai, Thailand. We’ve been discussing how to build an earthbag house with bags filled with rice hulls. Rice hulls are super cheap, fire resistant, superinsulating, and super lightweight and easy to work with. Rice hulls are the by-product of … Read more
Gayle Fleming at EcoGayle’s Blog recommended an article in the New York Times that addresses the effectiveness of passive homes: Can We Build in a Brighter Shade of Green? The New York Times article chronicles the experiences of Barbara and Steven Landau, who are building a 2,000 sq. ft. house to the passive-house standard in … Read more
Here’s a great article by Gayle Fleming, an environmentalist and green real estate advisor at EcoGayle’s Blog. She’s EcoBroker certified and a NAR Green designated real estate agent in the Washington DC metro area. The following text is quoted from her blog. “Yes, really. You think the oil, coal, natural gas and HVAC companies want … Read more
Here’s our third earthbag bench. I love these small projects. They’re so simple and practical. This one was made almost entirely with surplus materials: a few extra bags filled with gravel, cement plaster and scrap tile. It was built during the construction of our earthbag roundhouse so all the tools, materials, etc. were all in … Read more
We’re experimenting with rice hulls and clay to make lightweight building blocks. We’re using 25% rice hulls on our first test block. This is our first test block with a rice hull/clay mixture. This is not the most efficient way to mix it, of course, but we’re just doing small samples. Normally you’d use a … Read more