
I love old stone houses. Old stone houses like in these photos can be found in older, quiet neighborhoods from a bygone era. Many of them were owner-built or built by small companies. Most are fairly small, well made and built to last. Many stone houses last for hundreds of years. Every stone is unique, as the stones naturally vary in color, size and texture. The end result is often very beautiful. 
General
Hand-built Stone Houses
No Cost Winterhouse
“The short saga of how i built my little house two years ago, (2008) with no money and in two months in Skattungbyn, South Norrland, Scandinavia.
ESR: Making Waste our Greatest Resource

“At ESR we design sustainable solutions to waste and energy challenges. These solutions weave together engineering and ecological thinking and are deeply embedded in the economic, social, and cultural context of their application. 
Free Heat for Your Home: Homemade Briquettes and Logs
Many people don’t have easy access to firewood or the tools and ability to cut, split, haul and stack it. Buying firewood may be out of your budget. Here we’ll present some virtually free ways of making fuel briquettes and logs at home with simple devices. To make briquettes/pellets/bricks/logs, you can use free materials such as newspapers, junk mail, cardboard, wood chips, wood shavings, sawdust, leaves, pine needles, manure, rice hulls, straw, corn stover and other biomass fibers. The basic process usually involves soaking the materials and then compacting them with a press into blocks. 
Where the Haiti Relief Money Did and Did Not Go

A lot of our time and effort goes toward helping relief efforts in Haiti and other countries in need, so excuse me if this sounds like a rant. The following article truly disgusted me. The article breaks down how only a tiny amount out of several billion dollars in donations ever made it to help Haitians. This is appalling and shameful, and shouldn’t be allowed to happen. There needs to be a giant uproar over this to correct the situation, otherwise donors may not help in future crises. The good news is I believe there’s a fairly simple solution that could prevent this from happening again. I’ve outlined my “power to the people” proposal below after an excerpt from the article.
