There are plenty of ways to polish clay, this is just one put together for this video, but the concepts are the same for other polished plasters, like tadelakt. You can watch the video at www.youtube.com Plaster mixes: These mixes vary greatly depending on your substrate, weather, clay, sand, and application. And a test should … Read more
Long-time reader Gail forwarded the latest newsletter from Square One Villages that has some updated information about the 100 mile home at Emerald Village Eugene. This house was featured in a previous post a couple of years ago and a video about Square One Villages is shown on this post.Raymond Stone has lived at Emerald … Read more
Here is another nicely made video in the Groundwork series featuring straw bale building and explaining why it makes so much sense to think in terms of using natural materials for dwellings. You can watch the video at www.youtube.com or click the title to watch on the blog.
I have been familiar with biochar as mainly an agricultural soil amendment that helps provide habitat for beneficial microbes and sequesters carbon in the ground. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could also be used as a building material, until a reader suggested that I check out this article at www.biochar-journal.org Biochar is a … Read more
Sustainable Life School‘s mission is to empower themselves and others with natural building and sustainable living techniques. Morgan and Mary Jane Caraway have been homesteading off-grid since 2009, when they built their first earthbag home. They held their initial public workshops in 2011, while building a sun room addition on to their earthbag roundhouse. In … Read more
Thousands gathered in the World Heritage city of Djenné in Mali for the annual Grand mosque plastering ceremony. This adobe building is considered to be one of the greatest achievements of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style. The plastering is done with banco, which is a mixture of sand, water, shea butter, rice bran and baobab powder … Read more