Our final stop on the tour of Asher Gelbart’s off-grid homestead was a work in progress of incorporating an old Airstream trailer into a larger architectural project. Asher is holding up a model of this concept, which would not only feature a spiral roof covering most of it, but also earthbag domes.
The roof structure was mostly intact, and some earthbag retaining walls were established, but much work still needed to be done to manifest this vision.
“A team of folks in africa make some 7.3m long ferrocement roof channels for placement on top of a CSEB (cement stabized compressed earth brick) house.”
Christopher Day is a veteran of the world of architecture in Britain. In his new book, The Eco-Home Design Guide: Principles and practice for new-build and retrofit, he has condensed his considerable experience of both designing and hands-on building into a set of guiding principles for how to go about your own ecological building project.
The book is well organized into primary divisions that deal with the major issues that confront anyone who undertakes such a journey. These what, where, how and when issues are each examined in turn, so that by the time you complete the book, you should have a good understanding of all of the issues that need to be addressed. Each chapter is summarized at the end with a listing of the key points covered and a chart of the main choices that need to be made. With this approach, you can quickly thumb through the book to review the basic information presented.
Texas Stonehenge is what Clay DiMeno calls this bunker/tornado shelter/man cave that he made with earthbags and a lot of creative ingenuity. 
Most people would not realize that this roundhouse was actually made from earthbags, because of Clay’s faux stone rendering. This is similar to a root cellar that he made and we featured earlier.
During one of the early morning circles Sunray Kelley pointed up the hill to a group of trees and explained that he would be building a tree house there and that people were welcome to join him in the project. It didn’t take him long to attract a group of helpers willing to go around scrounging structural elements for this.
Sunray is a well known character around previous colloquia and a famous artist/builder in his own right. He grew up in the woods of Washington State and still resides on the family property, where he gleans material for most of the building that he has done there. I have never seen him wear shoes.
“Reciprocal frame roofs are highly regarded in the natural building community though there is a limited amount of information about them on the internet. Resources that we’ve found helpful are listed at the bottom of this post. There is evidence of similar structures dating back to antiquated castles of Japan and Eskimo huts, though I have yet to find images of these.