Roofs

Green Magic Homes

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I stumbled upon an interesting approach to creating underground housing. The manufacturer of the system calls them Green Magic Homes. Basically the structures are composed of prefabricated sections of molded composite material that are connected together to create a variety of shapes. They are waterproof and will not rot, so they are quite durable. Once the sections are erected, which can happen very quickly, they can be coated on the outside with foam insulation (generally needed in most climates). The idea is to cover the whole house with earth to protect it and to take advantage of the thermal benefit of going underground. Unfortunately, the system can only support about 7 inches of soil, so if you want more than that it may be necessary to add additional reinforced concrete.

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Transforming an Airstream Trailer

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tour14Our 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.

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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.

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The Eco-Home Design Guide

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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.

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Texas Stonehenge

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Texas Stonehenge is what Clay DiMeno calls this bunker/tornado shelter/man cave that he made with earthbags and a lot of creative ingenuity. IMG_3053Most 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.

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Sunray Kelley’s Tree House

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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.

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