“An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases, public roads. Advocates of autonomous building describe advantages that include reduced environmental impacts, increased security, and lower costs … Read more
Every year we publish the most popular blog posts for the last 12 months. We’ll do that again in November on our 4th anniversary. Our goal here is to look at the most popular blog posts since we’ve started – the Best of the Bestest. Think of them as hidden gems unless you’ve read all … Read more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZBNgx9shY4&feature=related This Bobcat mixer bucket caught my eye on YouTube. This would come in real handy on large projects to speed construction. I’m posting it here to show how to mechanize projects such as the lightweight geopolymer earthbag system that I’ve been describing the last few days. Source: Aplec Group
I want to take the ‘boulder house’ concept one step further by combining boulders with living walls and living roofs. The end result would be au natural – a sustainable home in a natural state. I envision a home that looks almost exactly like boulders surrounded by plants. It’s hard to think of a more … Read more
The lightweight geopolymer earthbag method I described yesterday opens the door to building boulder houses that could last hundreds or even thousands of years. All sorts of other styles could also be built, but for some reason (maybe because rocks last almost forever) these boulder houses really capture my imagination. Worst case scenario is you … Read more
I’m proposing using a combination of ferrocement, earthbags and porous geopolymer to build durable, affordable housing. In a nutshell, earthbags filled with lightweight geopolymer cement are fastened to a rebar or bamboo frame and then plastered with geopolymer cement. This is distinctly different from heavy earthbag walls, and much different than regular thin shell ferrocement … Read more