Today we’re experimenting with rice hull ash and road base. We’re using a small measuring device so we can get about 10% rice hull ash. This is what rice hull ash looks like. It’s hulls from rice that’s been burned. It looks like ash from a forest fire. It’s a natural pozzolan which can make … Read more
This just in from Kelly Hart: “Dr.Jenny Pickerill recently traveled around the world on a Winston Churchill Trust Travelling Fellowship on a quest for information and insights on how folks in England (where she teaches at the University of Leicester) might better address needs for sustainable housing. One of her stops was in the rural … Read more
I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Paul in Chiang Dao, a district north of Chiang Mai, Thailand. We’ve been discussing how to build an earthbag house with bags filled with rice hulls. Rice hulls are super cheap, fire resistant, superinsulating, and super lightweight and easy to work with. Rice hulls are the by-product of … Read more
Kelly Hart and I have been following the The Year of Mud cob house blog for about 2-3 years. Ziggy, the builder and author of the blog, learned the hard way that cob (actually, earth building in general) is not a good choice in cold climates. Kelly has been warning people for years at GreenHomeBuilding.com … Read more
The following text and video is from Daniel Geery’s article at OpEdNews. I can really relate to what this guy is saying about sustainable housing. Most of the technology was well known decades ago, as you can see in his video below. His house shows just how simple living off grid can be. “My family … Read more
The earthbag clinic and school buildings in Leogane have unfortunately experienced cost overruns. Obviously this is a very important topic, and doubly so when building in developing countries where budgets are very tight. One problem has been the unusually high cost of materials, which can be much higher than in the US. The main expense … Read more