We’ve profiled lots of Pinterest sites because they have so many good photos. Here’s a Pinterest page on earthbags. Most photos are from our sites (naturally, since we have thousands of pages of content now). But I found some new photos as well such as the earthbag rootcellar at Ecovillage Ithaca. (Starting out with a small project like this is a great way to learn earthbag building.)
We recently posted an announcement about the availability of this book, but since then I have had a chance to finish reading it, and have reviewed it below.
Chris Magwood’s Making Better Buildings is a comparative guide to sustainable construction for homeowners and contractors. It is also a masterpiece of research and experience folded into an encyclopedic reference book for anyone interested in sustainable approaches to our built environment. Clearly a labor of love and a commitment to improving our situation on Earth, this book will have enduring value.
To my knowledge, building science has never been approached with such an attitude of precise evaluation of all of the factors that affect the environmental impact of materials and building systems. Chris Magwood looks at both common, and not-so-common, ways of building to see how they stack up against each other, giving the reader the opportunity to compare every environmental and economic aspect. His criteria for this evaluation embrace environmental impacts, embodied energy, waste, energy efficiency, material costs, labor inputs, ease of construction for homeowners, sourcing/availability, durability, code compliance, indoor air quality, and future development. The environmental impacts include harvesting the material, manufacturing, transportation, and installation. Simple bar graphs indicate at a glance just how “green” each material or system might be.
“One of the greatest promises of the high-tech future, whether made explicitly or implicitly through shiny clean concept sketches, is that we will have efficient energy that doesn’t churn pollutants into the air and onto the streets.
I have been traveling in a little RV, visiting various places in New Mexico where I haven’t been for about a decade. Today I went back to a little community near Columbus and the Mexican border where I once had spent quite a bit of time when I was making a documentary video called A Sampler of Alternative Homes. One of the Homes I profiled in that film was Ted Specker’s abode, one of the more unusual places of all.
Ted died a few years ago and his domain has been abandoned since then. I was curious how his diggings have survived. Since I had been there Ted had done quite a bit more building, so there were new forms to behold. Everything was showing some of the ravages of time, but all of it was still interesting, as you can see by this series of photos.
“A guided tour to Auroville and Pondicherry. Video shows accommodations available and pricing, as well as a glimpse of the Auroville experience.”
(Video repeats near the end, otherwise very well done.)
“We’re designing an ultra-low-cost toilet around removable containers that make it easy to collect and transport wastes safely from the community. We know from many conversations with residents of Shada that a good toilet is a symbol of cleanliness and modernity. Beyond being odorless, hygienic, and vector-free, our toilet needs to be elegant, modern, and pleasant to use. And it needs to be cheap. To that end, our toilet combines a 20-L bucket, a liquid container, and a western-style toilet seat into a sealed, portable, urine-diverting toilet.