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More Grain Bin Ideas

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Here is another idea for using parts of grain bins in your building project. Chris Steen, pictured above, found some inexpensive bin sections at a local scrap yard and realized that he could stand them up to form an interesting entry way for his earthbag home. It is fun to poke around scrap metal yards … Read more

Grain Bin Homes

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There are many clever ways to use steel grain bins as parts of homes, and the above picture shows just one possibility. It was designed by Mark Clipsham, who has specialized in developing grain bin concepts. You can see many other of his designs at www.dreamgreenhomes.com. The advantages to using these bins as modular components … Read more

Urgent Architecture

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urgentarchitectureUrgent Architecture:  40 Sustainable Housing Solutions for a Changing World by Bridgette Meinhold was published in 2013 by W.W. Norton.  In this well illustrated and colorful book, Ms. Meinhold makes a good case that with the devastation and hardship incumbent with natural disasters and climate change, population growth, dwindling resources, poverty and conflict, we need to take a fresh look at appropriate architecture for these times.

In examining existing or proposed housing solutions, she has divided the book into five general categories: rapid shelters, transitional shelters, affordable housing, prefab housing, and adaptable housing. Within each category she introduces several specific examples that she feels address the needs expressed.

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Land and Farm.com

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Land and Farm.com has over 140,000 properties for sale.
Land and Farm.com has over 140,000 properties for sale.

In your search for rural land with few or no building codes, you might want to try out Land and Farm.com. Their search page enables you to narrow the search by state, county, zip code, type of property (farm, undeveloped, orchard, ranch, etc.), property size, asking price, price per acre, irrigated or not irrigated and quite a few other criteria.

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Pallet Planters

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Pallet vegetable garden
Pallet vegetable garden

This blog post shows several ways of building planters with free wood shipping pallets. Be sure to use pallets stamped as non-toxic. This stamp denotes that the pallets have not been treated with pesticides. Our Natural Building Blog now has about a dozen pages of free information on almost every aspect of pallet building (floors, paneling, walls, furniture, etc.). Use the search engine on the right side of the page using ‘pallet’ as the search phrase.

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