Avoiding Gridlock in Your Home

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The typical gridlock image is of being stuck in your automobile in a traffic system that has bogged down because it cannot handle the volume of traffic. You feel helpless because you have to use the car, but it’s not getting you where you want to go. You are locked into a dysfunctional system.

I use the term “gridlock” in your home to refer to a similar situation: you are locked into using the electrical power grid because it seems you have no choice, and if you look at the big picture, the system is dysfunctional. Electricity provided by the grid, at least here in the southwest, comes primarily from coal. Burning our finite supplies of fossil fuel to produce energy, with the byproduct of considerable pollution–especially the carbon dioxide that is increasingly blamed for global warming–would have to be considered dysfunctional.

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Financing Our Earthbag House

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Getting the money together to build a house can be an enormous challenge. The possibilities include saving up enough money over time, paying for it with earnings while doing the construction, or borrowing from friends, family or a bank, and then paying back the debt over time. All of these options have their pros and cons. Saving money is a good way, but it means postponing the pleasure of living in your dream home, and it can take a long time to save enough money. Paying as you build with income can be a lengthy project because not only are you limited by available resources, but you must work while trying to oversee the building. Borrowing money is likely the fastest way to be able to move in, but then you are committed to a lengthy (and costly) payback period.

When we started to build our unusual earthbag/papercrete house in 1997, we planned to do so without incurring debt, hoping to pay for materials as we needed them. We were comfortable living in our bus conversion motorhome, so aside from the Property Owners Association deadlines, we were in no hurry to finish the building project. For the first year we managed to buy the materials we needed and our plan was intact.

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How to Design Your Dream Green Home

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Are you dreaming about that cozy, energy efficient, green home that suits your needs perfectly? Finding such a home can be next to impossible. Perhaps the best way to realize this dream is to design and build your home from scratch, so that it fits your preferences for location, aesthetics, principles, and budget. This article will guide you through some of your basic choices to help you design an ecologically sensitive abode. My experience of designing, building, and living in my own home has been extremely satisfying!

The very first consideration in good home design (as opposed to house design) is where to build. The location is paramount, not only because it must fit your needs for proximity to work, schools, and shopping, but also because it must provide space for privacy, gardens, solar access, and all those intangible qualities that create a sense of place. A green home is one that is built to last for a long time, so it might as well be built where it can become a homestead.

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13 Principles of Sustainable Architecture

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As “consumers” we are frequently confronted with life style decisions that can impact our environment. There are a few choices in this life that can make a big difference in what the quality of life will be for those who follow us. Going with the flow of our culture is hard to avoid, and unfortunately the flow is not in the right direction for evolving a sustainable future.

One of the most momentous choices that any of us will make is the kind of house we live in. I have come up with a list of thirteen principles of sustainable architecture that can guide you in your housing choices.

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