I really love the Internet. I just learned of another cool way to share ideas called Pinterest. It’s an “online pinboard” to “collect the things you love.” I stumbled onto Christina Atkins’ site and was happily surprised to see not only some of my projects, but also other interesting pics. I loved the whole collection. … Read more
Do you dream of ‘getting away from it all’ and living in a self-sustaining, off-grid home surrounded by nature? A number of my earthbag house plans would work well for this purpose. If you’re looking for a relatively low cost and easy to build Boulder House then take a look at my Arc House. Arc … Read more
My Earthbag Building Guide covers all the basics of building with bags. In addition to the basic techniques, here are a few more small suggestions that didn’t make it into the book. I say small, but little improvements like these can save a lot of work over the course of building a home. – Cover … Read more
“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
Kelly sent me the following article about government and big industry plans for achieving energy efficiency in buildings. One goal is to achieve zero net energy by 2030. While I agree with the need to slash energy consumption and the overall goal of zero energy buildings, I have almost no confidence these type of plans … 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