“Design on the stone wing concept is being revived after a brief hiatus. My underground home project is growing to include a sunroom / atrium entryway that will give more exposure for PAHS efficiency, and the overall layout has changed drastically to accommodate a larger common area. Check out the attached rough sketch – more to come!”
DIY
Cast In-situ Adobe T-Bricks
The blog post the other day about cast in-situ adobe was quite popular and so let’s explore a variation of this method developed by Abe at Vela Creations.com. I consider Abe’s Tblocks a major contribution to the natural building movement – even good enough for a major magazine article. Keep reading to learn the details.
Tiny House Nation
Now there’s a show devoted just to tiny homes.
Barrel Oven Planning
“I’ve already written a bit about my enthusiasm for ensuring we have something other than a camp stove and an open fire to cook on during the build of our house. I’ve done that before for large groups of people and I’m not keen to repeat the experience over longer than a weekend. It also seems fairly obvious that the key to ensuring we have willing and happy helpers is to keep them well fed (the whole build will go smoother with full bellies). So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to spend quite a bit of time and effort ensuring this is taken care of – I consider it good project management. One of our strategies is a barrel oven.
Earthbag Rainwater Cistern
Here’s the rainwater cistern from dream to (almost) done! Built with earthbags and a custom liner.
Cast In-situ Adobe Construction
Typical adobe construction involves making adobe blocks by digging and mixing mud, filling molds with the mixture, drying the blocks in the sun, turning the blocks every so often, moving the blocks to cure under cover, and then moving them to the jobsite where they are often moved several more times in the course of constructing the wall. A typical New Mexico size brick is four inches thick, ten inches wide, and fourteen inches long (4x10x14). A brick this size will weigh about thirty pounds. Obviously building with adobes is a slow, labor intensive process.