DIY – Page 50 – Natural Building Blog

Top 10 Cottage Industry Products

June 3, 2022February 25, 2015 by Owen Geiger

Harvey Lacey’s block press turns recycled plastic trash into beautiful, durable and extremely strong homes.

We covered cottage industry appropriate technology in a previous blog post. The aim here is to identify the top 10 products for ease of construction, impact on community and potential profitability. These products obviously go way beyond just creating jobs and making a buck. The products featured here will have a big impact on local communities. Some are saving thousands of lives. Water filters, for example, help prevent disease. Treadal pumps have enabled hundreds of thousands of farmers to greatly increase crop production.

Buildbag — Earthbag in the Netherlands

June 3, 2022February 21, 2015 by Owen Geiger

Buildbag -- Building with Nature — Buildbag — Building with Nature

“The Buildbag Philosophy
According the United Nations it is estimated that approximately 1,6 billion people live in substandard housing and 100 million people are homeless globally, due to poverty, wars and natural disasters. Moreover, we have an ever-growing world population. This means we are not capable of solving this problem by conventional building; a fundamental breakthrough is needed.

Rocket Mass Heaters 4-DVD Set

June 3, 2022February 15, 2015 by Owen Geiger

“The annual cost of a rocket mass heater is less than a tenth of the annual cost of natural gas – and that’s if you buy the fuel instead of harvest it yourself. And a rocket mass heater emits less than a tenth of the greenhouse gasses. Many rocket mass heaters will heat a home with a tenth of the wood of what a conventional wood stove will use.

Stockade Style Walls

June 3, 2022February 11, 2015 by Owen Geiger

Most readers are probably familiar with old military forts in the wild west days of the US that were built with vertical wood poles set closely together. The same building method can be used for houses and other structures.

Adobe Vaults in Tamil Nadu, India

June 3, 2022February 8, 2015 by Owen Geiger

There’s no detailed information about these particular vaults, but they look great and I wanted to share this with readers. They look like leaning adobe vaults by the famous Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, author of Architecture for the Poor. This method uses thinner, medium sized adobe blocks mortared together with mud. The adobes are set into sloping arches that lean against an end wall..

Golden Bamboo Ceilings

June 3, 2022February 7, 2015 by Owen Geiger

Golden or yellow bamboo in the round makes a very attractive ceiling.

I posted a photo a while back about the new roofing tile on our earthbag roundhouse. The exterior looks great, and the roofing tile won’t take any maintenance for 20-30 years. But like I said in that blog post the ceiling is unfinished. The thatch roof that was on it before made a gorgeous ceiling, but the upkeep was too much since thatch here only lasts about three years. It occurred to me that bamboo would look really good on the ceiling. One option is golden or yellow bamboo as shown in these images.