Earth coupled floors – high mass floors in contact with the soil below (slab on grade, tile, stone, CEB, earthen floors, salvaged brick) – are ideal for keeping homes cool in hot climates. They are not recommended for cold climates where underfloor insulation is best. Our earthbag roundhouse, which is in a hot climate, remains … Read more
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuoCf8X12Qs&w=420&h=315] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-VREBnm-W0&w=560&h=315] These screening machines are primarily for production earthbag builders and other natural builders who want to mechanize the building process for maximum efficiency. They are useful for screening soil for earthen plaster, earthen floors, straw/clay and, of course, soil for earthbags. One advantage is the ability to utilize soil from the … Read more
Wooden shipping pallets are typically available for free and are very practical for building homes, furniture and many other things. We’ve already explored several ways of building pallet walls: Post and Beam Pallet Wall, Earth Lodge Pallet Walls, Interior Pallet Walls, Straw Bale Pallet Walls. This new design sprang from the idea of creating wider … Read more
“The small city of Athens, Ohio is a hotbed of sustainable building practices. There are nearly two dozen strawbale houses, an earthship and many off the grid dwellings in the vicinity. We did not realize this until after we had moved here. When we decided to stay we spent a year intensively researching alternatives to … Read more
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1do9_g6PoY&w=560&h=315] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKAB3bhawz0&w=560&h=315] These homes are looking better and better. The second video shows the construction of 11 SafeT homes in a Haitian village that were built in just one week. In addition to the advantages mentioned in our previous blog post about these Grain Bin Homes, the homes are engineered, include screened soffit … Read more
From Woodweb.com: “What is heart pine? Heart pine is the actual heartwood of the tree. Since pine used to be quite large when it was logged some hundred years ago, the pine trees were able to grow large enough to develop heartwood. Now that is not the case, as pine trees do not grow as … Read more