“Slightly before my 60th birthday I realised I had made no plans for my old age, and did not have any money put aside for it either. Thailand was my home, but no government pensions available, so what could I do that I would enjoy, which would also bring in a bit of money to live by. I decided to buy some land with my last few pennies, and go to the UK for a few years and earn some money, and save every penny I could. I bought a fantastic piece of land in Chiang Dao, northern Thailand, and spent several years in the UK saving like mad.
low cost
Housing Reclaimed – Sustainable Homes for Next to Nothing
“As editor of the Topeka-based magazine Natural, Home & Garden, Jessica Kellner had plenty of stories of families and organizations from across the country who had built their homes from materials that were otherwise destined for the landfill.
A Place of My Own
“A room of one’s own: is there anybody who hasn’t at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn’t turned those soft words over until they’d assumed a habitable shape?
Sawdust Stoves
Handmade barrel stove provides 8 hours of heating and cooking with one load of sawdust — smokeless and unattended. All gases go up the chimney. He heats over 1000 ft2 of uninsulated building. The basic idea can be scaled up to industrial sized heaters and dryers or scaled down for cooking and camping. Other materials such as rice hulls can be used instead of sawdust.
A Cleverly Converted Barn
“Interior designer Glenda Martin worked on the offices of some of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies and, later, on the luxurious homes of the people who founded them. But what she considered her best work was her smallest -a 650-square-foot barn-turned-house that she designed for herself in Sonoma County.
SuperAdobe (Earthbags-Earthsleeves)
Permaculture is an ecological way of thinking and designing human interactions for resilient, sustainable living.