natural building

Tree Root Furniture

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Tree root table
Tree root table

More low cost furniture ideas for your sustainably built home. The least expensive, high quality furniture is typically made from free salvaged/recycled materials like pallets and barnwood, and free natural materials such as branches, twisted wood, stumps and tree roots that most logging companies leave behind. Tree root furniture is strikingly beautiful because its twisted, rustic shape is 100% natural and unique. You could pay hundreds of dollars or even way more for this incredible furniture at a boutique store downtown. Or you could put on your hiking boots and head for the forest to gather your own tree roots for free. Either way, you’ll end up with a one of a kind piece that could last for centuries. And unlike that pressed board crap, this stuff is super strong and doesn’t offgas formaldehyde.

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Super Low Cost Housing Message Going Global

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It’s been fun watching the web stats on our blog hit record highs every month (at least up until our new blog that doesn’t yet show this). I take the surge in readership as a sign we’re on the right track. Our message about building do-it-yourself, dirt cheap houses using locally available natural materials is resonating worldwide. A new admin feature on our WordPress blog shows what country visitors are from and the number of hits. Not surprisingly, many readers are from the US (highest number of visitors), Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. But it’s surprising to me to see so many visitors from South Korea, Romania, Russia, India, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Ukraine, New Zealand, France, Netherlands, Philippines, South Africa and on and on – almost every country in the world, in fact.

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Exterior Log Siding

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You can a short video about  this at www.youtube.com I’ve talked about wood siding on earthbag houses before. In that previous blog post, I talked about using slab wood and other low cost offcuts from sawmills, and cutting your own wood. Another option is buying factory made siding. There are lots of styles and options … Read more

Parallel Pole Roof

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Here’s another good way to build an inexpensive roof if you have access to wood poles from a forest. Like many of the ideas here on this blog, this design is for areas with few or no building codes. One way to get the wood is with a firewood permit from the forestry department/forest service. … Read more

Additional Passive Cooling Strategies for Hot Climates

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Windcatchers have been employed for thousands of years to cool buildings in hot climates. The windcatcher is able to chill indoor spaces in the middle of the day in a desert to frigid temperatures.
Windcatchers have been employed for thousands of years to cool buildings in hot climates. The windcatcher is able to chill indoor spaces in the middle of the day in a desert to frigid temperatures.

The following list includes dozens of low tech, low cost ways to cool buildings in hot climates passively without electricity or machinery, i.e., passive cooling or natural cooling. This list is in addition to the 11 or so simple passive cooling techniques that I talked about in my video the other day. Altogether there are over 50 practical methods for cooling your home sustainably.

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Saltillo Tile

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“Saltillo tile is a type of terra-cotta tile that originates in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico. Saltillo-type tiles are now manufactured at many places in Mexico, and high-fire “Saltillo look” tiles, many from Italy, compete with the terra-cotta originals. Saltillo tile vary in colour and shape, but the majority range from in varying hues of reds, oranges … Read more