One key to affordable natural building is to use low cost, locally available materials. Look especially for what others don’t want – things like ‘problem soils’, dredgings, ‘wastes’. This brick making video was the inspiration for this blog post. It explains how a company in the Philippines uses abundant, locally available materials to make brick. … Read more
The cost of energy keeps going up every year. This means the cost of producing and transporting goods keeps increasing. At some point there’s going to be a tipping point where modern building materials are not affordable. I don’t know when this will happen, but it could happen at any time since fossil fuels are … Read more
This just in from Kelly Hart: “Dr.Jenny Pickerill recently traveled around the world on a Winston Churchill Trust Travelling Fellowship on a quest for information and insights on how folks in England (where she teaches at the University of Leicester) might better address needs for sustainable housing. One of her stops was in the rural … Read more
It’s not difficult to customize stock house plans to match your style preferences. To get ideas it’s helpful and fun browsing good websites for pleasing design details: trim, colors, interesting uses of natural materials, window treatments, roof details and so on. Here are some of my favorite design sites that feature the beauty of natural … Read more
Here’s a response I made to a reader over on the Mother Earth News Blog who said “This type of building for people is not going to readily take off.” Owen: It’s all a matter of perspective, because over 1/3 (some estimate ½) of the houses in the world fall into this category! This includes … Read more
This post is quoted from the Rivers of Land website. Even though their site hasn’t been maintained for a long time, they do have some very good ideas to think about. I wish them the best. Maybe another group can accomplish something similar? Who are we? We are people who have always wanted to live … Read more