Specifications: 256 sq. ft. 16’x16’ one room house plus 4’ wrap-around porch, Footprint: 24′x24′ Description: Do you dream of having a small place in the woods that can be built practically for free? The Forest House with its striking pyramid roof is made almost entirely of natural products that are readily available in tropical forests … Read more
Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (Cladium mariscus), rushes and heather, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. It is a very old roofing method and has been used in both tropical and temperate climates. Thatch is still … Read more
The ongoing economic recession is putting lots of people in difficult situations. For some, the situation may even seem hopeless. I’m writing this to remind everyone to never give up. Who knows for sure what’s in store in the future, but the main thing is to keep your head together and just keep on going. … Read more
This is a fourth installment on earthbag vaults. Previous posts have already covered most of the details. This blog post presents two more options – living roof and thatch roof. The thatched roof is the simplest and fastest. The living roof is much more difficult and not recommended as a first time project. The roof … Read more
This fine project is by Jesse Loving in Bullet Tree Falls, Belize. The content below is from his Picasa photo album. He has lots of great photos. Take a look. Or see the project page we created about it. In planning to build an earthbag house in Belize, Central America, I decided to first … Read more
We used pre-made panels of thatch to roof our roundhouse. Thatching is usually very slow and laborious, but we thatched our roundhouse in just one day and for only $100. That’s why I love thatch panels – they’re very inexpensive and all the tedious work has already been done. And they work great on round … Read more