Eco Homes from the Earth: 7 Ways to DIY - WebEcoist Wouldn’t it be nice to own your own green dream home, made with recycled and natural materials and packed with custom features? Whether you’re an experienced builder or have never picked up a power tool in your life, you can build a natural eco-friendly home with user-friendly, low-cost materials like cob, cordwood, straw and the dirt and wood from your own land. These 7 natural building techniques produce beautiful homes with a small ecological footprint and tons of personality. Earthships and Hobbit Houses (images via dominicspics, ECOnscious, Earthship Biotecture) [youtube=L9jdIm7grCY] They seem to be a living part of the very earth itself, often with nothing but a façade and some windows to betray the presence of a home in the hillside. Earthships are among the most popular types of DIY eco homes around the world, utilizing discarded “junk” like stacks of earth-packed tires, bottles and cans to build custom homes in practically any shape imaginable. (images via: simondale.net) Cob
Natural homes built by inspirational people and their advice... Jon runs Pun Pun an organic farm, seed-saving operation, and sustainable living and learning centre. At Pun Pun they use ancient natural building techniques with readily available, local, natural materials with little embodied energy and salvaged materials to make homes, a practical and affordable alternative to resource intensive conventional building. Jon says, "I want to be equal to animals. The bird makes a nest in one or two days; the rat digs a hole in one night, but clever humans like us spend 30 years to have a house... that's wrong." and, "Before I thought that stupid people like me … cannot have a house… because people who are cleverer than me and get a job need to work for 30 years to have a house. But for me, who cannot finish university, how can I have a house.
The Story of Shellac Return to Painting and Decorating Library Index A special note from NH... You can't improve on perfection, and the following article proves it! In celebration of our 155th year manufacturing shellac, we have revised this booklet, which was first published in 1913 and reprinted seventeen times throughout the years. For information on using shellac, read Using Shellac To Obtain A Fine Wood Finish Shellac has an Ancient History Shellac, as the word is commonly used, refers to all forms of purified lac - a natural resin secreted by the tiny lac insect on certain trees, principally in India and Thailand. “Lac” is derived from the Sanskrit word “lakh” which means 100,000 and refers to the vast swarms of insect larvae that inundate lac trees during brood season. Not much is known regarding the very early history of shellac. Ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations used the dye extracted from lac for dyeing silk and leather and as a cosmetic rouge and a coloring for head ornaments. 1.
USGBC+ | Bio Building A natural history writer, Benyus has published multiple books about the ways in which plants and animals adapt to their habitats. These “ecosystem-first” field guides are intended to help people find nature-inspired solutions to challenges facing the green building industry and beyond. “That adaptation to place always has to do with these amazing technologies,” explains Benyus, citing examples that include UV-resistant animals living in high altitudes and thriving with thin air; and those living at the bottom of the ocean, withstanding enormous pressure. It is their ability not only to survive extreme conditions that fascinates her, but also their ability to enhance their environment—perhaps by making the soil more fertile or the water and/or air cleaner. Benyus describes the phenomena as “nature creating conditions conducive to life.” Noting these adaptive characteristics, Benyus wanted to know whether or not all organisms have such “technologies.”
Naturalny Dom Earthbag Building - THE MUD How to Build an Earthbag Round House My earthbag house took six weeks to build and cost about US$5000 to make. Nearly all that money went on labour, the roof rafters and my beautiful juniper floorboards. There was no power or running water on the land.I didn't even know what a joist was when I started this project, so if I can do it, anyone can. You don't need prior knowledge. Step 1 - Designing Your Earthbag Home First decide: is earthbag for you? Earthbag is PERFECT for:Hot, dry climatesEarthquake zonesRoundhouses Compare earthbag, cob and strawbale Advantages over cobCan withstand flash floods, as the bag structure and the barbed wire combined create a solid framework for the mud. Shape RoundEarthbag is IDEAL for roundhouses. KEEP IT SMALL. Step 2 - Foundations No one believed a gravel foundation system would work. Let me take you back to the beginning . . ." Step 3 - Walls 1. Step 4 - Windows and Doors My windows were a disaster from start to finish, which is why I didn't put up photos.
11 green building materials that are way better than concrete | Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building Concrete is a material that quite literally holds our cities together. From homes and apartment buildings to bridges, viaducts, and sidewalks, this ubiquitous gray material's importance to modern urban life is undeniable. But you might have heard that it also has a dirty secret: the production of commercial concrete materials releases tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere each year, contributing to the calamity that is climate change. Rather than relying on new research and technology, straw bale building hearkens back to the days when homes were built from natural, locally-occurring materials. As its name might indicate, grasscrete is a method of laying concrete flooring, walkways, sidewalks, and driveways in such a manner that there are open patterns allowing grass or other flora to grow. What’s more natural than the dirt under your feet? Plain old wood still retains many advantages over more industrial building materials like concrete or steel.
Being Somewhere - Low Impact Living New Booklet Now Available Wild by Design is a mini design toolkit to inspire creative solutions for people to live in harmony with nature It's been a while now since we left the hobbit house and we've finally found a piece of land which we can actually call our own. As part of the Lammas project we are now living on the site of Wales' first authorised 'low-impact' ecovillage. After being granted Planning Permission at the end of August 2009, we moved immediately onto the land. By December, it had reached the stage that we were able to evacuate our temporary tented shelter and move on in. We have also been working outwards across our 7 acre plot.
Earthbag.Ru Built-in Mass Heater | Natural Building Blog Mass heater fireplace built directly into the earthbag wall Earthbag house with mass heater fireplace at Earthbag.ru Would You Live On A Cliffside To Save Space On Our Planet? | TIMEWHEEL The “Casa Brutale” is the architectural concept of building a living space directly into a cliff side. From the people atOPA (Open Platform for Architecture), this amazing house design is going to make its debut late 2015 in Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese Islands. One of the main appeals of this style of home is that it is a space saver, utilizing space on the planet that serves no other purpose.
First Earth | Videos | Polish Because we believe that as many people as possible should have the option of seeing the FIRST EARTH film, regardless of their financial abilities, for a limited time only we are making beta versions of the 12 chapters of the film available over the internet for free! The DVD version of the film has high-quality video and audio and includes extras. The individual chapters of the film can also be watched separately from one another. It won't have the same effect as watching the whole film from start to finish, but as part of our vision to make the content as accessible as possible, the chapters can be viewed one at a time.