one word: permaculture
Probably not applicable to individual residences any time soon, but hybrid solar lighting looks interesting.
Thanks for that, really interesting.
Said Mr. Wolf.
Said Mr. Wolf.[/quote]
And what’s the chance of it just going up in smoke? Haystacks are notorious for catching fire when the hey gets wet.
Sure, I guess if the house is built like a Haystack, which strawhouses these days are not.
“Holy shit, you’re not building that house out of WOOD are you? Don’t you see what we use to start the BBQ?”
The straw becomes the wall insulation, more or less, meaning that it’s often not exposed on the inside or the outside.
An interesting straw home website that I found awhile ago. Some details about the building process and photos. And, it’s for sale now.
[quote]Fox wrote:
And what’s the chance of it just going up in smoke? Haystacks are notorious for catching fire when the hey gets wet.
Sure, I guess if the house is built like a Haystack, which strawhouses these days are not.
[/quote]
A single bale, if it was baled damp, can spontaneously catch fire. It doesn’t need to be in a stack though that would help. The nature of stacking hay to insulate a wall in bales that cannot air (to cool) would allow for a fire to start. It would be interesting to see if it had ever occurred. All baled hay rises and falls in temperature because the hay has a natural water content. I’m sure the person who makes the houses is aware of this problem so I am being facious, of course, but it would still be a concern.
Good point about the spontaneous combustion. Had experience with that many years ago involving a hay barn. A webpage that briefly explains it:
omafra.gov.on.ca/english/liv … yfires.htm
While there are a lot of straw bale construction websites now, I just found an excellent one from the U.S. Department of Energy. They sponsored and carefully documented a prototype project on a Navajo reservation. Info on techniques, costs, FAQs (with the answer on fire risk), etc.:
eere.energy.gov/buildings/in … wbale.html
all of these are good ideas for people with capital, and/or a banker.
one can still own an existing home, or rent an place and still be resource conscious/self-sustainable.
it comes down to everyday decisions many take for granted. think about every purchase you make. what is the real cost of this item? that is, what did it take to grow it, process it, manufacture it, package it, ship it, market it, etc. each of these has an impact. to live with the rrr/c mentality and really take it to heart can help a lot. by rrr/c i mean the good old “reduce, reuse, recycle/compost”.
most people who are scraping by in this world are already doing this everyday.
it’s the people who want to accumulate material goods at any cost who are not living sustainably.
if you can’t afford a home off the grid, with a big enough yard for a garden and root cellar and composting toilets, and solar panels, etc., you can still do your part to get out of the cycle of consumption that is raping the resources of the planet and driving corporations to find new things to sell to us.
make sound decisions every single day with every single thing you buy.
bring your own mug to get coffee
buy food in bulk in your own containers
use cloth towels instead of paper towels
buy used clothing, pots, pans, dishes, furniture, cars, etc
turn the water heater down, and wrap it to insulate
keep the thermostat down/keep the ac a bit warmer
turn the water off while you brush your teeth instead of leaving it running the whole time
wash your clothes in cold water; hot water does not get clothes any cleaner than cold
buy biodegradable soaps, detergents
buy toothpaste, deodorant, lotions, etc that are plant based
buy things only in recyclable or reusable packaging
compost your kitchen/yard waste into valuble fertilizer
rake your leaves around your tree and mulch them
seal off drafts in your home with caulk or tape or insulation
avoid to-go packaging from delis/restaurants
avoid plastic one-time use cups/utensiles/plates/bowls
unplug the coffee-maker/vcr/tv/laptop or any other device that still sucks power while not in use-esp. those with led clocks
buy organic-pay the extra money to support farmers that practice sustainable agriculture
use a rake-not a power blower
use a push mower-not a gas mower
avoid electric can openers/tooth brushes/hair dryers
line dry your laundry instead of using an electric dryer
replace your incandescent light bulbs with compact flourescents
these are just things i do, i’m sure there are many more ideas…
jm
I remember a group in California that promoted living in yurts…
Since I love disaster scenarios (my favorite involves oil tankers not arriving anymore, but feel free to substitute plague or ice age if you like), I am attracted to the idea of preparing for various extreme contingencies. The ultimate would be to possess (a) water, food, and weapons in preparation for the immediate aftermath, and (b) arable, defensible land and related supplies (water buffalo? shoe repair kits, medicines?) for the long-term. The ideal, I guess, would be a family or identity group of 50-100 people, who would gradually make contact with other survivors.
Unfortunately for permaculture and organic food fans, natural living would result in a substantially shorter lifespan.
Interesting article here:
Wired: Plug+Play Construction: Panels stuffed with wires and pipes, preassembled on a factory floor, make high tech green building a snap.
Thanks for the article. Very interesting.
While on vacation a couple of weeks ago, we went and stayed at an “EcoInn” which is a farmstay type of setup running completely off the grid.
I had a couple of hours to pick the brains of a very smart Eco design engineer who showed me all the details of their operation.
Of note is a small business they are now running that sells renewable energy products. One product I was sceptical about intially but quickly grew to appreciate is a Wind Turbine that uses the motor out of a certain model Washing machine, but rewired to give exceptional electricity generation. Hard to believe until I saw it.
Not the prettiest website but an interesting read. ecoinnovation.co.nz/index.php
Truant, thought you might enjoy this photo of a small yurt my bro built on his land on an island near Seattle.
As you can see, it’s not very big (those aren’t grownups in the photo, they’re 2 and 3 yrs old) – just big enough to house guests you don’t want in the main house (or who would rather not be in the main house), or to sit and talk with friends, or as a weekend/vacation house, or a study/studio, or to live in while building the main house. But it’s really well built, cozy and fits nicely in the surrounding environment. The interior is beautiful, with nice wood, a great feeling from sitting in a circle, a wooden bench all around with storage underneath and walls nicely angled for leaning back on, and a skylight in the center. And, if one is really into yurts, one can easily (ok, maybe not easily, but one can) build a yurt large enough to live in comfortably.
My bro apprenticed since childhood with Bill Copperthwaite, who is one of the world’s leading authorities on yurts, a 70 yr-old who has lived for decades on 500 acres in Maine, without phone or electricity, where he has built a dozen yurts when not helping others to build them around the world. Bill doesn’t use a computer or have a website, but here is a little info about him and his fantastic yurts.
shelterpub.com/_home_work/_c … coper.html
MT,
thanks for the nice pic and words about the yurt. Very nicely built alright.
Currently we have 12 acres of land covered in Trees & Scrub and the idea is to clear a spot to build a permanent home.
Just looking at your Bro’s yurt makes me think something like that would be ideal as temporary accomodation during the construction of the main home, and would serve very well as a guest house after that.
Very nice, Now you got me thinking…
My bro has 40 acres and they built driveway, brought in utilities, drilled well, built pumphouse, cleared house site, milled and dried lumber from that site (used for the interior), designed house (with help from an engineer), and built this house.
The picture doesn’t do it justice, showing just a little of the front, but I was there last month and it’s a great place with living room soaring two stories high, huge open rafters, windows all around looking out on the forest, great sunny breakfast room and nice, heated concrete floors. Even in cold, wet Seattle, the floors (which provide the only heat in the place) keep it very warm – warm enough to walk around barefoot comfortably despite the cold outside. And the concrete floors look surprisingly beautiful. They were painted with some substance that turns them a marbled, rusty brown color, like burnished leather, and don’t look like concrete at all.
The house is bigger than you can tell from the photo. It’s been 2 or 3 years now and there’s still trim to put up here and there, but it basically took about a year to build it (my bro, who has considerable construction experience, acted as general contractor and primary laborer and there’s lots of fine woodwork and quality details in it) under serious pressure from the bank to meet deadlines in order to receive loan moneys.
In addition to the yurt (which he built on his former property and transported to the present site by truck!), he built an outdoor sauna on the property. And of course there’s a huge garden and when I was there we planted lots of blueberry and raspberry bushes (lucky bastard). They also eat salmon he catches from the Puget Sound and various organic farm products from his friend’s farm next door.
Damn you MT! Just what I need to see while sitting here in my concrete box.
Technically, I would not call your brother’s round house a “yurt.” It does not have felt sides and is not designed to be regularly moved.
I know how you feel. My bro will send me emails occassionally, telling me how he just got back from paddling his handmade kayak in the Sound, from which he caught a couple of salmon and saw whales swimming by and eagles and osprey flying overhead, before coming home to smoke a doobie in the outdoor sauna with a couple friends, while deer walked past, before they headed into the house, showered up and had a great feast and now he’s sitting in their cozy home playing with their cat.
And I’ll ask myself what I’m doing in my tile-floored, cement box in this crowded, polluted city, riding taxis to and from and to and from and to and from my office. But, supposedly the plan is that I’m putting in the time now so I can goof off in the forest later. Plus, he’s missing out on all these interesting cultural experiences here. 
Depends on who’s doing the defining. Originally that’s what yurts were, but they’ve evolved. Are they no longer yurts? 
Very nice.
Actually, I travel to Vancouver regularly and usually get to Seattle once or twice a year…so I might have to check this place out.
After doing some preliminary research about hooking up utilities on our block (power and phone is to the gate only) it appears that there is significant cost associated with getting power to the building site. However, in some ways I am quite pleased as it further justifies why I’d like to set up a wind/solar/hydro generation system and I can use otherwise ‘dead’ money, for something decent.
As an example, ballpark figures indicate that running the grid cable and hookup will be circa 10k + where as a pretty basic wind/solar/hydro system is 15k-20k. I’d probably seriously consider over-engineering it slightly and spending 25k-30k or so as I intend to have a decent workshop onsite (but besides that, I have Mrs Truant’s blessing to go ‘off the grid’ as long as we can live a ‘normal’ life).
The intention is to build the workshop,install the power generation equipment, rainwater catchment tanks and waste water mini plant FIRST, and then build the main home over time using renewable energy generated onsite.
The power system will most likely use 48v DC generation and distribution, and invert up to 240v* AC using a pure sine wave inverter for the outlets in the house.
Hot water heating will most likely be Solar with gas boosting when(if) required.
Heating will be combination of Passive Solar due to house design (big windows on North* wall, nicely finished concrete floor to store heat), Solar heated water pumped aournd concrete floor, and efficient wood burner.
Sound crazy? I believe it’s quite doable.
*note: yes, that is correct.