Cordwood Sheds and Cabins Cordwood Sheds and Cabins also known as Stackwall, Stovewood, Firewood or Cordwood Masonry. cordwood shed Short lengths of debarked trees (cordwood) are laid with a mixture of mortar and insulating materials - such as sawdust or spray foam - in between the mortar. The longer the length of the logs, the better the insulation qualities. 12 inches to 18 inches is most common and wood species will also determine insulating value. cordwood shed Hobbit House with living roof by Rena Upitas, Ontario. renaupitis.com Cordwood Shed with a thatched roof. roofthatch.com cordwood shed Gail and Mark Dupar’s cordwood shed on Decatur Island in Washington’s San Juans. cordwood shed John Meilahn's cabin, Copper Harbor, Michigan. facebook.com cordwood shed Sojourn Cabin sojourningboston.blogspot.com cordwood shed Piet Hein Eek for Hans Liberg, pietheineek.nl Cordwood Pole Shed at Treehaven. daycreek.com Irish Cottage Shed in a garden show, 2002. daycreek.com Backside of above cabin. Cordwood masonary sauna.
Diamond light, brighter than the sun Imagine that the only thing limiting you is your imagination – that the physical means of achieving what you see in your mind’s eye is right in front of you. That, according to Professor Mark Hodson, is how it is for scientists at the Diamond synchrotron in Oxfordshire. With its curving walls, lined with walkways, pipes and colourful, clunky-looking machines and gadgets, it’s a sight that wouldn’t seem out of place in an early episode of ‘Doctor Who’. Diamond light, brighter than the sun From a birds-eye view, Diamond looks like a massive ring doughnut or a spaceship half a kilometre in circumference (roughly the size of five football pitches). As the name suggests, Diamond is a source of intensely bright light, which can be up to 10 billion times brighter than the sun. Researchers go to the synchrotron to use that brilliantly intense light in much the same way as they use visible light in a microscope or X-rays: to reveal things we can’t see.
Cozy House Created From Bookshelves As we all know, now that we are experiencing the era of the iPad and Kindle, traditional books are becoming less and less popular. As a matter of fact, even some elementary schools are replacing books with iPads. I have a friend who just got her packet for attending University in the fall, and it came complete with an iPad 2 and a list of e-books to order for her classes. People are handling this major transition in different ways. There are those who always chime in with, “Those e-books will never compare to real books.” Others accept the change a little easier by embracing and having fun with it. Some designers are handling the change by looking at it from a different perspective. Designer Nendo created this award-winning house in Japan a few years ago.
Comfort In Any Climate Warmth If you want heat, you admit the sun. The sun heats the mass, the mass stores the heat and the insulation won't let it escape. The more mass, the more storage capacity. When there is no sun, the heat stored in the mass radiates into the space, for heat travels to the cooler direction. Coolness If you want coolness, you admit the cooler earth temperature and block the sun. Insulation & Thermal Mass In recent years humans have recognized the fact that insulation can help keep temperature in a shelter. Good insulation has millions of tiny air spaces. Dense mass both collects and stores temperature like a jar holds marbles. The people made shelter by assembling pieces one at a time. We are simply adapting our needs to the already existing activities of the planet. Why pipe water long distances from a centralized community water system, or from an expensive well that needs significant electrical power, depletes aquifers and lowers the water table, when water fall from the sky?
At This Vending Machine, Swapping is the New Buying - Environment We're used to putting money in a vending machine and instantly receiving consumable goods—a bag of chips, a soda, or even a new pair of headphones—in return. But what if vending machines became a fresh way to reuse, recycle, and trade with people in your community? That's the vision of the Swap-O-Matic, a New York City-based vending machine project that wants to "shift culture away from an emphasis on unconscious consumption" by encouraging people to donate and receive used items for free. To use the Swap-O-Matic, you register with an email address using the machine's touchscreen interface. New traders start out with three swapping "credits." Donating an item earns additional credits, which can be redeemed for anything else in the machine. Lina Fenequito, the primary creator and designer of the Swap-O-Matic, has long been an advocate of sustainable living and responsible consumption of resources. Via Springwise Photo courtesy of Swap-O-Matic
Urban Nomad We've done a bit of microhousing (and micro-driving) coverage of late, and here's some more. Inspired by the Urban Nomad movement of the 1960s and 1970s (which focused on diminutive, movable dwellings in cities), a Glasgow School of Art design student named Alec Farmer has built a tiny home in which he'll live for the next year. Using the instructions written by [Ken] Isaacs in 'How To Build Your Own Living Structures', I have created a replica of this 50 year old design, and plan to live in it, in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland, for one year. In doing so I hope to gain more insight into Isaacs design, and also into the movement as a whole. I move in at the start of September 2010. Farmer describes the work of Isaacs as "smaller than architecture but bigger than furniture," and that sounds about right.
Building A Roundhouse With Woodhenge And Cobwood Please Share This Page: Google + stumbleupon tumblr reddit 3 Building A Roundhouse With Woodhenge And CobwoodPhoto – Here you’ll find a three minute time-lapse video by ToneWrench of the whole process of building a small roundhouse. The windows have been reclaimed and the structure of the roundhouse is built almost entirely from sustainable materials, namely timber and cob (which is a traditional wall plaster/ render made of three parts sand, one clay, one chopped straw or hay). The walls of the house are made using cordwood (also known as Stackwall, Stovewood, Firewood or Cordwood Masonry) – this means horizontal log slices of tree trunks and branches that are used “in the round” – this produces a good surface for the cob to stick to, giving a thick wall for good insulation and an attractive look to the house. The roof is turfed, which helps to insulate the house as well as giving nature a place to grow. Okay, here is the video:
Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture Last Year Techdirt wrote about the case of the huge collection of historic jazz recordings that had been acquired by the US National Jazz Museum. The central problem is that even if the recordings can be digitized before they deteriorate, very few people will hear them because of their complicated copyright status. But as this eye-opening article from Benj Edwards explains, bad as that situation is, it's even worse for the entire category of software creations. For example, consider the earlier generation of floppy-based programs: Floppy disks, which were once used as the medium du jour for personal computers, have a decidedly finite lifespan: estimates for the data retention abilities of a floppy range anywhere from one year to 30 years under optimal conditions. That's great, apart from one slight problem: under today's copyright laws, all these wonderful backups that will probably ensure the programs' survival while civilization itself is still around, are illegal.
Historic Shepherds Huts A quick note to say that the excellent site dedicated to shepherds' huts - Historic Shepherds Hut ("a web based archive dedicated to record survivors and the forgotten part they once played in our country's rich agricultural past") - is heading to a new location at www.shepherdhuts.co.uk because of hosting problems. They're still in the process of moving everything across but it's worth changing your bookmarks now as they are also planning to expand the site to deal with lots of new huts which have come their way as a result of recent media coverage. Incidentally, if you have a shepherd's hut for sale, please do contact Shedworking - there were many, many disappointed readers who were very interested in the last one we advertised (including the editor of a wellknown national magazine) that I'm sure you'd find a buyer quickly. Our Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden officespecialists.Click here for more details.
Bear Hermitage Nestled in a glade of scrub oak on the site of a former moon lodge, the Bear Hermitage, a straw bale vault, designed and built by Women Build Houses under the loving guidance of Shay Salomon, offers womb-like seclusion. A tiny hermitage at the Lama Foundation in San Cristobal, New Mexico. MIT creates solar cell from grass clippings A researcher at MIT, Andreas Mershin, has created solar panels from agricultural waste such as cut grass and dead leaves. In a few years, Mershin says it’ll be possible to stir some grass clippings into a bag of cheap chemicals, paint the mixture on your roof, and immediately start producing electricity. If you remember high school biology classes, you will hopefully remember a process called photosynthesis, whereby plants turn sunlight into energy. Mershin has found a process which extracts the photosynthesizing molecules, called photosystem I, from plant matter. Photosystem I contains chlorophyll, the protein that actually converts photons into a flow of electrons. These molecules are then stabilized and spread on a glass substrate that’s covered in a forest of zinc oxide nanowires and titanium dioxide “sponges.” So far so good — now time for the reality check. Read more at MIT