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Eco Homes from the Earth: 7 Ways to DIY

Eco Homes from the Earth: 7 Ways to DIY
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. (images via: simondale.net) Among the most famous examples of a ‘hobbit house’ is “A Low Impact Woodland Home”, self-built in Wales for about 1000-1500 man-hours (over four months) and £3000. Cob (images via: ziggy fresh) [youtube=F0KDp00n4fs] Cordwood

How I built an electricity producing Solar Panel Several years ago I bought some remote property in Arizona. I am an astronomer and wanted a place to practice my hobby far away from the sky-wrecking light pollution found near cities of any real size. In my attempt to escape city slicker yuppies (you know the kind, the ones that like to blab loudly on their cell phone while they work on some business administration degree in a cyber cafe somewhere in Trendyland.) and their light pollution, I found a great piece of remote property. The problem is, it's so remote that there is no electric service available. That's not really a problem. No electricity equals no light pollution. I built a wind turbine to provide some power on the remote property. Here is a video of the solar panel set up and in use on my remote, off-grid property. Let me state up front that I probably won't be able to help you out much if you decide to build your own solar panel(s). So what is a solar panel anyway? After a while, I came to some conclusions: seller. Oops!

Natural Building Blog Build a 15,000 rpm Tesla Turbine using hard drive platters Here's a project that uses some of those dead hard drives you've got lying around. In the Tesla Turbine, air, steam, oil, or any other fluid is injected at the edge of a series of smooth parallel disks. The fluid spirals inwards and is exhausted through ventilation ports near the center of the disks. A regular blade turbine operates by transferring kinetic energy from the moving fluid to the turbine fan blades. To build a turbine like this, you need some dead hard drives, some stock material (aluminum, acrylic), a milling machine with a rotary table, and a lathe with a 4 jaw chuck. Wikipedia has a good review article ( as well as articles about Nikola Tesla the boundary layer effect ( and Reynolds number ( (which determines if the fluid flow is laminar or turbulent).

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. 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.

Laying out the Building Lines For Your Natural Building « Natural Living School Site Preparation After you select your site, and have a plan and design for your building, then you are ready for site preparation. The first thing to do is make sure you clear the site where the building will be located. This means removal of trees, shrubs, large rocks, stumps, or anything that may be in the way of the construction. If there is a lot of plant life, you may choose to transplant it, or if it’s just grasses you may just mow it down or weed whack it. If you are planning on having a living roof, you could use the top soil and the plants on your roof, as long as they don’t require lots of space for deep roots. Laying Out The Building Lines For the purpose of keeping things simple, lets look at two options. For a round structure; First, pound a stake deep in the ground where you want the center of your building to be. The trench for a round Sauna we worked on in Aurora Or. Then remove the top soil and set aside for future use. Batter Board Diagram for your Natural Building

Natural Building Techniques This program offers a wealth of information about construction details and other considerations. It covers adobe block construction, piled adobe (similar to cob), rammed earth, both load-bearing and post and beam strawbale, earthships, earth-sheltering, cordwood, thin-shelled concrete domes, papercrete, earthbags, hybrid structures, and recycling various containers for housing. $29.95 The books shown below are arranged according to when they were published, with the most recent ones at the top. If you click on one of the images you will be taken to a page at Amazon.com where you can find out more about the book. If you end up buying one of them, greenhomebuilding.com will receive a small commission that will help cover the cost of maintaining this website. This is a 2 bedroom, 1 story, 1725 sf (to the outside) house that is designed around the traditional hogan concept of Southwestern native Americans. Home Site Map STORE For Email contact go to About Us Custom Search

DIY Vertical Garden | How To Start | Gardening Tips ‘n Ideas A DIY Vertical Garden Example Ever since coming across Patrick Blanc’s vertical garden I’ve been interested to observe how this technology might transform the home gardening scene. I mean, it’s only a matter of time before we begin running out room for gardens to grow on a horizontal plane. For most home gardeners the concept isn’t a new one. The reason: Whereas all our other vertical gardening exploits centred around plants being grounded in the soil, the vertical garden has absolutely no dependency on the ground. But for most home gardeners, Patrick Blanc and his artworks are far beyond the comprehension and resources available to them. However, as we have already experienced with increasing gas prices our conservative views of the world may need to change. So, here’s a challenge for us all – myself included. A few helpful links to get your DIY Vertical Garden started The basics of a DIY Vertical Garden The frame is basically the support for the vertical garden. Conclusion

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