Someday I will build a house

More mobile home rehab that looks doable

2007-10-25T18:06:00.000-07:00

The RFID chip stuff is freaky though.

Simple instructions for a simple house

2007-08-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

Mark Stephen Chenail has simple down to earth instructions for building a basic house. He makes it sound very doable. Even has a simple way of making a barn.

More on concrete counter tops

2007-08-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

A while ago I commented on how much I like concrete countertops and sinks. I just came across this Instructables where a guy described how he made his countertops.

I am afraid I am not so meticulous as this guy and would not go to so much bother. I don't see the necessity for them to be shiny. And I would build the molds in place, not make them somewhere else and lug them in to the kitchen. This guy, Buddy Rhodes, has built a business with concrete countertops, sinks, fireplaces, etc. and does have some beautiful work. These people cater to the do-it-yourselfer using Buddy Rhodes' molds and materials.

Another house from throwaways

2007-07-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

Here are two grandmothers building a house from an old trailer and papercrete on a sloping lot. I've seen trailers and modular houses on craigslist for free, so you would only have the cost of hauling it to your site. But then you would have the basic plumbing and electricity already installed. That's not a bad idea. You could live in it while you're building the outer shell. Just cover up that awful tinny trailer look. I think I would still want to do slipform stone walls and maybe build the masonry fireplace into the hill.

Building a house from throwaways.

2007-06-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

Here's an idea for building a cheap house: Use what others are throwing away. This woman is using closed cell foam. It has to be disposed of, because of an envirmonmental law passed in the Ozarks. She is using them as load bearing supports. It looks good, but one doesn't ususally think of foam as being that strong.

Carrying this idea along, what they mostly try to give away on Craigslist is concrete chunks, mattresses and old appliances. I could see using concrete chunks like rocks in a slipform concrete wall. Maybe you could build a post and beam house filling in the sides with mattresses. Appliances, well maybe you could have a wall of microwaves. A refrigerator, washer/dryer/dishwasher wall would be quite wide, but at least they would all be more or less the same thickness. You could even have the doors open to the inside and have built in storage. It goes without saying that you would have to build this somewhere where there are no inspectors. I hear rural Vermont is like that.

More about composting toilets

2007-05-26T09:39:00.001-07:00

Further to my post on composting toilets, Florida Solar Cracker House has an interesting description of the actual use of a Clivus Multrum "Multrum I" toilet. They had problems at first, but after two years the toilet was working perfectly.

Straw bale house

2007-03-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

I hadn't done a post on straw bale houses, because they don't appeal to me that much. Unless I lived next to a farm where they baled straw, the expense of hawling them would not be worth it. The bale walls take up a lot of space, and moisture could be a problem unless you lived in a dry climate. This site, Balewatch, has everything imaginable about straw bale houses. Some nice house plans. Be sure and check out the Q and A.

Would you, could you on a boat?

2007-03-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

Living on a boat on a quiet inland lake has a certain appeal. Here's a simple plan for making a classic shantyboat. Here's the diary of a guy that really built one, so it can be done. Some more free plans. I can count the times I've been on a boat on the fingers of one hand, so I'm a landlubber if there ever was one. Never would consider living on a boat on an ocean coast. I was in Miami for Hurricane Andrew, and I wouldn't want to worry about a hurricane ruining everything even if I could get insurance. Seattle houseboats are talked about in this article. I guess they don't have hurricanes, but it sounds like the same as living in the city, which I would not like at all. Cool Tools has houseboats covered too. Here's a forum with discussions about living on a houseboat.

I would need to have space for garden containers, maybe on the roof, because I would always want to have a garden unless I could use some space on land near the mooring. The floating Spiral Island really caught my fancy, because of the way they integrated the plants onto the platform of floating pop bottles. But I want something that lasts better than the pop bottles, so if I ever come across some free or almost free plastic drums and have access to a lake I would try it.

Thanks to Redneck Structures for the picture. They give away old motorhomes don't they?

Slipform stone construction

2007-02-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting narrative of a guy building a slipform house practically all by himself. This is still my favorite form of self-building although it looks like so much work. He also plans to build a masonry stove. That's what I want too.

I would like to build a large probably brick masonry stove in the center and use it also to be the central support of the roof. This is most likely against building codes, but the brick never gets warmer than you can touch, and you would keep the wood beams at least a couple of feet from the actual chimney.

This website also has an interesting article about building if you don't have much money.

Another round house in Wales

2007-01-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

I generally don't like round houses, but this is another Welsh home that is especially cozy. And the building method I could really relate to:

"Lift logs, prop up, nail together and continue until no longer wobbly."

Straw bale was used to infill between the log posts. I wonder how hard it would be to use slipformed stone instead.

They did most of the building while living in a tent with a baby and a toddler. Now that's the real thing.

Homeless housing-I could do that

2006-12-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

I've been kind of losing the dream lately. But I definitely could do this. This group makes micro houses for the homeless. It costs less than $1000, probably a lot less if you scrounged up materials (It's amazing what they throw away at construction sites.) These guys even tell you how to make a stove out of metal buckets. The pictures are not very instructive, but they have lists of materials that they use.

Keep the heat

2006-08-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

All this heat we are experiencing this summer reminds me of something I've always wondered about. Why can't we save the summer heat for when it's cold in the winter. It seems so elementary. But apparently it's quite difficult, because it's being done in very few places.

Don Stephens calls it Annualized Geo-Solar Design and has actually designed houses where summer heat is stored under the house in an earth mass. The earth mass needs to be above the water table and insulated or kept dry some distance out from the house.

Another way to store summer heat is in saline solar ponds. Here's another explanation (scroll to the bottom of the page). And Mother Earth News had an article about it. Now this technology is mostly being used to generate electricity, but on a smaller scale it could provide heat for a house. Of course you would need some land for the pond and you would have to be next to the ocean or in a place that has a lot of salt like Utah.

How about storing hot water in insulated tanks in the basement. The water is heated by reflecting the sun down fiber optic cable. Well, this is just a theory. Maybe someone should try it.

Update: Thinking about these methods, I realized once the water was circulating, it would lose the heat in a matter of days or less, so you would have to have a separate tank or pond for each week or couple of days. I haven't seen this aspect discussed anywhere.

Missile Silo Houses

2006-07-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

Further to my post on missile silo homes, here's a real estate agent that specializes in missile properties and also underground communication centers. The latter are more interesting to me, because the holes in the ground mostly filled with water give me the creeps. One only costs $67,000. I think they could have a few more pictures of the properties for sale on the site.

747 House

2006-07-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

How's this for building material, a scrapped 747 jumbo jet. In case you missed this like I did in April, according to the article, a scrapped 747 costs about $100,000. The woman talked about in the article is building a multi-million dollar home with hers, but I imagine something more modest would be possible. I wonder if all the seats are still in there. You could build a great home theater room.

This article about the same house says the 747 cost $40,000. That starts to sound feasible. Just a big problem moving it to the construction site.

Wall-framing with 2x6's

2006-07-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

Your tax dollars at work. Here is some info on cost saving building by using 2x6's instead of 2x4's. They use a lot of specialized vocabulary which I don't understand like "drywall return" and "scabbed", but if you are ready to build your house it is worth a read.

Washer-Dryers

2006-06-29T16:19:00.000-07:00

Another I don't understand why everyone doesn't have one. A machine that washes AND dries clothes. If you have an automatic washer and an automatic dryer, why not go totally automatic and have it dry clothes too. It costs about the same as a washer and dryer together.

If you want to really save water there is the wringer washer. But then laundry is a whole-day affair. Start with the cleanest and end with the dirtiest using the same water. My mother always had a wringer washer when I was growing up. I wonder when water will become so scarce that we will be back to wringer washers. Right now I think about the only place you can buy them is at Lehman's. They have one made in Saudi Arabia. I guess even with all that oil, water is still at a premium in the desert.

Composting toilets have come a long way.

2006-06-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

Forget about water saving toilets. I think no water or composting toilets are the best way to handle human waste. All that manure needs to get back to the earth. There are amazing systems that actually do this. The cost depends on how much work you want to put into it. At the low end is Jenkins' bucket system as described in his book Humanure (available free online). But I could see that taking out buckets of the stuff would get old fast. And it reminds of the untouchables caste, whose job was (and still is in some parts of India) to take out buckets of feces from upper caste homes.

I like the Envirolet. They have normal looking toilets that have a duct that takes the stuff down to a floor below where the composting takes place. The cost is quite high, but then if you compare it to installing a septic tank, it is reasonable. Only problem is getting the building inspector to accept your not putting a septic tank in. There are lots of composting toilets to choose from for example Sun-mar, Biolet, Phoenix, and I believe the Clivus Multrum has been around for a long time.

And then you have to have a system for handling grey water. That will be in another post.

Build a cabin for less than $4000

2006-05-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

A good article from Mother Earth News on building a cabin with boards. The guy does a pretty good job of describing the process. There are just a few things I don't understand. Probably if I read it over and over again I would get it. The $4000 doesn't include plumbing, fixtures or electrical stuff. I guess you live by candle light or use solar electricity.

These guys say you can build a nice log home for under $10,000. I would check them out before I bought a log cabin kit.

Another housebuilding blog

2006-05-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting blog about building a house. He says he is the one-man crew for his contractor, so I guess it's a self-build.

Las Gaviotas - Colombian town of the future

2006-04-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting place. An engineer dedicated his life to making a barren, unlivable environment into an oasis, both literally and figuratively. Wind and sun was used to provide energy to a village in the Colombian llanos and then they brought in Caribbean pinetrees which made the soil attractive to rain forest plants turning the area back into the rain forest it was thousands of years ago.

The most significant invention is a simple hand pump capable of tapping aquifers six times deeper than conventional models, but requiring so little effort that children can operate it. In normal pumps a heavy piston must be raised and lowered inside a pipe. Gaviotas engineers realized they could do the reverse; leave the piston stationary and lift an outer sleeve of lightweight, inexpensive PVC tubing instead.

The word llanos translates to plains, but the Colombian llanos are nothing like the fertile plains of the U.S. Midwest. Roads are barely there in the dry season and completely impassable in the rainy season. And in Colombia anytime you travel outside the cities and larger towns, you also travel back one or two centuries in time. Las Gaviotas just leaped over the petroleum fueled era.

For 6 months I lived in Villavicencio, which is where the llanos begin. It was 1975, but I knew nothing about Las Gaviotas, which was started in 1971. We lived in the second floor of a house. It had a nice, big patio where I washed clothes in the lavadero (a concrete water container with a washboard).

The strangest part of the house was the decorative brick walls. It had holes so that a breeze could come through, but also the mosquitoes could come in. We had netting for the baby's bed, but not for ours. We sprayed insecticide every night around the bedroom, a very common practice in tropical areas. Nothing worse than hearing the whine of a mosquito when you are trying to sleep. There was no hot water, the norm for tropical areas, in Colombia at least. The water came off the mountain, so it was very cold. I could not take such cold showers, and there was no tub, so it was sponge baths for me and the baby. Solar water heating would have been so simple to install. I wonder if people are using solar now.

Slipforms on steroids, ICF's (Insulated Concrete Forms)

2006-03-22T12:03:00.000-08:00

OK, technically these are just forms not slipforms. But basically it's the same idea. You build the forms like legos, and then you fill them with concrete. ICF, insulated or insulating concrete forms. I haven't been able to find anywhere if you can fill the forms with papercrete or rocks and cement or rammed earth, which would be more the self-builder way. For sure you could not fill with cob, as it needs to breathe. I think the self-builder would want to go one row at a time, so even though the cost is comparable to a wood-frame house for a self-builder these would come out costing a lot, as you would have to buy them all at once. Unless you lived near a plant and hauled them yourself and maybe even picked up seconds.

Also all that concrete thermal mass is lost, because the insulation is on both sides of the concrete. They should make the inside panel of something that is permeable like wood not insulating material so that the concrete mass could help to store heat in the home modulating the temperature.

It seems to me the best system is Durisol, which is made from a cement-bonded wood fiber material with an insulating material inserted into the exterior side of the block. Here's a good article from Buildersnews. Lots of info here at the ICF Builders Network. Also the Green home builder has some info and links.

Round house in Wales

2006-03-10T13:18:00.000-08:00

A little bit primitive for me--a truly low impact house, but they built it for about $7000. Interesting how they used a pond liner to make the roof waterproof. And they are growing grapes on the roof. Who knows, maybe this is the way we (you) all will be living in 50 years.

I could do this - Tinkertoys for grown ups

2006-03-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

This Socket Systems looks very doable for a little house. I always loved playing with tinkertoys when I was a kid. This way you have room for a little loft, room you wouldn't have if you used trusses for the roof. This would be a good way to build a green house too.

How to build a shed (small house)

2006-02-23T21:29:00.000-08:00

This is a great site about basic house building. I suppose the plans aren't up to code for building a habitable dwelling, but if that doesn't bother you they are nice simple plans. And there is a free construction how to booklet. I think it would be a good idea to build a small shed before starting a house. It's a good way to learn construction terms and basics.

Maybe I'll pleach my house

2006-02-10T21:39:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, my friends and I used to play house in the woods. We would make our homes out of an area surrounded by trees, the closer together the better. Sometimes we found nice green moss for carpet. One warm early spring day before the leaves came out, we found a great place with vines that made real nice walls. Too bad the vines turned out to be poison ivy.

These MIT guys got a lot of press recently for his idea of building a house from growing trees. This process of training trees to grow together with other trees is called pleaching and would be fun to experiment with, although at my age time is of the essence. Maybe it would work with bamboo; they mature in five years. Here's an interesting article about how in medieval times they built huts into pleached trees to keep them off of frequently flooded ground.

P.J. Wilkin has quite a thorough article on how to go about Growing Home complete with suggested planting plans. And then of course you could grow your own furniture while you're at it like Arborsmith Studios.

House plans for owner builders

2006-01-30T21:45:00.000-08:00

Country plans has some nice simple plans for owner-builders. They have an active forum. Check out the articles, especially An Owner Built Home & Thought experiments; it's about a 60 year old guy that built his own house and how it's all in your head. Maybe I can do this when I'm 70. That leaves me 12 years to get situated.

This is the Victoria's Cottage, and I like the lofts with overlooks. I would want to have second floor decks too.

More cob houses

2006-01-26T17:28:00.000-08:00

Further to my post on cob houses, here are a lot of recent pictures of cob houses.

Missile Silo Home

2006-01-24T14:16:00.000-08:00

This is a little creepy to me. Like they really did build hundreds of silos with missiles in them? They seem kind of mythical unless you actually see one. Normally you couldn't get within 50 miles of these things. I saw this on HGTV, but I thought all the missile silos were out in North or South Dakota. Didn't know they were in New York.

Anyway, I suppose this is one way to take advantage of a government boondoggle. 18 million each and they only used them to store missiles for a few years.

Cave house

2006-01-20T21:12:00.000-08:00

I could live in a cave. They look cozy. I don't need natural light in my bedroom. And I'm always reminded of "Tom Sawyer". I would want to have a secret passageway out the back that the bad guys like Injun Joe don't know about. Or keep the whole place secret like this guy.

I never realized so many people live in caves all around the world. A lot in China and in Spain and France and Turkey. Most of these are not technically caves, because they are man-made. Apparently there are many places where the rock is soft like sandstone or limestone and people have just dug into the sides of cliffs. Less common are natural caves where people just set up housekeeping or fashion a fabulous living space.

I would like to try it out sometime staying in a cave on vacation in Spain. Here you can buy one for 90,000 euros. Notice how the bedrooms are way in the back. It must be very quiet.

Solar water heater --a must

2006-01-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

I've lived a couple places without hot water (well, one place they only turned it on Sundays), so I don't take it for granted. Never could take a cold shower, even in hot weather.

It's almost criminal to build a new house without a solar water heater. Everywhere the sun shines enough to heat water (except here in Oregon for the past month). The technology is proven and not very expensive.

There are plenty of places to read up on it, just google solar water heater. Build it Solar is a good one; they have some free pdf HomePower articles. Grab them while you can.

In the hotter climates where it doesn't freeze, solar water heating is very simple. Where you have freezing temperatures, you will either have to drain the water from the collector when temperatures approach freezing (this can be done automatically) or use a type of heat exchange system, where anti-freeze is circulated but kept separate from the household water.

Update: Another good site for Solar Water heating and other solar info.

Personal Note

2006-01-09T11:48:00.000-08:00

For any regular visitors, sorry for the lack of posts lately. Last month my mother passed away and my daughter got a divorce. Although my mother was 91, her passing was sudden, as she had been in quite good health up until a week before her death.

I am now chief babysitter for 3 grandchildren, so I will have my hands full but hope to keep posting on a regular basis from now on.

Passive solar power for your house

2005-12-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post about masonry fireplaces, passive solar power is the best other heat source for a house that is heated with a masonry fireplace. It looks like oil and gas will keep getting more expensive (Have you seen End of Suburbia? It's online. Hint: Put on pause until the whole movie downloads), so anyone building a house would be smart to look for alternatives. I found this site called Build It Solar that has lots of practical advice about using solar energy. Home Power Magazine used to be free online, but I see they now charge $5.00 an issue.

The Energy Self Sufficiency Newsletter is free. It has informative articles about all kinds of alternative energy. You can also access back to the first issue 1/05, which has a good article on passive solar.

Here's an overview of passive solar on the renewables site. And the Natural Home site has good info. They say concrete block dry-stacking is the most do-it-yourself friendly and economically sensible wall building method; you surface bond concrete masonary units ("CMU"s) for the home's walls.

Update:Very informative article about overhangs and how they are not effective in blocking solar heat in the summer.

A masonry fireplace for your house

2005-11-25T22:48:00.000-08:00

When I first learned about masonry fireplaces (also called Russian fireplaces), it was a mystery to me why more houses don't have them; it still is. Actually, I've never seen one in the flesh (or stone or brick). But I think unless you are a thermostat junkie, masonry fireplaces are the best way to heat a home along with some passive solar.

The way a masonry fireplace works is you build a hot fire in the firebox. The hot air heats the bricks or stones through a series of twists and turns that it has to go through before going out the chimney. Because the fire is very hot it completely burns your wood so there is no creosote build up and the air that finally leaves the chimney has very few polluting particles in it. The fire burns for about and hour or two and the heat radiates out from the bricks or stones up to 24 hours.

It is possible to build it yourself, but you will have to buy the bricks. These can't be adobe or mud, because of the high temperatures. I think stone would be pretty difficult. This guy has a lot of information about building it yourself, although it is a little hard to follow at times. Some Mother Earth articles here and here. Another guy that did it himself. Then there is the European style with soapstone, really beautiful; I would like to be able to use soapstone for other applications also (if I win the lottery). These appear to be kits that you build yourself. Here's some good info from the brick industry. And then there is the Masonry Heater Association.

Cheap materials for building your house

2005-11-21T21:14:00.000-08:00

Most people are familiar with Freecycle, a Yahoo local mailing list for giving or getting free all sorts of household and personal items. There are also material exchanges for more industrial type exchanges. You can get items at low cost from business that have excesses. Originally they would have thrown them away.

If you have every done any type of industrial dumpster diving, it boggles your mind the stuff companies throw away at least in the US, or maybe I should say used to. Hopefully they are all getting into these material exchange programs.

Just look up "materials exchange" plus your local state, city or country to find one near you. They are all over the world. And don't forget craigslist.com which is also local.

Floating Island and house

2005-11-17T17:01:00.000-08:00

Well, if you can't afford land to put your house on, you can always build a floating island. "Spiral Island," floated in a lagoon on the East Coast of Mexico south of Cancun from 1998, until it was unfortunately destroyed by Hurricane Emily earlier this year. The island had a two-story house and a sandy beach. It floated on about a quarter million discarded PET plastic water bottles. Start collecting those soda bottles. What's really neat is how the plants and trees grew on it. The roots from the trees combined with the netting holding the bottles and helped to hold it all together. Only problem they had to be constantly adding new bottles, as they deteriorated fairly rapidly.

There are also floating islands in Lake Titicaca in Peru. They have existed for hundreds of years and are made from reeds, but they don't have vegetation growing on them. Of course it's cold up there over 12,000 feet above sea level, so not much grows up there anyhow. The inhabitants also need to be constantly adding to the reeds, as the reeds eventually rot. At least there are no hurricanes up there.

On the opposite end of the scale are the Dubai Palm Islands. Not floating islands but certainly man-made, quite the engineering feat. One of the projects is near completion. Luxury apartments are already selling on ebay.

Folding House

2005-11-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

Another one that you can't exactly call building your house, but if you are in a real hurry this will do the trick. You just unfold it, really. The Habitaflex house comes complete with bathroom and kitchen fixtures plus heating, lights and water heater. The outside is quite the plain Jane, but inside is cozy with all wood paneling. They cost about $40,000. I guess you haul your furniture, stove and fridge in the back of the truck.

Do it yourself - all kinds of help for the homebuilder

2005-11-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

This self help site has info on everything from wiring to plumbing to building decks. Stuff you will need to know if you want to build your home. There is also a forum. I like forums, because you get the real life nitty gritty on what's involved with a job. Check it out.

Geese to guard my house

2005-11-04T23:03:00.000-08:00

I remember when I was a kid, we used to go visit some people who had geese, and I was terrified of those geese. They would raise a raucous and run at us kids like they were going to do something horrible if they ever caught us. So when I first read somewhere that geese make good watchdogs, I could concur.

Hopefully my acreage will be somewhat remote, and I'll want to have a dog or two and geese. These birds also eat a lot of insects like ticks and Japanese beetles. But if I have a really big tick problem, I'll try guinea fowl too. Supposedly they're the champion tick eaters and also good watchdogs. And it sounds like they are easy to care for too. The babies are called keets. Remember that for when you are playing Scrabble.

More house kits -bamboo FOB Saigon

2005-11-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a synergy of my post about house kits and my post about bamboo. Bamboo house kits from our onetime archenemies. Bamboo Technologies has a website complete with detailed houseplans from 200 to 1500 square feet and pricing FOB Saigon. For those without experience in international shipping, that means the price includes loading the container and delivering it to the port of Saigon. The customers are responsible for freight and insurance from the port of Saigon to the customers' locations and unloading the container.

Autoclaved Aerated Concrete

2005-10-29T22:33:00.000-07:00

Autoclaved Aerated Concrete sounds like the perfect building material. Here's what an article in Fine homebuilderg says.

It appears to be more or less fireproof, noiseproof, waterproof and hurricaneproof by comparison with conventional wood construction. It needs no chemical treatment for termites. It has a high insulation performance, and it is long-lasting, low-maintenance and beautiful when stuccoed and plastered.

It's not as cheap as some building materials, but at least for this homebuilder it was easy to work with. Actually, it sounds like most contractors don't want to work with it, because they have to do some things differently, a bummer for skilled laborers. This manufacturer calls it SafeCrete; lots of info here. Here's the association. I wish they would update the news on their site.

And if you just won the lottery and want to invest in a manufacturing plant, this company will set you up. Looks like a good business to me.

Container house

2005-10-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

The neighbors won't like it, but you can always buy an old shipping container for a couple thousand dollars and convert it into a house. Actually, you probably can't do it a lot of places, because of zoning regulations. I think it would take a lot of creativity to turn something so ugly into a pleasant place to live, but apparently a lot of designers are trying to. Look at an actual conversion to a livable space.

What with all the disasters we've been having lately, container living starts to make sense. This is the best design I've seen, but it costs too much for being containers.

Hey, I've got an idea. Plunk a container down; plant kudzu which will cover it in a couple of summers. Then no one will even know you live there.

Update: Containers are not very strong, especially the roof. The load is meant to go only on the corners like for stacking them on a ship. Here is info from a guy who knows a lot.
I realized you have to join the list to see this, so here I have copied it for you.

Strength is generally over rated....or underated. I'm not sure.;O)
But, the simple, humble, and cheap 2x4 is capable of supporting
a "4 kip" load, if it is kept from deflecting. A "kip" is just a fancy
word that engineers use to say 1000 pounds, in order to be able
to charge the big bucks ;O) Four thousand pounds, two tons,
that is a lot of weight. A pretty big area can be supported by it,
even in deep snow country. In most cases, wood frame walls
are way over built. Containers are under built, for supporting the
general loading that building roofs must deal with. Containers are
build sort of like post and beam, but without any beams in their
ceilings. If you want one to be able to support a roof load, you
have to build a whole new structure to carry the roof loads out
to the corner posts. If you turned one upside down, you would
have a strong ceiling frame (with the floor on the wrong side) but
you would then have to deal with building a foundation to support
those concentrated loads, at the lower end. They are designed
for the floor, not the roof to support their load, and for the walls
to hold loads in, not out. I sure would not want to be in one
underground, in a rain storm. That would create the exact
opposite loads that they are desgined for.

Quote;

"The permissible loading capacity of the container roof is only very
slight. The CSC stipulates that it withstand a 200 kg load over an
area of 600 x 300 mm; cargo must therefore never be put on the
roof. When several containers are stacked on top of one another,
the forces are conducted into the corner posts, thereby relieving
the roof." http://www.tis-gdv.de/tis_e/containe/belast/belast.htm

-Laren Corie-
Natural Solar Building Designs, Since 1975

House kits

2005-09-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

A house kit is one answer if you have more time than money. For the price of a good down payment you could have the whole house. Kind of reminds me of the old paint by numbers. Whatever happened to all those pictures? There must have been millions of them, but I've never seen a single one at garage sales or flea markets. I know the ones I painted got thrown away, so I guess that answers my question.

Well, anyway FirstDay Cottages seems like a nice company if you live in the northeast; they charge for delivery if you live more than 100 miles from their place in New Hampshire.

This site talks about the horrors of log cabin kits, so if you've been looking at those log cabin magazines better check them out. They say you can build a good log cabin house for less than $10,000.

House as fortress

2005-09-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

This house is not exactly owner-built, but if you have been following any of the peak oil scenarios, you will be interested in the security features of this house. Some of them could be incorporated into an owner-built house such as the safe room and the fail-safe water source.

I wonder though, since money was not a consideration, why they did not put in a masonry fireplace. They would only have to fire it up once every few days to heat the place. Maybe because it was originally planned to be a summer home. Did I say I love masonry fireplaces?

Had a house

2005-09-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

Pop's Mexican Rustic
As you probably know, in Miami Cubans predominate, but there are also people from many other Spanish speaking countries. The other Latins have a nickname for the first generation Cubans, the "tuvos" or the used to haves, because they are always talking about what they used to have in Cuba. Well, I'm going to talk about what I used to have in Colombia. I had a house full of beautiful Spanish Colonial furniture.

I found a place that sells just about the same kind of furniture except they call it Mexican Rustic . Actually, mine was a little more rustic, because it didn't have glass in the hutch doors.

I love this kind of furniture, and I like solid wood furniture, which is hard to find here in the U.S. for any reasonable price. When I build my house, I hope to have some of this furniture in it.

Who needs trees? Cold-hardy bamboo

2005-09-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

An alternative plan to build the $50 house. Normally you need trees. But how about if you planted bamboo on your 5 acres. In 3 to 5 years you have bamboo big enough to harvest. Some bamboo is stronger than wood. There are bamboos that grow in cold climates. Check out the Amercan Bamboo Society.

In any case I would grow some for privacy.

Do you really need more house than this?

2005-09-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

The word cozy comes to mind. For one or two people this could be just right, and the price is right too--less than the cost of most SUV's. Here is an article that might make you change your mind regarding how big a house you think you need.

If you decide it is too small, you could always give it to a kid to use as a dollhouse.

Update: Here are some inside pictures.

Waxed corrugated bale house

2005-09-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

I used to work for a wastepaper exporter, and I know that waxed corrugated is almost impossible to recycle. Sometimes wastepaper packers have to pay to have it hauled away, so, yes, a waxed corrugated bale house could be very economical. On the other hand those high density bales weigh more than half a ton, so you would have to use some heavy duty equipment to build a wall. Also there is the problem with odor. Wax corrugated is used for packing fish poultry, meat and some vegetables so they can be packed with ice, and consequently it smells. I suppose you would want to put some kind of plaster on the inside anyway, so maybe the smell would not go through that.

$50.00 House

2005-09-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

Anyone can afford a house according to this book. If I ever get five acres of land somewhere, I can always build a house like this provided there is timber on the land. It sounds entirely feasible.

Would have to make sure there was no flooding in the area. But I would use tubular skylights, and combined with the ideas that Mr. Oehler has for natural lighting, it would scarcely seem like it was underground.

Adobe house going up

2005-08-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Here are lots of different pictures showing how an adobe house is built. Very informative. Gives you a feel for all that is involved in building a house.

Rammed earth building

2005-08-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing 6 floor building made of rammed earth in 1826. I was aware that this type of construction was used in the country in South America, but I didn't know you could build a 6-story house with it. Have to admit that this is a durable and good-looking building method.

They use ramming equipment nowadays to compact the earth mix, so I guess this has come a long way. Check out this site. He has lots of links.

Free building guides and handbooks

2005-08-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

Your tax dollars at work. Lots of information at this government site for downloading.

The amazing insulation properties of rice hulls

2005-07-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of a house insulated with rice hulls. Seems like the best insulation material was sitting right under southerners' noses.
The rice hulls are unique within nature. They contain approximately 20% opaline silica in combination with a large amount of the phenyl propanoid structural polymer called lignin. This abundant agricultural waste has all of the properties one could ever expect of some of the best insulating materials. Recent ASTM testing conducted R&D Services of Cookville, Tennessee, reveals that rice hulls do not flame or smolder very easily, they are highly resistant to moisture penetration and fungal decomposition, they do not transfer heat very well, they do not smell or emit gases, and they are not corrosive with respect to aluminum, copper or steel. In their raw and unprocessed state, rice hulls constitute a Class A or Class I insulation material, and therefore, they can be used very economically to insulate the wall, floor and roof cavities of a super-insulated Rice Hull House...
From Home remodling news
Some other information is here and this guy really has some good ideas about constructing economical rice hull homes here. If I lived in the south, I would certainly look into this. Transportation costs would be a consideration further north.

I want concrete countertops in my house

2005-07-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

I love the look of concrete countertops, and I don't think it would be too difficult to do myself. I could even make sinks and bathtubs. Those sacks of concrete would be easier to lug around than a bathtub.

I once lived in an apartment with a large bathtub made of little ceramic tiles embedded in concrete. It had to have been made on site, the tenth floor of a condominium. Only problem was the hot water heater was small--half the size of a normal waterheater, and I could never fill the tub more than about 3 or 4 inches with warm water.

My father built the house I grew up in

2005-07-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

He did everything except the brick chimney. He took the plans from a catalog I believe. Did an amazing job, except never quite finished.

We always had just a little half bath downstairs for a family of seven kids. There was a room upstairs that we used like an attic, but we always called it the bathroom, because it was supposed to be the upstairs bathroom. We even had a bathtub in it filled with attic stuff.

My father mistook the inside dimensions for the outside dimensions, so the opening in the stairwell to the upstairs was very low. Everyone had to duck.

My brother lives there now and has continued in the housebuilding tradition, remodeling almost everything. The upstairs bathroom is now like a spa, and he added two feet to the front to make a larger dining room and bedroom upstairs, but the stairwell is about impossible to fix. Everyone still has to duck.

Adobe building game

2005-07-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a game about adobe building, one of the oldest building methods on earth. Couldn't be simpler, except they forgot to put in the building inspector visits.

Cob houses

2005-07-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

Here is good description of building a cob house on an Irish website. I didn't quite understand it before. This sounds like it would be as fun to build as a stone house.

Cob construction uses sand, clay and straw. Mixed well this special mud is applied to the foundation in continuing layers. Each layer must dry so that it can support the next, and the wall is tapered in as you build up. When it is dry, the walls are very hard and load bearing. The roof is built directly on to the walls, as the walls themselves are the support structure.

It goes on with more details.

Most of the cob houses I can find are like storybook abodes. I guess the process really lends itself to getting carried away by the imagination. I'm all for it actually.

Image from soilapprenticeships

Free CAD software

2005-07-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

This would be nice to have. I've always gotten a kick out of drawing houseplans. Was wondering how to put them on my site. Maybe this software would be too complicated.

Click on the big X. Let's try to get 100,000.

Building dome houses

2005-07-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

Dome houses are energy efficient, inexpensive to build, and easy for the do-it-yourselfer, but I just don't like how they look. I suppose I could get used to it if I had to, but domes just don't seem like home to me.

Masonry fireplace

2005-07-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

I want to have a masonry fireplace in my house. Wouldn't it be great to incorporate steps to the second floor in the brick. That's probably prohibited by building codes, but since this is a dream house, I'll just dream on.

Love balconies and overlooks

2005-07-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

I once saw a plan in a magazine for a three story house built with a central open space. All levels could look out over the middle space. That's a lot like typical houses are built in tropical climates, although they are usually only one or two stories and the middle is open no roof. I've never seen that plan anywhere again. Most house plans today are so ordinary.

Here is one I really like. The plan is here: First floor and second floor. Aren't those second floor bedrooms cozy with their little baths?

Here is a back view.

Papercrete

2005-06-29T22:41:00.000-07:00

Now papercrete really is a good idea for recycling paper that goes to the landfill. I used to work at a recycling company, and many people don't know that the paper you carefully separate and put at the curb is often sent to the landfill with the other garbage, because its economical value is so low. It's not clean enough and/or the transportation costs make it not worth the trip to the paper mill.

Here and here are some good articles and also one from Mother Earth News. This would be feasible to build just with a couple of people. The only thing that is costly is the Portland Cement, but you don't use so much of it. Although I still am partial to stone.

More on stone houses

2005-06-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here is another old article from Mother Earth News about building your own stone house, further to my post on slipforming.

Houses should always have at least 2 floors

2005-06-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

It's a more economical use of space, and unless you are an invalid (I'd better say disabled), you need the exercise.

Since I've moved into a 3 story house, I've have gotten into much better shape and have not gained back some weight I lost.

Straw bale houses

2005-06-18T22:39:00.000-07:00

Straw bale houses look easy to construct and look nice too.

There are a lot of books about straw bale houses. I think that would be a good option if I lived in a place where there were not lots of rocks. Has anyone else noticed that there are none of those small rectangular bales anymore in the fields? They are all those huge round bales. I wonder if it is increasingly hard to find the small bales to build a house? I haven't seen this problem addressed anywhere. If farmers aren't using those old balers, they will disappear.

Here's an article from Mother Earth News. Has anyone noticed that on the Mother Earth News website you can't find old articles, but they come on google searches?

A scam builder?

2005-06-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

I started this blog in part to promote a building material made from recycled waste wood and coal ash, but after investigating a little it looks like it might be a scam. Too bad it seemed like such a good idea. I worked at a commercial waste disposal site once, and they threw away enough wood in a week to make a house.

In any case, alternative building materials is one of my passions, so I will carry on anyway.

Slipform stone building

2005-06-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

If I have more time than money, I will want to build using slipform stone building. This would take a lot of time but maybe when I'm old, I'll have more time like the Nearings. It really looks beautiful.

My beautiful house

2005-06-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

Someday I will build a house. I'm 56 years old and have no financial assets (well maybe a car counts, but it's 6 years old), but I still have the dream of building my own house.