Passive solar power for your house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The amazing insulation properties of rice hulls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.