How to build a shed (small house)

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

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

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

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

Missile Silo Home

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

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

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

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

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.