Straw bale house

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.