While I tend to focus on tiny houses on wheels, if you don’t need mobility and want 100% natural building materials, consider tiny earthen buildings. In the video below the folks at Exploring Alternatives visit with Bryce from Dreamweavers Collective to learn about cob. Cob is just one of the earthen building options. It’s essentially a […]
Tag Archives: adobe
07
Aug
Aug
The California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture is a charitable non-profit organization that was founded in 1986 by Nader Khalili (1936-2008). They focus on developing truly sustainable earthen architecture. Their primary building method, nicknamed superadobes, uses long sandbag tubes filled with a semi-moist mixture of earth, cement, and water. The rows are laid with […]
30
Jun
Jun
This post was sparked by a comment from Steve, one of my long-time readers. In a nutshell, he suggested that people would be much better off living in handmade homes than living in machine-made prefabs. Like most people, modern prefab designs grab my attention. I suspect that it’s their product-like polish and our learned weakness […]
02
Dec
Dec
When I first read about Ryo Chijiiwa’s tiny cabin on Tiny House Blog I was fascinated by the adventure this fellow was on. He quit his job at Google, traveled America, and is now working to setup a more comfortable place to live on the remote property that he recently purchased in northern California. You […]
27
Aug
Aug
Three months out of the year this is the home of Samuel Gray. This adobe casita located near Abiquiu, NM and in just a few years will be Sam’s full-time residence. It measures 12′ by 10′ on the exterior but due to the thick adobe walls has only about 86 interior square feet. He built […]
23
Aug
Aug
Ziggy’s cob house at the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is complete. He’s also posted a lot of detailed information about the construction process, cost, and sweat-equity required to build such a house on his Building a cob house blog. The house is about 200 square feet and includes a reciprocal roof and rocket stove. Ziggy estimates […]
07
Aug
Aug
I was contacted recently by Michael Thompson a fellow I follow on Twitter, and a self-taught rammed earth expert. He and I share a passion for low-cost building techniques. He asked me to do him a favor and whip up a 3D drawing of his rammed earth wall former hat will serve as course material […]
04
May
May
I really like the ingenuity of the fellow behind the website naturalhomes.org. This is the website dedicated to houses built from natural materials like cob, adobe, straw bale, stone, dirt, and so on. You’ll find examples of natural homes from all over the world. Some are big but many are tiny houses. Oliver Swann, the […]
26
Mar
Mar
Owen Geiger over at Earthbag House Plans has been busy. He has posted the preliminary designs for about 77 plans for earthbag homes available on his newest website. An earthbag home is essentially a home made from the dirt under your feet. It’s scooped up and placed in bags like old grain bags or sandbags. […]
01
Mar
Mar
Cob is earth, sand, and straw. It’s similar to building with adobe but instead of making blocks to stack-up like with an adobe house, cob houses are built-up while the mud is wet. The material is essentially the same, the construction process is what differentiates cob from adobe. The most obvious design difference is that […]
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