Archive for the ‘Green Living & Homes’ Category

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There are many free and inexpensive ways to save water at home. The most important thing is to develop the habit of being water conscious. If you do that, you will notice ways that you can cut back on water usage. Here are some ideas for saving water inside your home.

Saving Water in the Bathroom

Keep a small bucket in the bathroom. When you start the water running for a shower, put the bucket underneath where the cold, clean water comes out. This water can be used for pets’ drinking water, for watering house plants, and for numerous uses out of doors. Read the rest of this entry »

Living a simple green life isn’t just about buying greener stuff. We need a major change of consciousness.

Now that many businesses have jumped on the green bandwagon, it is possible to get more ecological versions of food, clothing, vehicles, building materials, and other things. This is to the good. It’s also the case that a lot of the things being touted as green aren’t very. But leaving that point aside for now, the fact is that just buying green is nowhere near enough to keep our environment from being horribly polluted.

I’ve seen television shows where an existing house is made over to be more green, and this consists of things like replacing kitchen appliances and adding more insulation so the house requires less heat. I have never heard a moment of consideration about whether keeping the older refrigerator might be the more ecological choice. (The answer can be yes, in cases where it’s not a truly antique power hog. If you don’t use every square inch inside the fridge, put containers of water inside to help hold the cold by acting as thermal mass.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just been reading the current issue of the Mother Earth News, and while its downhome ultra-folksy style has been modified a bit over the years, it is still the same magazine I have loved for decades. Hadn’t read one for a while, though.

I read this one because a friend of ours, Owen Geiger, has an article in it titled Low-cost Multipurpose Minibuilding Made with Earthbags. The article mentions that more could be found on their website, and here is the link to that article: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/Earthbag-Building-Garden-Shed.aspx

But the whole  Mother Earth News website amazed and delighted me. It seems that all of the current issue is there, and in some cases, the articles are longer. Read the rest of this entry »

“Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream” is the subtitle of The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome (Amazon link) which my husband and I have just been reading. Kelly’s green home building blog has a long review of it, so I just want to reflect on one of its  themes.

I pretty much missed the macmansioning of America. Read the rest of this entry »

Kelly and I currently live in a very small house and we have discovered that there are many advantages. Of course, it cost less to buy, and it uses less in the way of utilities. To our surprise, after decades of having separate offices, we are enjoying working in different parts of the same room, separated by a huge bookcase so we aren’t breathing down each other’s necks but we can quickly discuss something. (I’m the software geek, he’s the natural building expert).

Our friend Owen Geiger has been designing small houses, Kelly has recently been putting some of the plans up on his ecological house plans website, and Owen’s plans have already begun to sell. Links are at the end of this article. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cheap-Ass Curmudgeon’s Guide to Dirt: Hand-Building with Adobe, Papercrete, Paper-Adobe, and More, by Michael Van Hall, is a delight.

This downloadable ebook will take you through the steps to make your own simple dirt structure. He doesn’t go into all the details of how to build a house, as he points out that you can find that information everywhere. (I will add you can find that sort of thing at our natural building bookstore.)

This 100-page ebook focuses on… as you might guess from the cover… dirt. With close to 100 photographs and numerous drawings, the book is a relatively quick and very enjoyable read. It will motivate you even if you already are excited about natural building. And it will give you enough information to pile up the dirt with his special method.

(One quibble: he says you can also do this approach with papercrete and other materials. Kelly and I used papercrete as the exterior covering on our earthbag house in Colorado, and we have several friends who built all-papercrete homes. Don’t do it just before the rains come or during the rainy season, as it needs to really really dry or there can be mould problems. If you want to use papercrete, do a lot more homework on it specifically.)

Okay, back to this ebook. After an upbeat introduction with some history, there is an illustrated section on the traditional way to make adobe bricks, with comments on how much work it it – both to make them and to carry them to the building site. Not to mention the patience required to wait for them to be dry enough to use.

Much better, says Michael, is his Self-Locking Pour-in-Place System (trademarked.) Much of the book describes how to do this, and it looks like a lot of fun. Okay, any play with dirt is still going to be a lot of work, but this sounds like fun work!

I specially enjoyed the chapter where he did everything wrong… at least by traditional standards.

Michael’s website is fun too – click here to see what else the cheap-ass curmudgeon has to say, download some chapters of his ebook at no cost, and buy it if you want to.