Archive for the ‘Green Living & Homes’ Category

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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.

I’ve been playing around for a while with the Greenbar toolbar. In a nutshell, I highly recommend it for keeping up with green news of all sorts; I expect to use it daily. You can download it at http://www.greenbartoolbar.com/

Here it is in my Firefox browser; it’s also available for IE.

I think the best parts of the Greenbar are the dropdown lists of blogs, sites, and feeds. Read the rest of this entry »

Where can you go around the web to find good information on simple green living? One of my projects here on this site is to review other websites, and over time I intend to have quite a list.

Now that green is finally fashionable, there are a lot of websites trying to take advantage of the latest trend. You won’t find those listed here. I am looking for websites on simple living and/or green living that provide useful information. Fine with me if they sell products too – hey, I link to Amazon every time I mention a good book! – but to be listed here, the sites have to be ones worth surfing to in their own right.

I’ll start today with a couple of the sites of my husband, Kelly Hart.

[1] Greenhomebuilding.com Read the rest of this entry »