Posted on 08/02/2013 11:34:14 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Imagine if it were possible to build your own home, in this day and age, for less than $35,000. Or to cut up some timber and piece your new home together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
What if you could create, with your own hands, a home that collects its own rainwater and generates its own power, so you never have to pay a bill again?
As far-fetched as it sounds, if you can't afford to buy a house, then designing and building your own may be more viable than you assumed. Today, upcoming architects and designers are coming up with solutions to the problem of rocketing property prices, by building houses of their own and sharing their plans on the internet.
In the UK, a young architectural practice has devised the world's first 'open-source' building. Made of simple materials and freely available plans, the 'WikiHouse' was conceived by English designer Alastair Parvin as a low-cost solution to the global housing shortage.
The aim of the project is to allow anyone in the world to design, share, download, adapt and 'print' a house that is inexpensive and tailored to their own needs.....
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Much more appropriate for dry climates, challenging to make work in wet or even humid ones. Not impossible, but challenging.
It seems to me that the exterior of the house ( the wall's building materials) would be a rather minimal cost. The real cost comes from all the stuff that goes underneath, on top, and ( especially) **inside**.
Rots from any moisture. Read three little pigs again.
A few people doing it in the Southwest where rainfall is low. Straw bales are stacked and covered in a cement coating like stucco. Excellent insulation and low price but I wonder how it would work in the Midwest rains.
Righto.
Far and away the biggest challenge with straw bale construction is controlling moisture intrusion: rain, sub-surface and surface water, humidity. Even have to give some consideration to the possibility of springing a plumbing leak.
Basically, if the bales get really wet, your house is toast. Block or frame construction homes can be dried, if caught and reacted to quickly enough.
Thanx for the link.Very impressive structure.Tom
Don’t forget to pesticide the straw.
In Maryland it requires a building permit.
Rot’s O’ Ruck getting that.
Inspectors come around, building codes get in the way.
Versatile stuff that scratch. I hear you can make biscuits from it too.
and good inuslation
Ping...
Mother Earth News comes to the Internet
Hand crafted adobe walls with adequate thickness outlast hay bales. If the house is dug into the side of a south facing hill and provided with a coated insulated glass south facing wall, it will be warmed (and cooled) by the ground and the sun.
Mother Earth News circa 1972
I wonder if he is a first cousin to the Pioneer Woman.
Don’t let the hay get wet.
I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!
There you go...container house. Huge industry for that now. And, gracious plenty containers in the USA right now just languishing unused
You’d need one heck of an A/C down here in Texas for that. If not it would be like living in an oven.
Cast concrete or some other material, igloo style.
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