Does anybody else have an interest in building a sustainable house?

United States
April 1, 2009 4:57am CST
I'm talking about building and living in your own natural sustainable 'green' house. I've researched and become obsessed with the ideas of a community of neighbors gardening, composting, and being happy in nature together. Building houses with their own hands out of cob, tires, bottles, adobe, rammed earth, straw, or just about any combination of recyclable materials. Anyone else think about this?
1 response
@smacksman (6053)
1 Apr 09
Continue your research by living for a spell in such a house and such a community and see if you can fit in before committing yourself to a construction project. Make sure you have enough land to build on as very few of those types of construction will allow you to build above a single storey without reinforcement or a strong frame. I found that the smell of tyres is not too bad but other people don't like it. Composting loos take a bit of getting used to and you need a strong stomach when it comes to emptying them and spreading it on the land. Would you then use gloves while working the soil and human compost mix for planting and harvesting crops? Are you happy living with the drone of a wind turbine and the flickering light as the sun shines through the blades? Some people can come to live with it but it drives others mad. I think city dwellers will find it a hard life.
• United States
2 Apr 09
Oh I'm in the process of making visits whenever i can to a community that is living like that. i'm leaving in a month to stay there for awhile and i can't wait. i much rather like the smell of recycled houses and earth. as well as the composting toilets, i can get over the unpleasantness by thinking about how it will in the end help grow food instead of being turned into toxic waste, and that makes it preferrable in my mind. i just long for something new and different. go backwards to evolve so to speak.
@smacksman (6053)
2 Apr 09
Good job. I think you have the right attitude to make it work. As a boy I lived on my grandfather's farm with no electricity, no piped water, no mains sewers and the walls were made from wattle and mud from a pit dug beside the house. It can be done but it means more work for the inhabitants.