Fresh Greens: A surprising twist for an ex-Enron-er, building houses for under $3k, presto-change-o chocolates, and goats
Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!
Ex-Enron-er Goes On The Road
Ex-Enron speech writer starts a cross-country tour with a surprisingly heated message about how the world is not hot.
Cob House Built For Less Than $3,000
And you thought there was no way out of the housing market crash... You can build your own charming house for next to nothing.
Vanishing Creatures Chocolates Feature Packaging with a Bonus Surprise
Waste not, want not. This zero waste packaging is an extra transformer treat to go with your sweet.
Goat Patrol Revisited: The Transportation Question Answered
The idea of using goats for landscaping maintenance always begs one question: What's the carbon footprint of getting them to your garden? Mystery solved...
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Cob home's look neat and hobbity, but I can't help but be a little bummed if the best thing in affordable homes of the future is a mud hut.
@1
It also lacks the amenities that most people would presume are required for a mud hut to be called a house or a home... I see no evidence that the house has a bathroom of any sort, no loo, no shower/bath and no facility for washing up etc?
Call me a reprobate townie, but I expect all of those in anything called a "house" rather than a garden shed, as I commented on the site.
I don't have any problem with hobbit houses, and still lust after this one:
http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm
which seems to me to be a lot more than a mud hut.
It's not that it's a Hobbit home so much, as an unrealistic price tag that misleads everyone - the raw materials cost 3k - all well and good, but it took him 9 months to make, I'm an eco-builder by trade and in my time that's worth £108,000 in labour. Pretty expensive for a mud hut.
Obviously that's a it extreme, and I am by no means cheap - but by any time = money equation it's still a costly build. 3k for a house is nonsense, and propagating the myth does not help people who work in the industry as everyone expects free energy and super cheap amazing homes. this does not happen!
Gotta say tho, I do love straw bale and cob construction, and he has made a lovely abode - mad props to him.
I also love the straw bale and rammed earth construction, but there are only a few incorporated places in the US that allow for these structures in their building codes. Unless you're building in one of those places (Tucson is one, off the top of my head) then you're relegated to the unincorporated and rural parts of a county/state, which makes a lot of your other expenses higher.
Re: goat landscaping. Do we have to accept the premise that lawns should be scaped or eaten at all? I'm skeptical of the claims that tall grass lawns attract more rodents or snakes, or present extra fire hazard, the usual justifications for mandatory mowing laws. Mowed lawns seem like a long-term fad instead of a necessity.
PS - It's nice that the founder of Goat Patrol welcomed the inquiry: 'More people need to take "green" claims with a grain of salt, and the world will never truly make progress toward greater sustainability without a healthy dose of skepticism in the mix.'
What he's built is/would be ideal for me.
Yep -- I like "mud huts."
We (Americans and anyone else) have got to get over the idea that a dwelling must have porcelain potties and wiring etc etc. Most houses in America are grossly over-built. And some are badly built, true.
I'm dreaming, I know, but I'd like to see the day where everyone builds their own home out of materials at hand. (Actually, I think it will happen, but it'll be in a Mad Max kinda world.)
These earthen African homes stand in hand-sculpted testimony to a different, humane architecture:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18039729/Houses-Are-Human-Architectural-Selfimages-of-Africas-Tamberma
Ianto Evans, the founder of the Cob movement in North America provides the following rationale for a return to natural building:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13790358/Ianto-Evans-Natural-Building