Who ever thought a high end magazine would agree with my curious perspective that the ability step outside and go pee without neighbor complaint would figure as a article-worthy metric for quality of life?
The project was officially dubbed a Squibbship. Who would have thunk…
Some photos of the near-finished product. We are still putting finishing touches, but have Certificate of Occupancy. YAY!
More photos below
How cool is elimination of the need for external energy altogether? Think of a house as a free-standing energy system – without need for external energy sources to maintain habitability and comfort. So what makes a building sustainable?
Wikipedia defines Green Building here… Does this definition make sense to you?
I hung on the word efficiency as a cop out. Efficiency means to limit consumption of external resources – minimize waste.
In today’s world where everybody is super jazzed about green building you’ve probably noticed something very strange….
Why is it so hard to find a cool project to work on? Continue reading Where are the cool builds?
Just about anyone who installs a solar panel has one simple question – where should I point this darned thing? That silly sun moves around all the time.
It moves sideways all day – every day, and up and down, all year – every year. Continue reading Sun Scoop – Solar Doubler
Using a portable bandsaw mill looks easy – just put the log in the cradle and cut away. Well… Not so much.
After a mountain of scrap, and probably 20 hours of unnecessary cuts – I eventually dialed in a method of efficiently cutting a log. This tutorial enables a beginner with a bandsaw mill to become efficient a lot faster than I did.
Here is the link to download the sketchup model of the house.
Sketchup is a great freeware 3D modeling program formerly owned by google. It is now managed by a group out of Boulder. It’s a great program.
When I invested the 2 weeks of long days building the model, I often wondered if it was going to be worth the time. In retrospect – yes it was – absolutely hands down one of the best investments I made. The model enabled:
You’ll need to download sketchup to utilize the model.
This experiment is in search of an affordable floor. At 2000 sq/ft, a 4 inch thick floor is about 25 yards, 3 truckloads of concrete, about $3K in concrete, delivered.
A week rental on a concrete sander prices out at about $1000.
So – the hard DIY price on a sanded concrete floor is $4k. Since I have a mountain full of dead wood – maybe I can find a cheaper solution… Continue reading Chipcrete Floor Experiment
Who says the animals can’t have a cool house too?
Who would really want a 10×10 foot square refrigerator?
I would for one. If you’ve ever fed growing boys – food and food storage matter.
