Sightings of a sustainable world.
Click images to enlarge.

---

Send your sustainable photo to sightings@baosol.com Add a brief description and your name if you like.

I didn’t really set out to build an adobe house, though I did feel an unknown source of inspiration motivating me to build my own home. I sometimes pretend that it has something to do with being a civil engineer, but I think it goes deeper than that. There is something very fundamental, a very basic impulse, that drives some people to build. I looked hard at strawbale, and insulated panels, and ICFs of all sorts, and almost every other sort of way to build a house. But I fell into the possession of a compressed soil block (compressed adobe block) machine. (Who among us can not blame eBay for one thing or another?) It wasn’t exactly a steal, but I couldn’t pass it up. And these things begin to take on a life of their own, if you are not careful. After buying it, I had to get it running. (There goes a year.) After getting it running, I had to make some blocks. After making some blocks, I had to build something! I started with a garage, to sort of test the viability of the whole concept. (There goes another three years.) After completing a garage, well, there had been an awful lot of talk about the glories of adobe by then. It became a matter of pride! Ah, pride! At any rate, too much in the middle of the stream to change ships by then!

Though even now I wonder at the (in)sanity of my course of action, there is no denying adobe’s appeal. Adobe has a conceptual simplicity, yet its application is limited only by one’s imagination. Though I thought that I could build an adobe house for a low cost, in the end I could not. I still believe that it is very possible to do so, but for better or worse I made many choices that took the price well above what I initially intended. The house is larger, has more wood trim, more expensive windows, doors, floors, plumbing fixtures, and just about everything else than I originally planned or budgeted for. Was this a result of poor initial planning, or good decision making as the project evolved, I’m not sure. In the end it will be a much nicer house than I had originally planned (or, rationally speaking, need), though no longer a “shoestring” project. It is hard to avoid. A person building his (or her) own house becomes very emotionally involved. Perspectives shift. I was also more than a little overly optimistic (OK, blatantly naive) in terms of what I thought I could accomplish on my own, and also regarding the cost of materials and labor for the things I couldn’t do myself.

My advice for other DIYers: 1. Keep it simple. 2. Real simple. 3. Find out during the design stage how much things actually cost (this is not as easy as you might think!). 4. Design and budget for a house that costs half what you can afford, because it will end up costing two or three times that much. 5. Build it where you will want to live in 10 or 20 years from “now”, because it might take that long! (Or, with luck, you might still be there.) 6. Plan well, and then get started! You can do anything that you really want to (though probably not everything that you want to)! If I can be of any advice, feel free to contact me at maxmcgowan@yahoo.com.

Brick Making Video

Almost 20 years ago my wife gave me a set of books, Michael Reynolds’ Earthship Volumes I, II, and III. I was taken by everything about the Earthship concept and design, as well as Michael’s sense of our whole social/design/construction system and the way it works. It seemed to be the perfect match for our area. It inspired me to start studying unconventional types construction (of which there are many), and to start seriously studying “Alternative” energy production. However, we had neither the means nor the land to build. We worked and waited almost 10 years before circumstances changed.

In 2000 a good friend was able to help us get started. I spent a year watching the weather patterns, wind direction and snow drifting, picking a water source, on the property we now owned, and re-evaluating whether or not the Earthship was the proper design/construction type for us. I revisited Straw-Bale, Cord Wood/Cement, Formed Concrete, as well as the traditional types, and concluded the Earthship was the way to go. For electricity, the choice was easy, Sun and Wind! We have a lot of both… I drew up a floor plan, designed the spring/cistern/water supply system, and took the SEI online course on Photo-voltaic/Alternate Energy Design.

This is how the property and existing home looked in 2000…

Rather than abandon or demolish the existing home, which was by the way, entirely dysfunctional, being built of un-insulated, filled, cement block, slab-on-grade, with minimal insulation, virtually uninhabitable during half the year, we decided to envelope it with the new structure. In 2001 we began excavation and construction. I worked on it myself in the evenings and weekends, keeping my “day job”. But after 3 years, it was apparent the project would last a very long time… So I quit my job, and went to work on the house full time, many times with one other helping me.

We moved into the unfinished Earthship in the summer of 2005, and needless to say, everything slowed down. And the construction continues today. As of March, 2008, we have 6000 sq. feet closed in and livable, with another 2000 sq. feet unfinished.

We now live in a home that uses only the Sun for heat; we make our own electricity, completely off-grid, compost our sewage, drink our own spring water, pumped to the cistern/house with power from the Sun, and have marvelous views of the clouds, moon and stars!

You can see many photos of all the stages and various methods of construction at www.dawneaglewoman.com on the Earthship/Alternative Energy page.

For more information you can write to info@sundogsalternativesystems.com

Brian White enjoys a highly eclectic background. He is a member of Mensa, designer/builder, philosopher and a musician of 35 years’ experience. In 1994 he was given the Hopi name, Hisayhoya Tsiro, Little Bird of the Two Horned Priesthood or Hummingbird, by the Hopi Princess. Brian is a skilled I-Ching practitioner and has extensive experience with a variety of physical skills including building electric instruments and components, sculpting, painting, alternative-energy sourcing, systems analysis, design, carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work.