This is a call for information from folks living in cob houses in cold climates – by cold, let’s say places that frequently have below freezing temperatures in the wintertime. If you live in a cob house in an area with cold and/or extended winters, can you describe the construction of your home and your [...]
Posts from ‘February, 2010’
A rough drawing of the kitchen design
Here’s a rough drawing of the kitchen design. In this sketch you can get a sense of the shape and arrangement of the building. On the east is a wide covered porch for outdoor cooking in the summer. The building has a sizable greenhouse on the south side for starting seedlings and additional heat in [...]
Tiny Wood Stoves For Small Houses: My Choices
I’ve been researching small, efficient wood stoves that could replace the rocket stove in my house. Most home wood stove manufacturers’ smallest models heat 800-1000 square feet at a minimum, which is overkill for my less than 200 round foot home. However, the house will probably benefit from the extra oopmh with all of that [...]
The Tiny Temporary Wood Stove
Here are a couple of photos of the tiny, super ragamuffin wood stove April and I are using right now. It’s manufactured by the Buckeye Incubator Co. Our setup is extremely tacked together, as you can see — the stovepipe runs out the top half of a double hung window. We didn’t exactly have enough [...]
2010 Natural Building & Homesteading Internships at Red Earth Farms
My friends Mark and Alyson, who live at Red Earth Farms, are recruiting interns for the 2010 season. They are looking for help with their natural building project, a lovely straw bale barn/house, and with their various gardening and homestead projects. If you are looking for experience, please read their call for internships ahead!
Seeking Builders with Balecob Information and Experience!
The design for the kitchen is coming together bit by bit. Thomas and I have recently touched upon wall systems in our dicussions, and I expressed my interest in doing the west and north walls of the kitchen in balecob style.
There are but two printed resources for balecob building, both of which are short articles [...]
The Cone of Silence: Keep Warm in Winter With No Energy Costs!
In our journey back home to Dancing Rabbit, April and I brainstormed ideas of how we could better button up the house for winter. At the time, the house was in the 30s, the rocket stove was clearly not going to keep us warm, and we didn’t have plans in place for a temporary stove [...]
I proclaim the rocket stove “not working”
I have officially proclaimed the rocket stove “not working”. The stove simply does not draw on days without the right wind direction/intensity. It is unreliable. Even when the wind is right, the stove takes too long to heat up (even the barrel itself!) At times, it smokes into the house, which is added frustration.
Something is [...]
