Natural homes map Links to low impact websites Natural homes Natural  homes courses Natural homes books
straw bale course Green oak course cob course earthbag course Clay and lime plastering course cordwood course natural roofing course

That Roundhouse 2010, Poland

Tony Wrench is leading the 'That Roundhouse' Workshop in Poland July 2010. The workshop includes building a reciprocal green living roof. See green hamlet for more details.

 

The tiny house show

The tiny house slide show is for your blog to help us spread the word about building and living in natural homes. Click each picture to take you to the location of the house on the natural homes map where there is more information and links to follow about the house. Get the widget here.

 
 

Tiny Cob Houses

Some cob homes have that little something to make you want to live in them. Here's a collection of tiny cob houses we love.

 
 

Technical Papers

A collection of books and technical papers to guide you through the natural homes building process in the Natural homes Library

 

Amazonails' straw bale homes

Barbara and Bee help all sorts of people learn how to build beautiful straw bale homes

 

DIY water and space heating

A clear guide to do-it-yourself water and space heating from North Carolina Solar Center

 

Natural Homes Social Network

We have a collection of ways to keep in touch with each other, join any or all of them:

 
Please join the collection of people on google connect, make friends and visit the other sites they are connected to. Join at the top of this page on the blue banner.
 
You can join the Natural Homes Group which is a google service where emails are exchanged between members.
 
Twitter is a great way to keep in touch with people like Green Builder @PollyBart , and earthship builder @PaulaNad . You can follow us here @naturalhomes .
 
Tweet to @naturalhomes
Natural Homes Twittering
 

Reasons to go solar in the USA?

Listen to John Schaeffer of Real Goods discuss three reasons to go solar and some of the very tangible benefits in this quick two-minute video

 

What's a cordwood house?

See some examples of cordwood homes here and read about Larry's cordwood cabin near Harrisville, USA

 

Put your cob house one the map

Here is a short note from Tim from his ecoHouse in Argentina.

"The folks who have come to visit all learned about the house from Natural Homes. Keep up the good work! We are pleased that we have a positive influence here. It's all great fun!"

How to use this site
We hope you will find plenty of things here to help you on your way to building a natural, eco-friendly home. The site is divided in to five parts.

  • Building courses in the learn section.
  • Start by buying a book or two
  • Links to other sites where you can learn.
  • House, natural homes built, or being built.
  • Map, natural homes around the world.
We use these colours for regions of the world.
Africa
Europe
Americas
Australasia
Middle East & Asia
 

Off-Grid in New Mexico  

We are looking for off-grid homes to put on the natural homes map. Recently Chris Niner contacted us to put Green Mountain Solar on the map. His web site if full of good advice and well worth a visit.

 

A Tiny Straw Bale Home

Steve James would like to live quietly and work on his building projects in peace. He has shared his skills with many people but now he has probably lost his home because of it. Read more about Steve James and see his straw bale house on the map.


 

The Earthbag Home Show

Earthbag building has seen a resurgence of interest since the late Nader Khalili began experimenting with bags of adobe soil as building blocks for creating domes, vaults and arches. Now the whole field has expanded considerably with further experimentation by his students like Paulina Wojciechowska and others like Doni Kiffmeyer and Kaki Hunter of OKOKOK.org . Here is a slide show you can include in your blog that presents a collection of earthbag homes.

 

Earthship Workshops, Japan

Join Saturday and Sunday, on the 3rd weekend of every Summer month to build a semi underground earthship, earth sheltered, passive solar greenhouse at Earth Embassy, Mt Fuji .

 

Straw Bale House Building

Red Feather are building a new straw bale house for a family on Third Mesa on the Hopi Reservation during the month of September. They are looking for volunteers

 

Tiny Housing Top 10

Some beautiful cob houses included in this collection of 10 tiny homes that you can include in your blog. Read the natural tiny house top 10 here.

 

Searching for a Cob House?

This is a custom search using a database of over 400 web sites that contain good quality and trustworthy information about natural and tiny houses. It also includes real experiences shared in self-builder blogs. The database is developed in cooperation with the European Straw Bale Building Association
 

Straw Bale Internship, USA

Interested in straw bale house construction? Want some hands-on experience with natural building? Visit Red Earth Farms
 

 

Dreaming about a cob house?

It's good to know you're not the only one that dreams of living in an ecohouse. Here's a collection of EcoHouse dreams on Twitter.

Straw Bale Earthquake Results

After earlier test on a cob structure by the University of British Columbia, Darcey Donovan, the founder of PAKSBAB, talks about the earthquake tests performed at the University of Nevada, Reno on the 27th of March 2009. Read the article here.

 

Support The Sun School

An off-grid school in the Indian Himalayas are looking for volunteers. You can see the location on the natural homes map or go to the project's web site at suryaschool.org  
 

Straw Bale House Vote

"You want to build your own straw bale house but you are concerned about potential problems. The one problem that concerns you the most is:"

Vote here and help our research by adding the vote to your blog to collect votes from your readers.
 

How to Harvest Timber

The Healing Harvest Forest Foundation shows how to harvest trees the environmentally correct way.
 

Why a truth window?

"Many straw bale homes have a truth window. It's a section of wall that displays the straw bale structure, but what is a truth window for?"

Vote here and help our research by adding the vote to your blog to collect votes from your readers.
 

Earthbag Building in Mali

A multilingual event (French, English, Polish and Dogon). Participants will learn everything they need to build structurally sound domes. Book early for January 9th - 25th, 2010. More details at earthhandsandhouses.org
 
 

The Lammas ecoVillage Story

Lammas is applying for planning permission to build an ecovillage in Wales which combines the traditional smallholding model with the latest innovations in environmental design, green technology and permaculture. More about Lammas

 

Straw Bale Congressional

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Washington, USA ran a briefing on "Straw-Bale Construction: Harvesting Its Potential As an Affordable and Energy-Efficient Building Strategy" with presentations from Laura Bartels , Sandy Wiggins, Bob Gough and David Eisenberg . Listen to the briefing on the EESI web site

 

Straw Bale house results

Results are in from October's ecoVote and the World clearly prefers to invest in straw bale homes but not in the Americas where earthen structures are preferred. Read more here.

 

Building an ecoHouse

Results are in from September's ecoVote and the World clearly prefers straw bale construction but in the Americas cob and straw bale are equally preferred. Read more about the ecoVote results

 
share us with others
 
 
 
Strawbale holiday home
natural building
 
be Inspired...
build a natural home
Straw bale eco house in Italy
Would you like to contribute

If you know of any sites we should link to, or books we should list or maybe you know of a natural home we should include, then please write to us at house@naturalhomes.org.
an earthbag home
near Warsaw, Poland
Carbon Neutral home in Poland
© 2009 Oliver Blake Swann
Design by
Site last updated 6th Dec 2009