Women
build beautiful homes
Barbara and Bee help all sorts of people learn how to
build beautiful straw bale
homes
Solar
Power Summit, Saville, Spain
On the 5th and 6th of November the Solar Power Summit
will help you to understand hybrid systems, improve heat
storage, maximise sunfall, cut costs, construct effectively
and manage financial risk. More about solar
power summit
French Straw Building Gathering
The next gathering of the French Straw Building Network,
Les Compaillons, will be held in Jublains from the 1st
to the 4th of November. The gathering will be in French
apart from a presentation on loadbearing construction
by Amazon Nails. More details on lamaisonenpaille.com
The World prefers straw bale
Results are in from September's ecoVote and the World
clearly prefers straw bale construction but in the Americas
cob and strawbale are equally preferred. Read more about
the ecoVote results
Celebrating
Sustainability, NC, USA June
20-29 2008, Asheville,
with Kleiwerks, run a city wide collaboration of local
communities building sustainable solutions for the city.
You can volunteer for 2 weeks and up to a year on the
project. More details on Kleiwerks
and ashevillage.org
Special homes around the World
Here are some of the special homes you can find on the
natural homes map.
Earthship
Biotecture, Jamaica
Earthship Biotecture will be starting a project in Negril,
Jamaica in February of 2008 spending three weeks building
an earthship. There will be positions available for
eight trainees for each of the three weeks. Fees for
the training will be 350 USD per week. If
you are interested in participating in the Earthship
Jamaica Training Program, please go to www.earthship.com
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
Put
your house on Natural Homes
Here
is a short letter from Tim & Patricia from their
straw bale eco house
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!"
To
help others who are thinking of going green we have
launched our mapping system so that natural homes around
the world are more accessible. If you know about a home
that you think should be on our map then contact us.
Take a look at the Natural
Homes Map.
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.
Lammas
UK eco-village rejected
The Lammas plans for an eco-village of nine low-impact
homes on land in rural Pembrokeshire has been turned
down by councilors. Read about it on the BBC Please
send a message of support to Lammas who
will re-apply for permission. You can read Pembrokeshire
County Council's low-impact
policy here
and watch the Lammas' eco-village
video collection
October's ecoVote results Strawbale
warning
in the Americas
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 prefered. Read more here.
Put
a map on your blog
The natural
homes map is now available for you to include in your
blog. This is an example
blog
that displays
straw bale houses. Get the code for your blog here
and spice up your eco-friendly blog.
What's
an Earthship? You
can see pictures of earthships with links to the builder's
websites here
and get a good introduction about earthships on Wikipedia
It's
possible there why not here?
The
International Polar Foundation unveiled its plans for
the Antarctic Polar Station which will run entirely
on renewable energy and will completely recycle all
its waste. It will not cause any damage to the pristine
Antarctic environment. So why can’t we do the
same here? Read about polar
renewable energy here
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 website if full of good advice and well
worth a visit.
Natural
Building Colloquium, Texas
In the Central Hill County, Kerrville, Texas, October
19-28. With David Eisenberg,
Matts
Myhrman and Judy Knox, Doni Kiffmeyer and Kaki Hunter,
Kindra Welch and Frank Meyer. More
details about the Natural
Building Colloquiumhere
Cobbing
in Mexico, February 2008
This Cobworks project is located 8KM
above the town of Santiago in the mountains of the La
Laguna Biosphere Reserve. There is a 50 foot waterfall
within hiking distance of our worksite, as well as hot
springs to explore on rest days. In
addition to laughing,
singing, eating,
and making friends that
you will probably keep in contact with long after
the course is over, cobworks will cover all of
the basics of cob mixing and building.
cob
building.
Women
build beautiful homes
Barbara and Bee help all sorts of people learn how to
build beautiful straw bale homes
A
green oak builder's day This
course was lead by Ron Smith, one of the many green
oak courses listed by Natural Homes.
Click on the picture below to see a time-lapse animation
of a day in the life of a green oak building team as
this green oak frame extension to a Welsh home rises
in a day.
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.
Women
build beautiful homes
Solar
Power Summit, Saville, Spain 
Celebrating
Sustainability, NC, USA
Earthship
Biotecture, Jamaica
Lammas
UK eco-village rejected
October's ecoVote results
Put
a map on your blog
What's
a cordwood house?
A
green oak builder's day
