[Video] Home Sweet Recycled Home

[Video] Home Sweet Recycled Home
The newest innovation in the "green revolution" is recycled homes. Mark Phillips talks to the resident of a home that has been built entirely out of shipping containers.

Building a Straw Bale House: The Red Feather Construction Handbook

To help our readers flex their DIY green spirit, we're going to start covering some useful books. First I'm going to start out with this great book about straw-bale construction. If you're not familiar with straw-bale construction, check out Wikipedia for a primer.

Building a Straw Bale House: The Red Feather Construction Handbook
By Nathaniel Corum

Amazon.com Product Description
"This book is a timely and important tool for the empowerment of communities facing housing deficits. The Red Feather project is extremely important; it is truly making a difference."—Jane Goodall

For more than a decade the Red Feather Development Group, a volunteer-based organization, has built and repaired straw bale houses for Native Americans. Somewhere along the way—and this was certainly not the plan—they created an architectural phenomenon: This inexpensive, environmentally sound, easily constructed, and downright beautiful form of building has, for good reason, caught the public's imagination. Here, Red Feather provides a step-by-step, easy-to-follow manual for would-be strawbale builders—indeed, they supply everything you'll need but time, energy, and lots and lots of straw. Informative sections on safety, design, tools, and materials, and case studies picked from over thirty-five Red Feather projects give a comprehensive overview to straw-bale building.

But this book is much more than a construction manual. It is also the inspiring story of Red Feather itself, a tale of community action and cooperation that suggests a can-do solution to the growing housing crisis on America's Native American reservations.

[Video] Powering up with the sun

Twenty universities from Canada, Germany, Spain and the United States are competing here in the 2007 Solar Decathlon to design and build the most livable, energy-efficient solar-powered house. An AFPTV voiced report.

Innovative architects turn used shipping containers into homes

Lately I've been interested in using shipping containers as studio/office space, or even housing. Looks like people are way ahead of me. I found this great article on SF Gate about some of the more innovative approaches to using shipping containers in architecture.

DIY Greenhouse

Using a common car-port cover frame and some thick clear plastic Plumeria 101
shows us how to make a simple green house, that can be torn down and moved on a whim. Not necessarily a permanent greenhouse solution, but a viable one for temporary use.