Cob A Sampler Of Alternative Homes / Straw Bale Solution

[M J Epko]

Watched a new video last night called A Sampler Of Alternative Homes. It's
a couple hours long, is pretty good for what it is (low budget), and has a
fair bit of introductory information and inspirational footage on
owner-builder things like compressed earth blocks, puddled adobe, rammed
earth, strawbale (loadbearing, post-and-beam, and hybrid), earthships,
cordwood, earthbags... and, yes, fibrous cement.

Still not having met Eric Patterson, Mike McCain, or Sean Sands, it was
good to get to see the three of them on video, using their own words.
They're much more even-handed and level-headed than I'd feared they'd be
(based on the fevered second-hand miracle pronouncements I'd been hearing).
The technique is experimental - they state it without prompting - and they
don't make pie-in-the-sky promises. (They're enthusiastic, yes; but seemed
well-grounded in reality.) The dome on the front cover of Earth Quarterly
contains a multitude of different mixes, in order to see how they react to
life. Some mixes don't work, it's freely admitted. The FC structures
approved under the adobe code are not domes, as I was quite sure was the case.

The video is from Hartworks, 713 W Spruce #89, Deming NM, 88030. I don't
know how much it costs.

There's another brand new video just out called The Straw Bale Solution,
narrated by and featuring Bill & Athena Steen, along with Judy Knox, David
Eisenberg, Bruce King, Kim Thompson, all sorts of SB luminaries. It's 30
minutes, broadcast-quality (documentary-style), and the last third or so of
it features the great stuff that the Canelo project is doing down in
Mexico. I've seen copies of this one from the rough cut stage, and how it's
turned out blows me away. It's *really* good. It even has a commissioned
soundtrack.

David Bainbridge, one of the co-authors of The Straw Bale House (the only
one of them who isn't in this video) wrote, "This is an outstanding 30
minute video introduction to straw bale building. It offers viewers an
excellent look at $1.50 a square foot straw bale homes in Mexico and the
custom hi-end straw bale mansions of Santa Fe... How and why they are
built... Why they make so much sense and cents and how to get started are
all covered."

The dupes are on the way, apparently, so copies will be available from
Black Range in a day or two... <blackrange at zianet.com> 505 895-5652



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   Freewheeling autonomous speculation - Think!
      Personality #7 represents only itself.
    M J Epko - duckchow at mail2.greenbuilder.com
               Kingston, New Mexico
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 Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is
 very important that you do it.  - Mahatma Gandhi