Photo at left is from a Yestermorrow course in building tree houses.
Yestermorrow is a school for building in the Green Mountains of Vermont. The school’s founder, architect John Connell and Giocondo Susini are teaching a 5-day course starting April 17th on building with prefabricated components, “Putting the Fab back in Pre-fab.”
“New developments in factory-built housing now make it possible to design custom, environmentally enlightened homes that meet the needs and pocketbooks of normal homeowners. Healthy and green, these buildings can be less expensive to build and operate even while looking historic, vernacular or contemporary. But only if you understand the entire process and work with the right manufacturers. This course will enumerate the dos and don’ts of building with prefabricated house parts by taking students through a design process focused on their own individual projects. In addition to appropriate siting, Energy Star and LEED design principles, we will cover how to shop for a manufacturer, what to ask, how to price your home, and what to expect as the construction process unfolds. There will be field trips to fabrication plants, and we will demonstrate how to vet different manufacturers.”
Boy is this beautiful!
Be sure to click on the 4 little arrows at lower right side of screen to enlarge. This is just magnificent.
Discovered by Lew Lewandowski
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HiUMlOz4UQ
Tags: animals, birds, building, farming, fishing, gardening, homes, nature, ocean, people, surfing
Dieter is an adventurer after my own heart (see below post), If he lived closer I’d be hanging out with him. All the stuff he does “resonates” with me, from sailing on a catamaran in Baja California to cruising in Alaskan wilderness waters. He finds ways to have fun out in the natural world. Top pic is Dieter, lower pic is Anne Lee.
Dieter Klose was one of the featured builders in Builders of the Pacific Coast. He recently sent us photos of him and girlfriend Anne Lee collecting moss for a living roof in his boat out of Petersburg, Alaska. He writes: “It’s a renewable resource, and doesn’t house any creepy-crawlies, none that bite anyway.…”
They also collected bark, as a base layer, for moss food. I asked about the boat and location: “The best harvesting comes off of downed dead trees, and boulders, but low branches often have a good load, and even hold what we call “Boa’s”, which are about a foot wide, 6″ thick, and 4′ to 7′ long. They’re the best!…Location is at Scenery Cove, about 18 miles from home by water; total wilderness, although theres all likelihood they will put a hydro plant in that otherwise untouched cove.
The cruiser is custom made for me by a friend, of welded aluminum, and her name is FANG (named after my daughter, Wrenna, whos nickname is white-fang, or Fang for short).
The boat is 21ft long w/ a 150hp outboard, a double bunk, small settee and mini galley. Its a perfect rig for around here, as it goes up to 40mph, comfortably 30mph, as this is not the best place for sailing: too much or too little wind, with lots of tidal current.”
More pics tomorrow…
Healdsburg, northern California yesterday afternoon. Check scroll work at gable.
Barn on road from Healdsburg to Forestville.
The Hop Kiln Winery. Louie says they probably dried apples and other fruits, as well as hops. Look at this stonework.
Got over to the coast around 8PM, went to the recently refurbished Timber Cove Inn to get a couple of draft Boont ales and great hamburger with as-good-as-they-get fries. I knew the architect, Dick Clements, back in the early ’60s.; I cut shakes from a deadfall tree on his land.
Back then I didn’t realize what a great building this is. The place fell into disrepair over the years and was recently bought by people who obviously love it, and they invested a lot to resuscitate it. It’d be a great place to hole up for a weekend away from the city. Right on the ocean, fires burning in bar and restaurant. Good food.
The storm was just blowing in as I got there. Exciting!
After beer and burger, I drove north along the coast as wind-whipped rain pelted the truck.
Sending this out on 2nd day of trip from the Arena Market and Cafe in Pt. Arena. On the way into town this morning was Shake, Rattle and Roll by Big Joe Turner. What a great song! One of my favorite songs when I was 18.
…get in that kitchen, make some noise with the pots ‘n pans.
So gender-incorrect in these times…
It was cold and dark Tuesday night and us runners gathered in front of the unique fireplace at the Pelican Inn. Roger, who’s a builder, remarked on the chimney not smoking at all. Like the fireplaces designed by Count Rumford in the 1700s, the flue here draws perfectly. Being on the floor level, it’s like sitting in front of a camp fire.
“The staff at White Oak Farm is pleased to offer our new and improved Comprehensive Natural Building Apprenticship program for summer 2011. Tyler Walter, Taylor Starr and James Haim will lead the program. The Apprenticeship will span five weeks of fully immersed hands-on experience, as well as field trips, lectures, discussions, slide shows, independent design projects and more. It will be an excellent opportunity for people looking to learn practical natural building skills for their future career or owner-builder projects, as well as for college students seeking an alternative classroom experience…”
https://www.whiteoakfarmcsa.org/nb-apprenticeship/
“…Two of the more remarkable things about the Harris’s home and studio are that there are no blueprints other than a sketch on a piece of paper, and J.D. built most of it by himself, with little help.
‘It’s all in his head,’ Cathy said. ‘He just sketched it to show me what my new home would look like. Every cut and nail is in his head.’
‘It’s all two-by-fours and one-by-twelves,’ J.D. said. ‘I can see this so clearly in my mind, and it stays. It doesn’t just come and go.…’
Others have constructed sloped roofs, J.D. said, but he came up with a way to do it without steaming the wood, which would be impossible for some of the lengths he’s using in his roofs. He figured out a way to put two 2x4s together, put pressure on them and then nail the joints with nails at different angles so the planks hold their curvature.
How did he get 40 feet in the air to do this?
By building the walls from the ground up and making a hand- and foothold “ladder” out of pieces of 2×4 nailed to each vertical section. ‘He hung upside down by his toes from these to do some of the work,’ Cathy said. ‘I couldn’t watch.'”
https://www.lovelycitizen.com/story/1641288.html
Sent us by Fred W. Weisenborn
On Tuesday I did a talk/slide show titled “The Half Acre Homestead in the 21st Century” at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif. The course was titled “Shelter,” inspired by our 1973 book of the same name, and taught by Kristen Sbrogna.
This is the 2nd presentation I’ve done on the subject; the first was at the Maker Faire last year in San Mateo. I started creating a home and surroundings 50 years ago, have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations as they say, and felt that my experiences might be of interest to anyone attempting to evade the bank/mortgage or high rent syndrome of getting a roof over one’s head.
Above: one of the slides, showing our kitchen dish drying/storage rack, built years ago by Lew Lewandowski. Dishes are slid into slots as soon as rinsed and remain there until used again.
The Wabi-sabi sub-community (Ziggy, April, Thomas, and Ali) at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage are seeking individuals to help with building our cooperative kitchen and maintaining our organic vegetable gardens for the summer of 2011.
Are you interested in roundwood timber framing? Do you want to get some hands-on experience building using natural materials? Would you like to experience community life in an off-the-grid, sustainable ecovillage?…
Wabi-sabi wants to host excited work exchangers during April to October 2011 to help with the construction of a timber frame, straw bale and cob kitchen.…
The Wabi-sabi kitchen is a oval structure composed of a reclaimed urbanite foundation, a local roundwood timber frame, and eventually, a reclaimed metal roof and straw bale/cob walls with an attached greenhouse and outdoor cooking space.…
We are seeking builders with timber frame or carpentry experience.
This season, building work will largely consist of helping to design and construct a timber frame from locally harvested roundwood using hand tools. Logs will be cut, split, hewn, mortised, and shaped to build the frame for our kitchen. The ideal candidate would have experience using hand tools to shape logs (saws, adzes, chisels, etc.), but a candidate with more general carpentry experience could be a fine candidate, too. Ultimately, we are seeking an individual excited and enthusiastic to experiment and learn about timber framing techniques and methods!
https://small-scale.net/yearofmud/2011/01/17/timber-frame-and-natural-building-work-exchange/
