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How long did it take you to build? What about permits/codes...did you have a hard time?
Very inspiring!
Took us a whole summer to build it, only 450 sq ft. footprint + upstairs. We did it all with hand tools since we had no power at that time, just the 2 of us except roofing & plastering parties.
That's awesome:} Did you do it legally? I want to buy land so badly and I feel like it would be hopeless to ever convince anyone in Oakland County to allow such construction...
Friends of mine built their house in Colorado out of straw bales, plastered over with stucco. I live in the SW, and the adobe homes that have double or triple thickness walls are cool and comfortable.
I have considered building a house based on a heated slab and framed with structural steel in filled with straw bales coated with cement stucco on the outside and lime plaster on the inside walls. The original space would be completely open with eventual internal privacy dividers framed with steel studs and regular drywall. Most of the heat would be provided by an old tech diesel co-gen fueled with waste vegetable oil to back up solar or geothermal cheat collection.
If you were so empowered would you build and live in a structure other than the traditional wood-frame house? What would you build for yourself and what is stopping you?
FWIW.
My female cousin, in her mid-twenties, with a low paid job (college grad, though) working with kids, and her parents deceased, built a native American Indian (and she is not native American) teepee and put a coal or wood burning stove in the middle and lived in it close to two years. In Pennsylvania. She paid rent to live on a friend's backyard land and used her bathroom. One day, the top of her teepee caught fire and she had to move out <g>! I was amazed at her creative solution. Now she's married with a kids and lives in a conventional house.
Of all my buildings larger than 200 sq ft,
* 2 are traditional stick constxn - 1 predates me; 1 I built;
* 1 is close to traditional stick, except that it was 2 modular prefabs melded together - also predates me;
* four are log;
* 1 is timberframe;
* 1 is a glorified carport comprising two shipping containers and some roof trusses.
The next significant building I plan to erect will be a full shipping container structure.
Reasons for not having built it yet:
1. It's next in line!
2. It will not be on this site, and am still looking around for suitable land for it.
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Alternate housing
