build my eco home

We are starting to make plans for our new place we are putting up this summer. It won’t be the place that we want to have indefinately … it will just be a temporary place while we get our $hit together for the final place. This place needs to come down, so we are tearing it town as soon as we can. We’ll be living in the cabin for the summer and the girls in the barn. I am hoping to get my mom’s camper up here on loan so that we have a kitchen that is easier to work out of. I love cooking on the fire.. but lets face it.. a few days rain .. or weeks – and it isn’t fun anymore:) Plus with all the bears in our property it would be nice to have something as a back up :) The shower needs to be built and the outhouse is already there so things should go smooth. Very excited.. but very nervous!

of Cordwood that I think looks great.
This was at a guys place we got to see -completely off grid and made from cordwood – really beautiful house but WAY too big.. lol
anyways here is a feature wall in his living room he designed with his wife, i think it is beautiful.. I just may steal this idea;)

Now that we are done our course and we came home to finish the goal of building the barn! yes the barn it built – YAY! We are planning on building in the spring, there is still some discussion as to what medium we are going to use for infill. I know for sure the frame willbe timberframe. I am partial to straw but that would take more money and energy (which means more pollution) than using the pine beetle killed trees out back (there are 67 just behind the house), so I think we are leaning towards cordwood even though I think it is too busy.. but it can be beautiful if you are mindful of the patterns you are creating. Here is dare working on a pattern he designed for a community garden work shed and the class helped him put it together

Well not accually building our home.. but are in school for learning to build:) We are on day two of our eco home building course and it is pretty damn exciting! I know alot of the information so far, but the practical hands on stuff will be amazing! This afternoon we get to take a”fieldtrip” to a strawbale home in town here.. looking forward to it!

so now we know the building course is from July 2 to August 8th.. which unfortunately interferes with alot of things.. specially Clinton War:( (sca war on Augest long weekend) but I am so excited to go.. I am finally going to learn the skills we need to build our own eco home! Most of the people who were going to attend with us have dropped out already… but hey.. more time for me and Dare to be alone!

We found out about a natural building course next summer in Kimberly that we want to take:)It touches base on several different building methods and it is all hands on;) 3 weeks of it. So far besides Dare and I, we have 4 other friends who also want to take the course. This will be awesome cause being away from home for 3 weeks we’ll be able to have over half a dozen of us camp together somewhere and this crew that wants to join us knows how to camp! Rory has a full kitchen that he hauls around with him to different events and we all have so much in common that I think it would be a blast.
http://www.cotr.bc.ca/natural/

Our dream is to build an Eco home on our land. We haven’t come to 100% agreement of if we are using strawbale, earthbag or cordwood yet, or a combination of all.