The Hand Sculpted House

The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage Building with earth is nothing new to America; the oldest structures on the continent were built with adobe bricks. Adobe, however, has been geographically limited to the Southwest. The limits of cob are defined only by the builder's imagination.Cob has been a traditional building process for millennia in Europe, even in rainy and windy climates like the British Isles, where many cob buildings still serve as family homes after hundreds of years. The technique is newly arrived to the Americas.Cob houses (or cottages, since they are almost always efficiently small by American construction standards) are not only compatible with their surroundings, they are their surroundings, literally rising up from the earth. They are full of light, energy-efficient, and cozy, with curved walls and built-in, whimsical touches.

Save Your Poop!

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure

For over thirty years, Joe Jenkins has been pooping in a bucket and saving it. No, this isn't some sick Howard Hughes imitation. Rather it's a simple, safe and well documented method of recycling human waste into high grade compost. Conventional "wisdom" holds that the best way to treat human excrement is to dilute a few ounces of it with at least four gallons of drinking water, then run it through an expensive processing facility that more or less completely fails to remove pathogens before releasing it into the watershed.

Joe's book, The Humanure Handbook, explains in detail his method of turning human waste into safe, rich compost using nothing more advanced than a five gallon bucket and fresh sawdust. His method is cheap (less than $25 in parts will get you started) and surprisingly straight-forward. All you need to know about the system fits on a few pages (a free download able instruction set is available here). The rest of the book is extensive documentation, both anecdotal and scientific, of the system's safety and usefulness in retaining nutrients and saving water.

Now in its third edition, the book is sold in over 57 countries and at least three languages. Last year Joe was hired by the government of Mongolia to work with their sanitary engineers to develop classes to show people how to build and safely use a humanure toilet.

Buy.com has a great price on the book and free shipping on orders over $25. Click on the image below to go to their listing.

Welcome!

Since getting involved in the Natural Building Network (www.naturalbuildingnetwork.org), I find myself increasingly exposed to tools and information that would make a difference in the world if more people knew about them. So this blog is dedicated to the people who dare to do.