Building A Low Impact Roundhouse

In Building a Low Impact Roundhouse, Tony shares his many years of experience, skills, and techniques used to build this unique and affordable low-impact home. Always witty and inspiring, the author explains the process of visualizing and designing a house through to the practical side of lifting the living roof, infilling the walls, laying out rooms, and adding renewable, autonomous technology. Building a Low Impact Roundhouse has become a classic text sold all over the world. Tony's home and lifestyle have attracted much media interest, and he and his partner continue to inspire many individuals and communities to seek out ways of living more sustainably. Now in its third edition, with a fascinating ten-year update including a major new section on the couple's marvelous straw bale den, Tony also includes sections on the physical design, and he writes about the lifestyle required for living in a roundhouse. He offers advice on roofs, floors, walls, compost toilets, wood stoves, kitchens, windows, and planning permission. There are additional photographs of life in and around the dwelling and illustrations from the construction plans for one of the UK's most unique homes. This true and captivating story covers the realizing of a lifetime's dream as well as being a practical how to manual for anyone who loves the idea of low-impact living and wants to self-build an affordable, organic home.

The author designed, built and, with his partner Faith, lives in a simple, turf-covered, wood and cobwood, low impact roundhouse. He wrote a book Building a Low Impact Roundhouse (Permanent Publications) to describe the process. In the fifteen years that have elapsed since the roundhouse becoming known about, Tony has been asked several times to run and supervise courses in which participants build a simple roundhouse over two to four weeks. In this book he uses the experience of those courses and other builds to produce a thorough 'How To' manual covering Site, Design and Planning, Drainage and Stem Wall, the Henge, the Reciprocal Frame roof, Walls, and Roof covering. From the words, diagrams and over one hundred colour photographs here, you will be able to design and build your own simple roundhouse. Preferably in a group, because that is more fun. The tips in this book will enable you to build a simple roundhouse very cheaply and quickly. This manual should be a part of your toolkit.

Simple and beautifully illustrated introduction to the use of reciprocal frame structures in architecture.

This definitive manual marks the birth of a new vernacular for the 21st century. Over 400 color photographs and step-by-step instructions guide you through the building of anything from a garden shed to your own woodland house. This practical how to book will unquestionably be a benchmark for sustainable building using renewable local resources and evolving traditional skills to create durable, ecological, and beautiful buildings.

Cordwood construction - log-ends set in insulated mortar - is a versatile, economical, low-impact, and beautiful building method. Its durability and performance has been proven in beautiful, centuries-old buildings in North America and Europe. Yet until now, there has been no trusted, practical guide to cordwood construction using the material in a wide variety of construction projects. Distilling decades of experience and best practices, Essential Cordwood Building is the first fully illustrated, step-by-step guide to cordwood building. Ideal for the DIYer and professional designer and builder alike, it covers: Wood species selection, log-end length, and seasoning Cement, lime putty, and cob mortar options Wall cavity insulation options Budgeting and estimating Highly illustrated, step-by-step building techniques Window and door frame installation Pointing and chinking, finishing, and plastering Special designs and decorative features Code references, compliance, building science, and best practices Troubleshooting and maintenance

Grow your own seasonal food in a low maintenance, nature-friendly garden that feels like a woodland glade. Scottish plant expert Alan Carter shows you how to plan and plant a temperate forest garden for any sized plot--from a small terrace garden to an allotment or smallholding. Learn how to successfully layer root crops, fruit, perennial vegetables and edible shrubs below tree crops, cultivating an edible garden that doesn't look like a traditional vegetable plot. A forest garden is wildlife friendly, provides nutrient-dense and often unusual food through every season, and requires minimal work to maintain. The first part of this in-depth, practical guide explains how a forest garden works, how to map your climate and design your own plot, and how to manage it with mulching, weeding and pruning. What's not to like about Alan's motto of "the more you pick, the more you get," and intriguing concepts such as the Panda Principle? The second half of the book is a detailed directory of more than 170 plants and fungi suitable for a wide range of temperate climates, complete with growing, harvesting and cooking tips based on over a decade of Alan's own experience. Learn how to incorporate traditional fruit and vegetable crops, such as strawberries and beans, into your forest garden, and how to weave in more unusual crops, such as shiitake mushrooms and ferns. Techniques from agro-ecology bring regenerative farming into the backyard, helping you to work towards greater self-sufficiency. Useful tips on seed saving and propagation help keep plant costs low, and there is practical advice on soil health, compost--essential for all no dig, organic gardeners--and pests and disease. A Food Forest in Your Garden will help you create your own productive forest gardens even in cooler climates.

Self-Build Homes connects the burgeoning interdisciplinary research on self-build with commentary from leading international figures in the self-build and wider housing sector. Through their focus on community, dwelling, home and identity, the chapters explore the various meanings of self-build housing, encouraging new directions for discussions about self-building and calling for the recognition of the social dimensions of this process, from consideration of the structures, policies and practices that shape it, through to the lived experience of individuals and households.Divided into four parts – Discourse, Rationale, Meaning; Values, Lifestyles, Imaginaries; Community and Identity; and Perspectives from Practice – the volume comes at a time of renewed focus from policy managers and practitioners, as well as prospective builders themselves, on self-build as a means for producing homes that are more stylised, affordable and appropriate for the specific needs of households. It responds to recent advances in housing and planning policy, while also bringing this into conversation with interdisciplinary perspectives from across the social sciences on housing, home and homemaking. In this way, the book seeks to update understandings of self-build and to account for housing as a distinctly social process.

Analyzing the movement's deep-seated origins in questions that the country has sought too long to ignore, some of the greatest economic minds and most incisive cultural commentators - from Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, Michael Lewis, Robert Reich, Amy Goodman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gillian Tett, Scott Turow, Bethany McLean, Brandon Adams, and Tyler Cowen to prominent labor leaders and young, cutting-edge economists and financial writers whose work is not yet widely known - capture the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon in all its ragged glory, giving readers an on-the-scene feel for the movement as it unfolds while exploring the heady growth of the protests, considering the lasting changes wrought, and recommending reform. A guide to the occupation, The Occupy Handbook is a talked-about source for understanding why 1% of the people in America take almost a quarter of the nation's income and the long-term effects of a protest movement that even the objects of its attack can find little fault with.