Here’s a collection of our best articles about how to build everything from a strawbale chicken coop to a hurricane-proof tinyhouse.
Featuring info on everything from earthbag, strawbale, wattle-and daub and cobb to light earth, and also backyard DIY projects using recycled timber…
Natural Building is rather a broad subject. It takes in everything from strawbale building to cobb, light earth, rammed earth, roundwood construction, earth floors and mud and lime wall renders, just for starters. We figure it’s best to dive straight in, and get hands-on while you get your head around these different construction techniques. Here’s some photos…
On our last Natural Building course, we built a portable reciprocal roundhouse frame. Beauty meets strength meets simplicity. Using sapling logs (though you can use bamboo instead, or framing timber, at a pinch) plus ropes and screws, this structure went up fast and is a great foundation for all sorts of projects.
After completing the strawbale walls and the roundwood, reciprocal roof of the Milkwood Roundhouse, we wanted a gorgeous floor to complete this hand-crafted natural building. So an earthen floor was a natural choice. There’s not much easily accessible info out there on how to make your own earth floor, however. So we’d like to share…
Here’s a funky little guide for getting started with DIY urban rainwater harvesting projects…
The final stage of building the roof of our roundhouse was to transform it into a garden. Living roofs can help insulate the building below, provide pollination sources for surrounding wildlife and help the building blend into the landscape. However, this roof is far from flat. It’s made on a reciprocal frame, to create great…
Reciprocal roof frames are self-supporting structures that date back to the 12th Century. They are used in Chinese and Japanese architecture, as well as being something that Leonardo Da Vinci explored in detail. The interlocking nature of the separate members creates a complimentary tension that, ultimately, results in an extremely strong, self-supporting roof. The theory of it…
Last week we built a home. A round, load-bearing strawbale tiny house with a roundwood reciprocating living roof, to be precise. And when I say ‘built’ I suppose I mean that we got it mostly done. It was amazing to be a part of. I’m going to go into the construction of this building piece…
Reciprocating roof roundhouses are pretty darn cool. They look gorgeous and they are a very good way to quickly make a strong structure with simple, available materials, the right knowledge and a bunch of willing hands. We’ve been researching reciprocating roof structures, but hadn’t as yet had a chance to build one. Luckily Harris has…
Rose has moved into the Earthbag Dome at Milkwood Farm and we can now report that it works. There’s the woodstove to stoke up on cold nights, and the rest of the time it’s a very quiet, very temperature-stable bedroom, with only slight hobbit connotations. One of the things about this earthdome is that it’s…
Our criteria for building the greywater system for the tinyhouse was pretty simple: cheap, made from readily available materials, and effective. We also wanted to use the outputs to irrigate a grove of important fruit trees, as water is very precious here, especially in a dry year. After many, many hours of research on systems…
All drinking water at Milkwood Farm comes from the sky. This means catchment and storage of drinking-quality water is a very big deal for us. And since we’ve got the opportunity to define the quality of our drinking water here (a luxury so many millions of people do not have), we’re determined to get it…