We publish the House Alive! Newsletter about six times a year. With its to-the-point articles and updates on natural building techniques, appropriate technology and design, it is a great way to keep Natural building on the front burner! To sign up, just provide your email address in the form to the right (House Alive! has a privacy policy!). The current article is displayed below; you can read older articles by following the links on the right.

Building a House With a Spouse

Posted by Coenraad Rogmans on November 1, 2008 –

OK, it’s a funny rhyme, but it is a serious occasion. Building a house with the one you love can be a dangerous undertaking for your relationship. Many married couples end up divorced after several years of working on a house together. Often the house then has to be sold in order to pay the legal fees. What started out as a dream became a personal catastrophe: No house, no partner and financial distress. How does that happen? Read More »

Soft Materials

Posted by Coenraad Rogmans on August 31, 2008 –

It is important to consider the characteristics of the materials you bring into your house. By understanding how they effect you, you can then choose use materials that will make your living condition more pleasant, harmonious, functional, and healthy. These very important considerations are mostly overlooked in the conventional building industry.

Building materials have many different characteristics. They may be heavy or light, locally harvested or from far away, rough or smooth, synthetic or natural. One often overlooked but very important quality of materials is their hardness. Over the years I have come to appreciate the implications that harder versus softer materials have on the quality of our home and life. Read More »

“Cob Speed”

Posted by Coenraad Rogmans on May 31, 2008 –

In the early Eighties I read a very interesting little book by a philosopher named Ivan Illich. The book was about driving cars and started out by calculating the average speed at which a car travels in its lifetime. Want to guess? The answer is 6 miles per hour. This is true because you can’t measure the speed on the speedometer alone; you have to take the annual amount of functional miles you drive and then divide that by the total time you spend in your car (including traffic jams), the time you spend taking care of your car (washing, bringing it to the shop), waiting at the shop, getting gas, changing the oil, changing a flat, buying and selling the car, dealing with an accident, and, often overlooked, you also have to count the time you spend working so that you can afford the car (as well as the insurance, maintenance, and gas). How about working to pay taxes to build roads? Read More »