From The Independent: How I built my house for £4,000. When he’s expecting visitors, Steve James watches out the windows so he can catch the look on their faces when they see his house for the first time. It’s always the same, he say. There’s an intense stare and total mystification, as if they can’t [...]
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Do people who own waterfront property worry about rising sea levels? I would, and if I were building a home near sea level on Pilot Bay, say, I might opt for an ark-style dwelling. Perhaps I’m not the only one thinking this way. From csmonitor.com: A growing answer to rising seas: floating homes A floating [...]
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Ooh, this is fun: top 10 smallest houses in the world at trouvetout.ca. That rolling German thing… oh my! And if your crawl-space is flooded right now, you might conclude that the last house shown is perfect for Gabriola. In other small house news, the The Parasitic Cabin of San Francisco is delightful.
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You’ve seen some of the huge trees in the Elder Cedar (S’ul-hween X’pey) Nature Reserve, and perhaps elsewhere on the island, too. Maybe you’ve crowded inside one of Gabriola’s hollow old trees or stumps with your friends while someone snapped a photo. Did it ever occur to you that the base of some old-growth trees [...]
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When I see lots for sale on Gabriola, I daydream about the sort of houses I might build on them. How am I to resist, especially considering my interest in alternative housing? So I send you, my dears, to consider the earthship. Could you live in one? Would this kind of design be just the [...]
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Do you have property on Gabriola, but no house upon it? Here’s an interesting possibility, then: Ecopods. Operating with an 80 watt solar panel and minimal electrical needs there is no need to run power lines or trench power cables to the unit, it’s ready to use minutes after setup. [continue]
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It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about houses and such, but of course I’m always on the lookout for interesting small house designs — houses I can imagine seeing on Gabriola, and houses that are appealing enough to make me think I could live there! Here’s today’s cool little house: timberframe prefab cabin. Rather [...]
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Here’s a shelter that could help homeless Haitians (or, um, homeless people on Gabriola). It’s cheap to build, and you can make one yourself. It’s a hexayurt. Wired.com explains. With just $100 worth of plywood and screws, almost anyone can build a shelter known as a Hexayurt that can last three years and possibly even [...]
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These days I spend a lot of time thinking about low-impact housing, small houses, and also inexpensive houses. Sometimes those topics intersect, as they might with some kinds of yurts, for example. Sure, it’s expensive to buy a yurt from one of those specialist yurt companies, but there are cheaper alternatives. One is the Gertee, [...]
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Do you know about yurts? They’re round dwellings, made of fabric over a light wood frame. (See a variety of Yurts here on Google images.) Traditionally used by nomads in places like Mongolia, yurts can be set up or collapsed within a couple of hours — just the thing if you want to move around [...]
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We get serious amounts of rain on Gabriola in the winter months, and we know people on the island whose basements and crawl-spaces flood every year. We also know some people whose Gabriola property is very swampy. With that in mind, I was fascinated by the land-locked floating house. (Go look!) How amazing is that? [...]
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A fun and interesting friend visited last week (I am trying to convince her to start a Gabriola blog, though I don’t know if she’s realized that yet) and we wound up talking about small houses. Here’s one she showed me: the Glidehouse. The company behind it uses phrases like sustainable, modern, modular homes. Looks [...]
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If my property on Gabriola didn’t have a house on it, I’d be thinking seriously about small house designs. (Had you guessed?) Here’s an interesting one: …the Osprey is approximately 523 square feet of efficiently designed living space with one bedroom, one bath, a large great room and integrated decks that provide a generous living [...]
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Imagine a log cabin that’s completely different from any log cabin you’ve ever seen. Now go look at hey, that’s not how you build a log cabin at gizmodo.com. Cool or what? I want one.
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In the galaxy of off-the-grid living, their pad is cooler than yours. Now, just from that sentence, what kind of accommodation are you imagining? Think of a place that: …sleeps six; contains a hot-water shower, kitchen, fridge and freezer; sports floor-to-ceiling wood paneling; and features a music studio with a stand-up piano. Have you imagined [...]
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You’ve seen some stunningly expensive houses for sale on Gabriola. There’s that one down on the waterfront that costs more than I can imagine spending on anything short of saving the world. Then there’s the massive property with enough land and buildings to house a religious cult. Then there’s…. oh, you get the idea. We’ve [...]
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We keep hearing about the housing shortage on Gabriola, and I keep finding shelters like this hidden in the Gabriola woods. What would be the best way to solve the problem? One possibility is tiny little houses like this one: The builder explains:
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