What if you could build an attractive, energy-efficient home for as little as $10/sqft? Think it's impossible? Think again.
Find out how below the fold.
So, how does one build a cheap, energy-efficient home? The answer is around you every day, dirt.
Cob houses are made with a mixture of clay, straw, sand, earth and water. The ingredients are similar to an adobe brick home, but, unlike adobe homes, cob houses can be built in wet areas and areas prone to earthquakes. Because the earth walls of a cob home are typically more than 2ft thick, they are naturally energy-efficient. Meaning cob homes stay cool in the summer, and warm in the winter.
Cob homes also give home-owners more control over design and construction. They are owner-built, and the unique nature of the material gives the owner-builder the ability to create nearly any kind of design. With a little help from your friends and a few free weekends, you can build your own cob home for next to nothing, often from materials that are already on site.
Cob homes are durable, too! In the UK there are cob homes that have been standing for over 500 years.
For more information about cob homes, go here.
In an economy where housing prices are crashing, and mortgages are getting ever more difficult to procure, cob building could open up the "American dream" of home ownership to people who never before could have even imagined owning their own home. And, you can use all that money you are saving on labor, contruction, and materials to install a solar/wind hybrid system making you completely energy-efficient and energy-independent.
UPDATE (LINKS)
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/...
http://www.naturalbuildingnetwork.or...
http://www.cobcottage.com/
http://weblife.org/... (The first few chapters of The Cob Builders Handbook)