Product Details

• Actors: Mike McCain, Sean Sands
• Directors: Mike McCain, Kelly Hart
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Juniper Ridge Press
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1998
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• ASIN: 0916289257
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #473,644 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

-Library Journal

"An interesting look at alternatives to the traditional wood home.

Product Description

Enjoy a look at a fascinating variety of homes and the creative people who built them! Discover how passive solar design and environmentally low-impact materials can be used to create comfortable and economical homes. See the use of both traditional materials, such as adobe, and innovative materials, such as papercrete and sandbags.

The program begins with an overview of the basic tenets of sustainable architecture. Passive solar design and the use of natural, local, and/or recycled building materials are emphasized.

Building with earth is demonstrated by visits to an adobe block house, an Islamic cultural center made of vaults of adobe, a unique and artistic hut-like house made of piled adobe, and a rammed earth house under construction. The process of building and the nature of the material is described by the people who have done the work.

Various straw bale houses are shown. Both load-bearing and non load-bearing methods are described, with particular attention to the use of natural stucco materials and the need to keep the building skins breathable. A charming dome hermitage made of straw bales is described by both the builder/architect and the resident.

Techniques for earth-sheltering are demonstrated: there is a visit to an earthship under construction. Then a "gallery" of completed earthships accompanied by music provides a break from the technical discussion. A lovely cordwood/earth-sheltered home is described by the owner/builder. A dug-out kiva in the desert, and a unique technique for creating thin-shelled concrete domes with a rotating sectional mold, complete this section on earth-sheltering.

Papercrete, a new building material made with recycled paper and cement, is discussed by two different people who "invented" it. Homes and experimental buildings using this material are shown.

Earthbag (sandbag) building has been gaining popularity. The polypropylene bags can be filled with a variety of earthen materials and then stacked to form walls in the shape of domes or vertical walls. A visit to the dome house of a woman who built it with her grandson is fascinating. The beginning of a dome house created by the producer of this program shows one of these unique structures under construction.

The use of hybrid techniques is demonstrated by an owner/builder who made a round house with conventional wood framing and used straw bales for insulation.

The final section shows the use of existing containers as a shell for a house with the producer's wife taking the viewer on a tour of their bus conversion motorhome.

Included with the video is a resource guide to more information, including addresses and phones of most of the people in the video.

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