Alternative Home Construction

When deciding to construct a house, we must look at alternative home construction as well.

We look at the surroundings, the climate and the local materials available for construction, the cost of local labor available when one is constructing a home etc. One must open our minds and look at alternative home construction, as well, rather than being rigid in our minds. For instance, if one were building a house in the desert, it would not be very sensible to use wood as it would need quite a lot of maintenance. Also if there is not much wood locally, one would have to procure it from other places and then one would end up paying quite a bit on transportation. For building a house in the desert, the sensible options would be Earth ship rammed earth, traditional adobe, strawbale and cement block of which the best would be strawbale.

If one is already living in a motorhome and then wishes to build a house, it makes sense to build a house around the motorhome, since atleast you have a place to stay and can keep a watch on your new construction. As your new house progresses, then you can move your motorhome forward. What is needed is out-of-the-block thinking if you are seriously considering alternative home construction.

While constructing such a house, it is better to use a foundation of concrete which is about two by three feet. It would be preferable to use steel pipe for the framing – a horizontal welded steel pipe at the top and a concrete header poured around it. The verticals should be on three feet centers since generally the strawbales have a length which is about three feet. Every second course should have a horizontal rebar which should be welded to all the other verticals in the wall and around the corners into the next wall.

Use rebars which are long enough to go through two bales, plus about eight inches above the bale and about two feet into the concrete foundation, should go through the bale vertically. After you put the third bale in place, another rebar needs to be welded to the first, which should be long enough to go through the next two bales plus about eight inches over and above that, with the rebar being forced through the bales. All the exterior walls should be strawbales with welded rebars for the purpose of reinforcement.

Apart from the idea of looking at alternative home construction, one must look at apartment construction cost, as well.