GONE BROWN

700 Year Old Houses gone BROWN!

In the north east of Iran at the foot of Mt. Sahand in Kandovan, the villagers live in cave homes carved out from volcanic rock. Some date back more than 700 years.

Just try to imagine how much work it was to build homes into the mountain like this without any power tools.

If this one were painted white, you might think it was a picture of a house along the Mediterranean!

Homes were sculpted into the mountain on all levels.

Don't tell me you wouldn't have loved exploring this place as a kid! How about as an adult?

It this way cool or what?

Inside a furnished/finished home.

These are great examples of human ingenuity AND ultra low building costs!

Have YOU got this disease?

It's not my fault...I've got a disease—a disease I've had to live with for over 10 years now. It's called boredom. I'll bet some of you have it, too.

It's a dis-ease with sameness. A dis-ease with our replicated, dull, assembly-line living.

Oh I know, the process of replication in the manufacturing, housing, textile and automotive industries has led to much more affordable goods—and services too. Thank you very much Henry Ford!


Mr. Ford's assembly line has crept into all areas of our lives bringing us not only cheaper cars, but cheaper food, cheaper housing, cheaper clothing...cheaper everything.


But as is true in all areas of life, every plus comes with a minus. In the process of making life more affordable for everyone, we've lost something.

That something is individuality, a uniqueness that sets us apart—each from the other.


Are you bored with your choices of cars? Cars that all have the same parts, share the same engines and all look alike—many being the exact same vehicle with the only difference being the name plate?



Are you tired of everyone always wearing the same styles, the same footwear, the need for everything to be the "in" thing? If no one else is wearing it, it must not look good.




Builders all use the same lumber—of the same dimensions and lengths. The sheet goods are all a perfect rectangle—each 4 feet wide and 8 feet long.



And so, our houses all look the same, too. I don't know about you...but it all dulls me out—puts me to sleep.


Sameness is rapidly expanding throughout the entire globe.

To deviate usually means you have to pay more...sometimes a lot more. But those of us who are afflicted with this dis-ease have a hard time living with the status quo. Something inside us needs to break out, be different, be unique.

The price we are willing to pay for being different varies from individual to individual, but for each of us the payoff is worth the price.

Do YOU have this dis-ease? If you're not sure, sometimes you can tell by the symptoms, though they may be lying dormant just below the surface, biding their time, waiting for the right moment to burst forth.

Here are just a few examples of the numerous symptoms this dis-ease can manifest. If you have one or more of the following, look out...other symptoms are sure to follow:



Do you "personalize" your vehicle so no one can say, I drive the same thing?





Or do you eat and grow your own organic vegetables?











photo courtesy: Flying Concrete






Maybe your house isn't exactly normal on the outside...





"Round house" photo courtesy: That round house









...or the inside.





photo up, courtesy: Flying Concrete
photo right, courtesy: Busyboo.com



Or, maybe you just dream of such things, a constant haunting of your soul, an itch you just can't allow yourself to scratch.

It isn't always easy to tell if you have this dis-ease. Sometimes the symptoms lie dormant till something triggers them, then...out they come.


If you think you might have this dis-ease, but you're not absolutely sure, you will want to order my book, The Cheap-Ass Curmudgeon's Guide™ to DIRT.


In it, you will find many more symptoms associated with this dis-ease:

- Creativity—you just can't stop thinking outside the "box"
- A fixation for obtainium (making use of found objects)
- Square-corner phobia
- A need to do things your own way
- A compulsion to always ask—why?
- An aversion to building codes
- An obsession to do things as cheaply as possible
- And a host of other symptoms too numerous to mention here.

But that's not all. Inside, you'll also find the formula to "cure" what ails you—step by step instructions on just how to scratch that itch!

So if you think you have any of the early signs of these symptoms—one of which will be an overwhelming desire to find out more—you'll find yourself developing a need to order this book—you'll just have to have it and you won't be satisfied till it's YOURS!

So, get your copy today, discover the cure...it's just a click away! CLICK

How about a DIRT HOUSE? The "dirt" on...dirt

For all you non-believers out there who have read my book and just can't imagine that what I said was true—that you can build a house out of dirt and ONLY dirt, and that you don't always have to have footings—take a look at this...


Here I am standing in front of a 3-story, 35-foot tall building made entirely out of dirt. No stabilizer such as cement or emulsion was used, and there's no straw mixed into the mud. And guess what? It's built without ANY footings—none, nada. (Wonder how they snuck that one by the building inspector?)

Yeah, I'll admit it looks a little rough but consider this—it's around 700 years old and has stood for nearly 600 of those years completely out in the weather before we came along and decided we had better put a protective roof over it.

Here's another shot with someone standing nearby to give you some more perspective on just how big and tall this building really is.

This massive structure with its 3-foot thick walls is located just east of Casa Grande, Arizona and carries the same name "Casa Grande." Casa meaning house, and Grande meaning big or grand.

Following are more pictures and some images of a few of the information stations around the site. (Click on the images to enlarge the print.)



Here is a cut-away drawing so you can see how the floors were constructed. Some parts of the interior floors are still intact.



Below you see an example of the plastered walls. The finish was very smooth and is in really nice shape where it still exists. The beams and supporting rods in this picture were added as supports over 100 years ago.



How did those who built this amazing building come up with the perfect mixture of sand and clay (caliche) to make their adobe mud last so long? They didn't. They just used what happened to be right there. Caliche is made up almost entirely of clay. (So much for having to have the perfect mix of sand/clay/straw/stabilizer in order to have one of these buildings last.)

Here is one of many places in the walls where passers-by have scratched their names and initials long ago.



A blow up of one such name and date that someone carved in the wall in 1870, nearly 140 years ago.

Photos by Monica and Michael Van Hall

CONSTRUCTION PUPPY

After numerous requests (and many "ruff-ruffs" and "grrr-grrrs"" from you know who about not showing up yet in my blog) I thought I had better show you all a few pictures of Gizmo the construction puppy featured in my book.

"Wanna play?"

"Yipee!!!"









"Just follow me!"







"Oh... if only."















"I know, I know!"

POOR BASTARD

Here are a few illistrations from my book, The Cheap-Ass Curmudgeon's Guide to DIRT.

This poor bastard is one of many who have not read the book and are still using the old brick-n-mortar method of building with adobe.





I feel sorry for him. It's a very difficult, hard, tedious, tiring and never ending method of building.


It would have been so easy...if only he had read the book!

First Blog, First Book, First Everything!!!

My new book is out! "The Cheap-Ass Curmudgeon's™ Guide to DIRT"—Hand building with Adobe, paper-crete, paper-adobe, and more...in HALF the time with HALF the effort!

Check it out at www.cheapasscurmudgeon.com