GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN Stuff … we all have it. I’m as guilty as the next person of accumulating questionably necessary possessions. I was reminded of that only this morning when I ventured down to the basement of my apartment building to get my tent out of the storage […]
GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN After I wrote this title I decided that perhaps the metaphor is slightly off. It seems to be more a question of albedo, the distinction between the many shiny-nesses of green. As Denise mentioned on Tuesday, this weekend our family met in Madison and […]
So, last weekend my husband, two grown daughters and I settled comfortably into our daughter’s Toyota Corolla (the greenest car among us as present) and motored down to Chicago to refill our spiritual cisterns from the wealth of cultural treasure only a city can amass and to check out some […]
GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN Why work with an architect when you can just hire any contractor, buy a plan off the internet or even … design it yourself? A professional designer is trained to help you solve the problems you’ve been wrestling with as well as others you never […]
GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ve seen the term “whole trees” a number of times. Doug and Denise have decided that they want their new home to be a whole tree house. They won’t be living in the air, however. Here’s […]
GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN Whole Trees Architecture and Construction Before you even start thinking about the specific design of your building, you can have a huge impact on its comfort and cost by choosing the site wisely. Issues of solar gain, prevailing winds, and drainage are key, as well […]
Today’s guest post is written by Della Hansmann of Whole Trees Architecture and Construction , a young architect who is designing the house we expect to build in 2012. See more here. You don’t have to make a building more expensive or technologically complex to make it sustainable. Before entering […]
There is a long and continuing saga to the barn you see in my blog title up there. Our farm needed a barn — someplace to store the equipment we were accumulating to take care of the land. A place we could camp in comfort, and a staging area to […]
Though I’ve already applied some of it, I’m still digesting the feast of info from 20th Energy Fair of the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) June 19-21 near Custer, Wisconsin. It’s a great gathering of people who are learning how to live more lightly, and it just feels good to […]
Building a house is a big frigging deal! The Real Estate Blog says that 2.1 million houses were built in the U.S. last year, and that half of them are now sitting empty. I don’t even want to think about the cost to the environment and the boost in our […]
Digging in the Driftless 