I have been between jobs for coming up on two months now and I have taken advantage of this free time and the beautiful Vermont autumn by walking around a lot. Hiking is a good way for me to come up with fifteen great ideas an hour, and I have been focusing lately on houses. I have always had an interest in architecture and I am looking forward to building my own remotely situated house somewhere in the next few years. My friend and former employer JS built himself a small cabin out in the woods in upstate New York that he lived in while building a house for his family, I take that as inspiration for this whole business.
The current plan is wide and ever changing, but the basic idea is to be really, really far away from other people, get a shipping container or two from the Port of Boston (word on the street is they’re going for about four grand plus transit costs), and set up shop in those while I build the dream house. The main conceit: seasonal walls. Indoor space becomes outdoor space in the summer time. The black fly aspect hasn’t been thought through yet.
I also get to think about all the times in my years of looking I’ve come across individuals and families inventing tremendous solutions for heating, cooling and powering their homes and businesses efficiently and off the grid. I am not sure how I came across this particular site, but Dr. Tom Chalko of Australia has come up with some very, very good ways to build a house off the grid at maximum efficiency for not very much money. One of these great ideas is the conversion of a chest freezer (as pictured above) into a refrigerator. It’s considerably more efficient than a stand-up refrigerator, which is good for people off the grid and people just looking to replace their aging, inefficient refrigerator. The energy savings are so remarkable it will pay for itself after a few years, if you still pay for electricity, that is.
Other great, inexpensive ideas Tom has implemented include straightforward reflective solar heating, insulating windows with bubble wrap (it’s really cheap, really efficient, and looks good), geodesic greenhouses that withstand substantial winds, a really cool heat pump/geothermal heating system, and a common sense way to improve the efficiency of your woodstove.
