HGTV Extreme Homes- info

Interested in UNUSUAL house ideas?

Don't miss HGTV "WORLD'S EXTREME HOMES" shown on Monday nights at 9:00 pm {Pacific} In the past they have shown some amazing, owner built, wild, wacky and ingenious homes!

Extreme Builder Dan Phillips' completely recycled house in Texas has been featured, as well as ferrocement domes, underground dwellings, castles, and solar engineered designs that take advantage of passive solar energy.

Other good programs on alternative building and salvage/repurpose building are: What's With That House?!, RE-Zoned ( turning odd buildings like firehouses, schools, grocery stores & churches into cool homes) and Generation Renovation also old buildings into creative living spaces.

---

Alternative-low cost building webgroups:

Go to www.groups.yahoo.com to JOIN
organic_architecture@yahoogroups.com

NEW GROUP:Papercrete-fibercrete papercreters@yahoogroups.com

Also see the Ferrocemnt site www.ferrocement.net

PHOTO: This Ferrocement Castle is the home of Nolan Scheid, of Eugene Oregon, who spent eight years building a multidome design, with tower and turret. (The tower is now a guest room with a 20 foot tall ceiling!, but will eventually host an elevator to the top floor where guest quarters will be added. Nolan sells a Stucco Sprayer that can be used for DIY ferrocement projects.

The huge egg shapes rocks that line the entry used to be buried in the earth right under the construction site for the home...talk about double work! They had to be excavated-- many, many multi-ton rocks...and moved before the home could be built. Talk about a persistent DIY builder!

The stones are an elegant reminder of the power of nature- they were thrown by volcanic erruptions millions of years ago, and slowly buried over time.