Alaska

I was thinking, what if within a year I have enough money to buy a piece of land where I'm at now. Then I will use that as a home base. Then I will set out towards Alaska and find land for sale in Alaska and build one house in Alaska every summer of every year starting next year. And the good thing about living in Alaska is the "permanent distribution fund". Which means that if you can verify that I lived there for 2 weeks out of the year I think, then I'll get 3000$ a year(or whatever it is that year). Then you can buy another piece of land every year and improve the land by building a house on it. Also each house would need boat access to a town in the summer and snow mobile access to a nearby town in the winter.

I have a video on how to build a cabin in Alaska, so I would start out by making my first one with the most obvious and proven methods and then experiment with new techniques on later cabins.

Why is this a good investment of time and money?

1. live in the cabin rent free

2. rent out the cabin to tourists

3. sell the self built cabin for what it's worth or less(you make money the buyer makes money/win,win) and move onto building another one

4. exercise for the rest of my life to lose weight.

5. just the experience of it and knowing how to build my own house in many different ways.

6. The demand for housing in alaska is high while the supply is low. Therefore cabins are expensive so there's high potential to profit.

7. learn how to utilize the environment to find fresh berries or fish or caribou or goats, or rabbits, birds, duck eggs

8. nicest city in america is anchorage alaska

9. No more risky living in the city(accidents, crime, no land, noise,)

10. no more bills (cell pnone, car insurance, electricity, plumbing, cable, internet, food, movies, holidays)

11. everyone always says the city is boring anyway.

12. no building codes or any other laws or rules.

New house production method

This is a method for a structure anywhere where there is dirt.

First dig an under ground chamber, then gather clay from that dirt by separating clay and sand by mixing dirt with water, in a pit, until a mud slurry and then leaving to dry for the smallest clay particles to settle on the top.

Then on the interior of this underground chamber, you will put one solid unbroken strand of steel wool along the walls of the chamber. This may be done in sections. Then you will put a layer of clay over the steel wool.

Now hook up a high amperage power source like a car battery to both ends of the steel wool making sure that none of the steel wool is exposed to air, therefore not oxidizing and burning away.

And the final product of this is a ceramic wall that is water proof and structural. The more energy going through the wires the hotter the wires will get.

An alternative method of doing the same thing is put lots and lots of already burning hot coals into the underground chamber and then sealing in all of the heat by sealing off the chamber. The more coals put in, and the smaller the chamber, the hotter the temperature will get and the better the clay will turn into ceramic.

New house design for 2009

My current most well thought out simplest house is a cave house. I've come to this conclusion for the following reasons:

1. We can! We are the only species on earth capable of making their own cave out of rock.
2. Our planet has been around for a long time, and that naturally gives our planet lots of mountain ranges that have formed over eons, so lots of places to make cave houses.
3. High supply, and low demand means mountainous terrain is CHEAP!
   
4. There is no need for air conditioning, AT ALL, EVER AGAIN, even if it's solid state and never needs repair, or energy to run.
5. Once you build it, this house will be there for eternity. Site: Cave paintings.
6. We have the tools necessary like homemade explosive charges and electric blast cord, and hammer and chisel and jackhammer, and generators to power it, and pick axe, and some rocks are easy to chisel out.
7. The only fire possible is from the contents of the house.
8. It's weather proof other than water leaking from fissures(just use silicone).
   
9. There is constant wind power right outside the door, because along the sides of cliffs and buildings there is a natural chimney effect(Bernoulli's principle) as air flows across the top of a cliff or building, air will travel up the sides from the bottom.
10. You'll have the biggest house around(mountain sized).
    

My last house design was "New technology in a futuristic cabin".

Phone, Internet, and TV: "wireless broadband mobile internet". If you can get cellphone reception where you are. Also see my free cable post. And have a Google android for house phone, if it can connect to the wifi of the mobile internet, and a go phone for emergencies.
Food: Be on a south facing part of the mountain, and grow food nearby, or collect from the forest. and have a road to a nearby town also.
Dishes: Make pottery from self separated clay, which you get from the way you make adobe, and fire them in a self made oven/kiln. Making adobe: First you dig a hole, then you fill it with water, then you fill the hole back in with dirt, and then mix it up. What you will end up with once the hole dries up in 1 day, is clay that has settled at the top and sand that has settled at the bottom of the hole. Now you just skim the clay off of the top, and mix it with sand in the proper portions to make adobe. This is useful for a structural and heat retentive component of a house. You can also include hay mixed in with it, acting as a binding material so it won't crack, for structural adobe. Adobe is also useful when making a rocket stove.
Lighting, Cooking, Heating, Fridge, Transportation: All electric and solid state.
Toilet, Shower,Clothes washing: Toilet is the outdoors (bury it for no smell, also test a post hole digger). Shower the same way as Alaskans, a rag and bucket of soapy water. Bucket of soapy water and plunger for clothes.
Electric: Wind power enough to fill the batteries. Or just solar power.
Income: A home business of some kind like as seen in my home business post, so that you won't have to commute to work.
Road access: Build your own dirt gravel road out of the chips left over from excavation.
Excavating: Use a pick axe for soft rock and osmocote and chemical fertilizer for hard rock. Video

This would be one of the most fun houses ever also because first of all you'd be living like the Flintstones and it would be just like when you used to build forts as a kid however precarious they were. Start out with just a cave and whenever you feel you're lacking anything, just add a new amenity to make yourself more comfortable, with all the spare time you have from not working 8 hours a day to pay a mortgage.

Instant Roof

I just posted this on whynot.net

Have a factory that produces a solid sheet of 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick plastic that is 20 foot wide and cut at intervals to be a length of about 50 feet or whatever. But the general idea is that you roll up the finished product to transport it to a building site and then at the building site you just unroll it and put it on top of the house, as well as attach it in whatever way works best. This roof will last forever because it's plastic and may not blow away in the wind if it's thick and heavy plastic. It could be an arched roof or an A shaped roof. An arched roof may just be easier because it's the natural shape left over from being rolled up. Also for natural lighting just cut out a hole of any shape in the roof, and put a frosted translucent plastic window over that hole, for easy energy savings during the day.
The plastic to make the roof sheet out of could be recycled and any color. In the same way that they make imitation wood planks out of recycled plastic. Also this kind of roof would be a good insulator already because it is made of plastic, but an alternative may be to make it out of rubber. And you could always just spray foam the underside of the roof.

R - Value In Alaska

The wiki page I got this info from was"R-Value (insulation)" which is otherwise called heat resistivity. Not to be confused with U-Value which is otherwise called heat retention.

The best spray foam is Closed cell polyurethane spray foam. And a close 2nd is open cell polyurethane spray foam. These are all better than wood as an insulator

The following R-values are average per inch, based on available results:

Straw Bales: R-1.45
Wood Panels: R-2.5
Open Cell Polyurethane Spray Foam: R-3.6
Closed Cell Polyurethane Spray Foam: R-5.5
Silica Aerogel: R-10 (Best possible insulation for a window material. Hope it's available someday on the mass market.)

So if living in Alaska it would be wise to spend a tiny bit more to use spray foam in your cabin instead of wood. Spray foam is also easier to work with and can be sprayed onto a geodesic dome, with shingled plastic for water proofing utilizing "grip clips". The floor of cabins in Alaska are often dirt floors, but before installing any type of floor, just prevent flooding of a that floor in the geodesic dome, by halfway burying a solid water barrier material sheet around the perimeter of the dome.

You could also add heat retention(A.K.A. U-Value) to the already well insulated structure by putting moss or dirt on top of the geodesic dome. This is free, and only adds to the insulation quality, and also the natural woodsy look. But just spray foam or air foam should be enough insulation. And fire proof it all with a stucco coating.

Most cabins in Alaska are very small also because of the hassle of collecting more wood to heat bigger sized cabins. So a small one room cabin is normal in Alaska which means the cost of spray foam would be minimal, from such a small surface area to be insulated. Just be sure to make a sturdy geodesic dome out of hardwood(bamboo?) or metal bars so that the house can't collapse ever.

But there's nothing stopping you from making the same type of house in Florida with a total construction cost of about 300$. In other words anything that they do in Alaska to live independently can also be done anywhere else in the U.S.. But you would have to consider an outhouse and how to clean clothes. I discuss all of these considerations in my post called "permanent fort or camp". Also other posts are useful in constructing an independent homestead like the artificial aquifer post, and also earlier posts like the utopia now post, for info on an ideal community(Which is not possible). Or my old version of an independent homestead was the utopia list post, for more personal independence ideas, however outdated they are. But for diagrams of devices go to "New house design pics".

What Makes It A Million Dollar House

I propose that having the most interesting things to look at in your house, makes it the most expensive house. Or another way to put it is the definition of a million dollar house is a house that is over built, or has lots of eye candy.

If you have more space in the house then there is more room for more interesting things to look at.

If you put things with a story behind them or that are one of a kind or that are the best of the best. Then those items in the house are now more interesting to look at and think about.

In every direction you look there should be something interesting to look at, in the best houses.

And there are always rich people that are tired of designing and putting together their own interiors. So there will always be a market for people that do that thinking for them. Interior designers/house flippers. But this is only true at the really high end houses. This isn't as effective at working class houses.

Working class houses are mostly built to be practical and cheapest. And typically your materials costs are just as expensive as labor costs, when calculated in the final appraisal value(this is a quick/easy calculation of sweat equity). But cheap and very effective materials are the best to put in lower end houses if you intend on selling it. But there is never a guarantee, of getting your money back in the working class market, because the market may go down after you're done renovating. But million dollar houses go by completely separate market conditions and are usually guaranteed to rise or stay stable in price, until the renovating is done.