Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!
              MOST RECENT HOUSE PHOTOS
          Click on the thumbnails for expanded images.


South side.  A cement sculpture of two contortionist acrobats is still unfinished.  The house has been "painted" with yellow tinted cement, which helps protect the expensive layer of white cement-based sealer.  When the yellow weathers away and I see white, I will know it is time to put on a new coat of the cheaper yellow tinted cement. 

Trellis.  A couple years ago, I started making rebar trellises over the house to provide shade and food.  The house stays a lot cooler inside, because of the shade.  I grow zocato, chayote, passion fruit, and spinach on the trellises.  I can stand on the roof to easily build the trellises and harvest the food.  If the trellises are covered with more cement, I could see this growing into a city, like a termite nest. 

This is a simple solar water heater.  It is an unpressurized plastic tank that takes a little of the edge off of the cold water in the shower. 

I have assembled my collection of home-made percussion music instruments and hope to get more into music recording in the future. 

This is the main room of the house.  You can see the safety barrier around the vertical shaft leading to the underground tunnel.  The floor was colorized this year.  The chairs are recycled from an old automobile.  I covered the iron "feet" with nylon rope and silicone rubber to protect the floor.  Sand bags behind the chairs let you lean back in them like recliner chairs.  They are very comfortable; my favorite chairs for reading. 

This is the second story bedroom.  The bed hands from the roof and swings like a hammock.  Cave-like window openings have a great tree top view out over the valley. 

This is a view from the top of the house, showing the trellis that covers it. 

This is a view looking straight down into the vertical shaft in the livingroom.  It is 30 ft. deep and was hand dug and lined with nylon-cement.  I can climb the walls to get up and down, if necessary, but it is a lot easy to enter the tunnel from the hillside entrance. 

In honor of Buckminster Fuller, inventor of geodesic domes, I made this model using bamboo skewers and hot melt glue. 

This is the patio on the north side of the house, between the house and the fishpond.  I painted the patios and some of the walkways with tinted cement, which makes them look like new.  It seems to be holding up very well.  The mix I used is one part of cement to one part of sifted sand, scrubbed on with a broom head, with powdered pigment. 

This is a window on the dome covering the fishpond.  I used to have fishnet covering it like a screen.  When I cut the netting out years ago, volunteer plants grew on the fishnet left around the rim, creating this beautiful natural border. 

This is the inside of the fishpond area.  I mostly have guppies in the pond, but there is also a turtle and a few other varieties of fish.  Water hyacinths grow on the surface of the water.  Occasionally, when it gets too congested with hyacinths, I pull out some of them and toss them out to feed the plants outside.  I do a trade with the pet store in town sometimes, fish for cat food, which feeds my cat and the fish. 

This is the side of the house, showing cement hand-powered washing machine, the red patio, and trellis.  The bathroom area is beyond the blue tarp curtain. 

The rebar trellises have some degree of strength, and can support some hanging weight.  Here, I suspended two parallel pieces of pipe by wires and use them to put plant nursery things up at a comfortable work height and out of reach of rats.  The styrofoam grape boxes, which I occasionally scavange from trash work well as sprouting trays.  They have holes for ventilation, which serve as drain holes.  I line them with a layer of newspaper before filling them with potting soil. 

This is a cement sculpture I made, inspired by the morphing features of Photoshop.  It is interesting to see the personality of the piece change as you view it from different angles. 

This is the bathroom area, showing the cement flush toilet.  The toilet has a rain cover.  When it rains, there is sometimes an exciting dash from the house to the bathroom. 

This is the roof project at my guesthouse on an adjoining piece of property.  When I got the property from a neighbor years ago, it included a standard cemento block house with a tin roof.  The wood supporting the roof eventually deteriorated.  Instead of replacing the metal roof, I am replacing it with a nylon-cement dome.  I extended the existing walls up to help support the roof, although domes can normally support themselves without internal supports.  Note the temporary bamboo supports.

Seen from underneath, the bamboo supports the rebar and fishnet until the cement hardens up and can support itself.  In the process of plastering the top side, you sometimes have to island hop, stepping from the top of one bamboo support to the other. 

This is the top of the roof, showing some of the first cement to go up.  Eventually, a trellis will cover this roof area, and the roof itself will be accessible for use as a little park area. 

This is a view from the side.  This sort of nylon-cement dome construction can work hand-in-hand with existing structures, like this.  I could also see using existing structures as scaffolding for safely building large domes that cover them without even touching them.  Existing cities could be converted into "termite nest" cities this way.  One would not have to destroy what already exists.  When the old does eventually decay, it could be removed from the inside, leaving huge domes made with the new technology.  .