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KnM makes the Birmingham Post.
From the category archives:
on the web
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Website by Steve Carter about his self-build in Loch Torridon, Scotland, with lots and lots of pictures.
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More meetings and discussions over the Government’s planned eco-towns, this time in Selby near Leeds.
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Biased reporting from the BBC which only covers objections to, not arguments for the wind farm. Sounds like bad science (wind farms cause breathing difficulties?) and nimbyism to me - we put up with hideous pylons, so what’s the problem with turbines?
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I like the idea of a standard equation to calculate how attractive a house is in terms of cost, energy efficiency etc. We have eco standards in the UK, but I don’t think anyone really knows what they mean.
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An abject lesson in how not to do it. Usually helps if you, y’know, plan ahead when thinking about putting up any kind of structure.
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More of a meta-blog really, Best Green Blogs does pretty much what it says on the tin: It gathers green blogs all in one spot. You can search alphabetically, by country, or by category such as alternative energy or sustainable development. They’ve got a nice Green Blogger Map, although you’ll need to zoom out or manually scroll over to see Europe. Kits and Mortar is how proudly part of the Best Green Blogs, and I’m looking forward to making it onto the map!
There are so many links here that it’s going to be a long time before I’ve looked through them all. How Timothy Latz, who runs the site, finds the time, I do not know!
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I’m continuing my search for real, live blogs about self-building, but it’s hard to find ones that are still being updated. A Selfbuild Experience hasn’t been updated since September 2006, and Wicklow Self Build Project has just three posts, last one in October 2007. Self Build Ireland stopped in December 2007 after a three year run, and although Architect’s Self Build Eco House posted last month, it looks like it’s winding down given that they’ve now moved in.
I suspect the archives of these blogs will prove to contain some rich pickings in terms of information and ideas, so I will have to find the time to go through them at some point. But I still want to find more self-builders who are actively blogging.
One person to add to my RSS reader is Robert Bagnall, who writes 127a Church Street: Diary of a self-build. His blog started in April 2007, and it’s clear from reading the archives that the build is progressing apace. The house is up, the windows in, (even if some are wrong!), and he’s currently battling with awol electricians and plumbers who aren’t returning his call, so fingers cross the carpenter turns out to be more reliable!
Despite the fact that it seems he’s had a bit of a hard time herding all the relevant cats, Robert seems to have kept a sense of humour, and his blog is very readable. It also gives a real sense for the nitty gritty that every build has to deal with, from what it’s like dealing with local contractors and suppliers, to how much plumbers and their apprentices cost. (Plumber: £220 per day; plumber’s apprentice, an additional £40. Poor apprentice!).
Well worth a read!
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Huge amounts of information that it will take me ages to plough through!
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Interesting site about generating electricity from wind, and building your own wind turbine. Really wish Mr Piggott would install Wordpress and tidy the site up a bit, though. Hard to find stuff in the homepage melee.
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The wind is free, the turbine less so. But if you like making things then maybe building a wind turbine is for you.
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Development trust and charity which aims “to achieve sustainable development by improving the social, economic and physical environment for community benefit”.
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OK, so it’s a bit cheesy to bookmark your own site, but I’m curious to see how many other people have Del.icio.us’d it.
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I’ve started my search for kindred blogs, and one of the first I have came across is the fabulous Shedworking, by Alex Johnson. Shedworking is a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration, with posts about micro-compact homes, a shed that looks like a Romany caravan, and a whole weeks’ worth of posts about treehouses.
Alex is clearly mining a very rich seam, as almost every post makes me go “Oooh!” There’s tons there that I want to spend more time investigating. I think you can expect a lot of inspiration “via Shedworking” here over the next few weeks! The blog is very busy too, with three to five posts a day - way more than I have time to write.
Alex also has a book, Shedworking - The Alternative Workplace Revolution, slated to come out in July and published by The Friday Project, although it’s unclear what effect their recent bankruptcy is going to have on whether the book comes out. I hope it does, because if the quality of the blog is anything to go by, the book would be a fab addition to my library. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
UPDATE 13/4/08: Alex reports that Harper Collins have taken over The Friday Project, but have declined to publish the book. That’s a shame, but hopefully Alex can find another publisher soon.
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