cnsilver Hatfield

I sure wish you all were in the western NC area, I could definitely use all your mentorship!! Dale when I said I had a building that I would like to move I meant only select pieces of it, much of whosh isn't viable.. However the roof keeps the water out and I can store many things in it in the meanwhile!! Is yjere any way to find buildings that people want removed other than word of mouth? And Winsol do you have any suggestions for building a passive solar home? Thanks for your great resources!

Dale, I am also interested in deconstruction for reuse. I have an old building on our property that we would like to take down and use for building a place in the mountains.  I would eventually like to get a plan with a materials list and start collecting stuff in order.  Any ideas?

thank you for your responses and I have posted a question forestry forum.  We are looking for someone with a portable mill who is in this area.  As far as felling trees, my husband can take them down to start the drying process!!

Hi there!!  I was wondering any of you have used trees from your land to build with...  We have some pines that grew very tall and tend to blow over when the wind blows.We would like to have someone with a portable saw mill come and cut them into lumber.  Are there special drying techniques for the lumber?  Anyone have some thoughts?  Thanks

I bought a shower bag with a battery operated pump to shower outdoors. The solar bag doesn't heat well but the pump sure does  Kmart in the camping section!

People have told me they aren't worth reburbishing but I wish I had bought a cheap one and fixed it up temporarily then you can always pull it out when you are ready to build! When we are ready to build I am thinking of mimicking the floor plan of a double wide half the length and an upstairs loft.  They seem to make good use of the sq. footage. Trying to learn all I can about passive solar  and zero energy before then...

Tak so mykett!!Very nice work!  I will be travelling to Sweden this August to visit family, and was hoping to pick some pointers on sustainable building...  the green way of building in America seems to have been lost in our disposable world whereas in Sweden it has only been more sophisticated!!

We have in fact tried several of these approaches  Our Airstream is 140' vertical from a creek.  As of now we use a ram pump to bring water up hill.  At one point we put our reservior uphill from the camper to gravity feed the camper, but there was little water pressure for showers and washing dishes.  we then bought a transfer pump which gives us plenty of water but we must manually turn it off and on!!!
in the future we are hoping to build a house, fully knowing that our nearby neighbors have spent $20,000 for their wells.  we are  seriously looking into other options

We would love to use rain water to flush toilets and water the garden with, but is there a on demand water pump that can be used for these?

Yup!!! Thank God for our ram pump!! We bought ours from a company in Texas.  The  man was very helpful getting ours set up.  We went with a 1" pump, the cheapest they made to see if we had adequate flow and fall.  now that pump raises water 600' to our camp(140" vertical!) We were given an estimate of $20,000 for a drilled well which is not an option right now but we wanted to be able to enjoy our new piece of earth now... when there is a will there is away