In today’s real estate market, many prospective homeowners are faced with the tough financing situations that are now all too common. The government does not seem to have any viable solutions and seems to just get us further into the crevasse of recession but allowing big banks to run even further off course. If you find yourself seeking a way out of a life of bank servitude, try building your own green home by using these strategies.
Build a cord wood home
Saving a lot of money by building your own cord wood home is easier than you may think. First, cord wood construction is simply using lengths of firewood (cord wood) embedded into mortar structure. This wood is built into the wall in a perpendicular fashion and creates a wall that is about a foot or so thick, whatever length of wood you cut.
The reason that cord wood construction is most appealing to me, is that it is cheap and requires little skill to complete. You simply lay a layer of mortar down and place the cord-wood at intervals in the mortar, and then mortar around the cord wood to embed it in the wall. I am simplifying it for brevity sakes, but that is the basic action involved. The only significant expenses in the process, apart from the land, is the footing or foundation, the mortar and the wood. You can harvest the wood from local public firewood stands accessible via permits. The rest you have to find money for somehow. The mortar is cheap and the firewood is virtually free.
Tools you will need to build your own cord wood home
The basic tools you will need to construct your cord wood home are listed below:
- a chainsaw- this will help cut the cord wood to precise lengths
- masonry tools- including mixing tools like a wheel barrow, shovels, trowels and gloves
- elbow grease- this form of construction is labor intensive and takes more time than conventional means.
Keep in mind that this list only pertains to the wall portion of construction and does not include tools that are needed for the construction of the footing or foundation, nor the roof and roofing materials. Once you have the tools you need, all you need to do is gather the cord-wood in the form of poles, cut the to length and start building the walls of your new and low cost dwelling!