A 600 ft. 3D printed home is fully recyclable and highly insulated with 100% wood insulation and customizable R-values. Construction waste was nearly eliminated due to the precision of the printing process.
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Western JUNIPER: Wood that Checks all the Boxes
100 years ago, walking across the expanse of Eastern Oregon would have revealed sprawls of sagebrush and native grass, pockmarked with the occasional juniper tree. Fast forward to today, and those picturesque western landscapes have become overgrown with juniper trees. Due largely to modern day fire suppression, junipers, a “native invasive,” have expanded from one million acres at the turn of the 20th century to a staggering 10 million acres today. Junipers are a thirsty tree, drinking up to 35 gallons of water per day in a high desert ecosystem that is already plagued by drought. As the trees expand, they push out sagebrush and grass, which affects vulnerable species…
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Tall Wood Buildings
Tall wood buildings are on the rise in the Northwest thanks to the recent development of a wood product known as Cross Laminated Timber (CLT).
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Straw Bale: A Love Story
A storm moved over the campground. He offered me his coat. Lightning struck, sparks flew, and the rest is straw bale history.
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Building Green Made Simpler
Choose Your Level of Green Construction To a lot of people, building green means costly, complicated, and confusing, but it is getting easier as designers and builders find simpler ways of doing things. Structures NW llc of Vancouver, using their 10 plus years of experience building with Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), has come up with a unique system that makes building green simpler. They created a three level system of pre-designed green construction templates that fit the Northwest climate zone; Green, Greener and Greenest. Green uses a 6” SIP wall that provides a true R-21.7 whole wall R-Value as determined by the Oak Ridge National Labratory. Combined with a 10”…
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Modern Earthen Floors
Earthen floors are ancient. They were the predominant floor from the time people first built homes until the mid 1300s, and are still found today in many parts of the world.
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Simplicity Is the Way
When I started my journey beyond the borders of my upbringing, I learned that simplicity was the way. I built a cabin on the back of a flatbed truck with a six-cylinder engine. You know, the kind of engine where you could see the parts and knew what they did. I found my way to a cabin in a canyon with a spring, a cow and an outdoor shower. I learned to make bread in a wood cook stove, to churn butter and raise honeybees. I went to work and came home tired from a day well spent on producing something tangible. I know simplicity is the way, but like…
