mind body planet

Yert Crazy

I’m back at home today everyone and I am really missing my former abode in Ithaca. The week was very fun and I am now seriously thinking about it as a place I will look for jobs when I graduate. The only down side to that is that I hear the job market in Ithaca is very hard to break in to. I will certainly keep my hopes up though. For now I am looking ahead to the future, namely the semester which starts next week, and I want to move on with this blog. There is obviously still some run off from my week of fun and sun and so I will be bringing back our discussion of green home building. My friend Jamie who just moved to Ithaca will be the first topic on this discussion actually.

When Jamie was in college he lived for a year in what is called a yert. This was a project as part of his educational experience and he got credit for the experience. Basically a yert is a type of housing that comes from the areas of Mongolia and the steppes mountains. It is a small round house that is designed to be easily broken down and moved. At least that was the way the nomads of the time did it and still do today. What was different about this design was that it was not meant to be moved. This home was made with a green roof, or garden on the roof, it was constructed with very sturdy, heavy wood and metal parts. Though it was different hat that of the nomads, the point was that it was completely unconnected to modern housing. There were no lights in the house and there were no distractions. It was also built in the woods as to seclude it even further from all things civilized. 

This is just one design, but right now there are tons of options when it comes to homes built with the earth in mind. The point of homes like this is really to lower the ecological footprint of the inhabitants and the creation process. This can be done in a variety of ways. Some things like building with recycled materials or from minimally processed materials. Some types of materials like compressed straw bales are being used to compose the walls of homes as they are quite efficient with heat loss and retention. There are also homes being built out of material known as cob, which is essentially cob, clay, and straw. As the days go one the designs for the more high tech ideas increase, but these are options that are much more accessible to those without much money to fund such a project. 

I’m out of time for today, tomorrow we’ll come back with a little bit about a natural resource that is fast becoming one of our most precious natural resources.