I've been researching areas where Earth-friendly building doesn't pose too great a challenge. Ecuador, for instance, uses the mud from the foundation to create adobe bricks in the driveway of the new house. One builder advertises rammed earth. Domes are plentiful. Land is accessible.
Land is very reasonable in Belize, but I couldn't determine the building codes. Also, looks like many areas of Nicaragua and Costa Rica would be hassle-free. Anybody got any specific feedback?
It is possible to build in North Carolina and Georgia, as long as you don't apply for a septic tank or electricity. That's how the PTB contol the people.
Earthaven, a community in Black Mountain, NC, brought in instructors to teach cob, strawbale, and log, and let the students help them build their houses. They also teach permaculture.
www.earthaven.org. Quite a successful, long-term community.
One interesting experimenter built a guest house, using a different method for each wall. Since one of the Earthaven Strawbales was musty (it is a temperate rainforest in that area) he wrapped the first two layers of straw in tyvek. That solved the problem.
The second wall was cob. It took four times as long for a DIY to build the cob wall, compared to the others. though it is very easy to do and looks fabulous. It did not offer very good insulation for the cold winters of NC.
The third wall was cordwood. It complimented the rustic cob/strawbale plaster. Easy to build, wood was plentiful on his farm, a good choice for NC.
Fourth wall was a board and batten-style, from lumber milled on-site. More conventional building, there wasn't much to figure out.
The guest cottage had so much character! It was a stunning success, both low-cost and functional.
One family built a Cal-earth dome in South Georgia. It turned into a nightmare of a project. It was too big, took too long to build, and had lots of structural flaws. It seems more time-consuming, expensive (buying the tubes and the barbed wire), and harder to use than cob and strawbale. The red Georgia clay gives amazing colorations to rammed earth. I could imagine a monolithic dome using a clay combination.
AND there are some gorgeous Cal-earth houses that I would love to live in. And Earth-ships. And Hobbit Houses. Why do we settle for gated communities with cookie-cutter boxes? And mountains of debt? Shall we show the rest of the world how it could be done???