Contacts And Links
Contents
- People.
- Mentions of the Potters' house in other locations.
- Rammed-earth houses using tires.
- Rammed-earth houses using other techniques.
- Cob houses.
- Straw-bale houses.
- Permaculture.
- Other cultivation
- Suppliers.
- Design resources.
- Toronto links.
- General links.
People
Chuck and Pat Potter
PO Box GB344
RR#2
Gilmour ON
K0L 1W0
Canada
+1 613 474 0435
Martin Liefhebber Architect, Inc
177 First Ave
Toronto Ontario
M4M 1X3
Canada
+1 416 469 0018
The "Alternative Construction" forum
This web-based discussion forum invites discussion about rammed-earth, straw-bale, and other construction techniques, solar heating and electricity, and other topics. Jion up and chat! It's located at http://z10.invisionfree.com/Alternative_Building/
Mentions of the Potters' House in Other Locations
Thunder Bay Indymedia: an article describing the house, with pictures.
These pages about the Potters' house are linked under Eco-Centres and Places at PlanetFriendly.net.
Rammed-Earth Houses Using Tires
Earthship Biotecture
Home of Michael Reynolds and the originators of the Earthship concept.
Publishers of the Earthship books. I experienced problems viewing this
site outside of Internet Explorer.
Green Home Building
on Earthships.
Touch the Earth Construction in Colorado, USA.
Other Rammed-Earth Houses
The technique used by the Potters is only one way of building rammed-earth houses. Rammed earth walls can also be built inside forms, not unlike concrete walls; the forms are removed when the wall is finished.
Wikipedia on traditional rammed-earth construction.
Cob Houses
"Cob" is an ancient European house-building technique that uses a concrete-like mixture of clay, sand, and straw for building walls.
Wikipedia on cob construction.
Straw-Bale Houses
Walls can be built from and insulated with straw bales. Straw bale walls are very thick and can bear loads if they are designed properly.
Wikipedia on straw-bale construction.
Permaculture
Permaculture is a technique of 'permanent agriculture'. Pioneered by Bill Mollison in Australia, it relies on the creation of self-sustaining low-maintenance food-producing gardens and landscapes. Permaculture gardens mix their plants and often appear quite wild.
In the Toronto area, the Permaculture Community Action Worknet runs workshops.
Bill Mollison's Permaculture Research Institute lists course and contact information... it's in Australia.
The La’akea Community in Hawai'i.
Permaculture Magazine from the United Kingdom.
"The Power of Community"
An article from Permaculture Activist discussing how Cuba survived its "Special Period": its local version of the Peak Oil crisis, after Soviet aid ended. The gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by more than a third, and at first there were rolling blackouts for 16 hours a day, but now the cities grow food, people eat more healthily, and solar power is spreading. One important factor: Cuba maintained its universal health-care system.
Update. This has recently been the subject of a CBC documentary, The Accidental Revolution.
Other cultivation
A Google Directory search on sustainable agriculture.
Minifarms.com: advocacy site for raised-bed agriculture.
City Farmer out of Vancouver.
Community gardening in Toronto, from FoodShare.
Suppliers
Roxul
The rock-wool insulation used by the Potters.
Sun-Mar
New. Maker of composting toilets, both self-contained units and centralised systems. These toilets require no septic system, though some require electricity to run fans. I found one of their self-contained units featured prominently in the central aisle of the hardware store in the little town where my father lives.
Design Resources
Designers and architects who are reaching towards a new ecologically-based architecture and community.
Tsui Design and Research
Eugene Tsui's creations appear to have grown from the earth.
Michael Reynolds of Earthship Biotecture in New Mexico.
John Schinnerer's page about cultural and ecological design contains details, links, and more links.
Mark Rosenfelder at zompist.com discusses Jane Jacobs' theories of city design: how cities grow and what they need. Zompist is an amazing site: all kinds of interesting stuff about languages and cartooning. Among other things.
The National Research Council of Canada: doing construction research since the 1940s, the NRC's Institute for Research in Construction performs research and publishes books and periodicals. They have a library and an online store.
Loyalist College in Bancroft offers courses about alternative building--including some the Potters have taught--and about the Ontario Building Code. The Building Code courses help designers and contruction people understand what is allowed and not allowed when building a house.
The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing's site on the Ontario Building Code. The source. Includes information on changes to the Building Code, a link to the QuARTS registry of building-code-qualified people (inspectors, designers, etc), and more.
Environment Canada, home of the Meteorological Service of Canada, has an online archive of climate and weather data. Climate Data Online gives access to daily minimum and maximum temperatures, precipitation, relative humidity, air pressure, winds, and more, for locations across the country... in many cases updated every day. Climate Normals gives average conditions and extremes for many locations. Great for the designer seeking information on heating and cooling degree days at their proposed house location.
New. Need that critical value for the density of plaster or the thermal resistance of cotton batting? The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, that massive compendium of tables, lists, and charts covering physical and chemical properties of just about everything, is now online as a subscription service (with a thirty-day free trial). Of course, your local reference library will have the print edition. At USD 140, it may not be for the average coffee table, but I've wanted one ever since Chemistry class in grade 11. The website links to other engineering reference books, for when you really get into things.
New. Some links on degree-days (a measure of the amount of heating or cooling required with changing temperature):
What degree-days are, and how they are calculated (from vesma.com).
Performing heat-loss calculations on a structure. Includes how to use degree-days once yuo have figured out the building's heat loss or gain per degree of temperature difference.
Ways of calculating degree-days (warning: US units!)
Toronto Links
Velo-city.ca: a proposal to build a network of above-ground enclosed bikeways throughout Toronto. These bikeways would speed cyclists across the city in about the same time as existing transit, but would give the benefits of exercising as well...
Green roofs at Toronto city hall. The city is promoting the use of green roofs.
A local economic-relocalization study group in Toronto, affiliated with the Post-Carbon Institute.
The Toronto Public Library. Source of many of the books I've been reading lately. Members can search and request books online, and have them delivered to their local branch. There are research facilities and reference libraries, professional research help, newspaper archives, books in many languages (including Esperanto), internet access, including high-end databases the average consumer can't afford, magazine archives, images and videos, and much more. And it's all free if you live in Toronto. Similar deals apply to other municipal libraries. And there's the interlibrary loan service for those books you absolutely have to borrow. Public libraries are so underrated.
General Links
PlanetFriendly.net. Portal to many ecologically-friendly affairs. These pages about the Potters' house are linked under Eco-Centres and Places.
Worldchanging.com: news and reviews of new developments in green technology, social movements, blogging, solar power, sustainable housing and commerce, and more.
An article from DailyKos about microactivism: what can one person do?
Three about energy, with an eye towards the possibility that world oil production may be at its peak:
Energybulletin.net provides a worldwide roundup of news about energy production, use, and the related politics. It also includes a great section with sustainability and green topics.
theoildrum.com discusses the oil and gas industry, its techniques, and its reserves. This was THE place to go for detailed information about what was really going on after the hurricanes down south last summer.
FromTheWilderness.com provides more peak-oil reporting.
Green Roofs for Healthy Cities: Why not grow grass, flowers, even crops on our roofs, instead of hectares of baking tar and asphalt and gravel? This is the website of the industry association, promoting green roofs across North America.
The Post-Carbon Institute is encouraging "economic localisation" based on the thesis that society will be constrained by increasingly-expensive oil and gas, and that we will have to reorganise our economies to be more locally self-sufficient. They support local groups; there is one in Toronto.
The Unplanning Journal: if energy becomes more expensive, and we cannot maintain the current structure of bigbox stores and suburban sprawl... what do we do with it? Includes such things as how to recycle a Wal-Mart (turn it into a greenhouse and farm) and details not to forget when you build your new community.
Sustainablog: news and links about sustainability.
Abundance Ecovillage: an ecological development in Fairfield, Iowa.
Five good mapping links:
Google Maps -- Satellite shots of your hometown, and places all over the earth. Many areas in detail, and combined with roadmaps, local searches, driving directions, and other information.
Google Earth -- Fly through the maps from Google Maps in 3D! You have to install a viewer program, and it needs a high-speed connection as it downloads the maps to build your images.
Terraserver -- satellite images, some free, many for pay.
NASA WorldWind -- Like Google Maps, a downloadable world viewer. From some real satellite people. Has overlays of weather and climate info. Includes the moon!
TopoZone -- like Google Maps, but centred on topographical maps. USA only, unfortunately.
To the main Potter house page.
To the intro page.
To the sunspace.org home page.