gorges
Recycled Wine Bottles Add Good Churchy Feeling
Visitors beware when you step inside the Dacha Haus you’ll see colors and glowing orbs. While not quite the illumination of the divine, all hail the awesome sun as it catches the diffused color of all-dry-now wine bottles.
Yes, after seeing many pictures on homestead blogs and in straw bale building books, we have joined a movement of people using recycled wine bottle as passive energy light fixtures.
We’re just at the beginning stages of this, but these photos are cool! For more visit my flickr Dacha Project set.
-LSF
Marina plugs up wine bottle-sized holes in the oh-no-zone layer (our insulation) with wine bottles.
Wine bottles! Cut in half, with the bottoms of each bottle tuct taped together and fitted into a wall.
Earth-bermed, passive solar Common House .vs. Snowmaggedon 2010
Before we forget how awesome the Dacha Haus Part One preformed in Winter ’10 here are a couple of photos of February. They are also to remind this summer’s building crew that as we build Dacha Haus Part Deux a winter in the Southern Tier is no joke, but that we got it on lock down!
-LSF
All photos by Joe Fisher.
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The key to solar passive is full frontage windows facing the south. They are placed at such a height that the house gets direct sunlight in the winter and indirect sunlight in the summer. This technique works around the sun's busy but well-established and much preferred primordial travel schedule- that is low in the sky during winter and high as a pie in the summer. The placement and size of the windows optimizes for maximum comfort, while minimizing energy use.
Danila and I are in shock that the Common House is so warm (see below) when outside it is like 18 degrees F! The snowbank behind us is caused by snowmagedden falling off the hell roof and onto the front field. I'm just back from Mexico, and feeling like this is warm enuf but where's the coconut tree?
Old Barn Boards Meet Restoration
We purchased some old for-cheap barn boards from the Fingerlakes Reuse Center to throw up as the ceiling of the straw bale cottage we built. Check out what some sanding and polyurethane and/or linseed oiling can do to a board. Will post photos of completed ceiling when that happens.
-LSF
Straw Bale Hijinks
The Dacha Project presents a short by Lea LSF. Starring Joe Fisher-Price, Danilatron & Lea LSF. For more info visit. dachaproject.com.
Strawbale Hijinks- A near silent comedy about the countless opportunities to act like a monkey one can miss if they choose not to build a straw bale cottage. Critically acclaimed as the must see monkey short of this fiscal year. Sponsorships welcome.
-LSF
[vimeo 10397150]