Reddit Reddit reviews Living Homes: Stone Masonry, Log and Strawbale Construction, 6th Edition

We found 1 Reddit comments about Living Homes: Stone Masonry, Log and Strawbale Construction, 6th Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Living Homes: Stone Masonry, Log and Strawbale Construction, 6th Edition
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1 Reddit comment about Living Homes: Stone Masonry, Log and Strawbale Construction, 6th Edition:

u/StrawbaleHippie ยท 5 pointsr/OffGrid

Wow! I had the exact same sentiment when I was 20. I'm now 30, let me give you a summary of how things developed :)

First off, I created a spreadsheet to calculate the effect of adding more people to the effort. Turns out, adding even one person is hugely helpful. There's just one (fairly major) downside: Zoning laws will generally only allow you to build one house on a property, so these people need to get along well enough to live together. Easy to do at age 20, much harder to do as everyone ages.

Then, what I needed was an accurate idea of how much $$ you will need to get started. In other words, why can't I just go NOW! This is where reality hits. I can post my budget(it's huge) to help, but here's a very high-level summary of the options:

Option 1 - Everything from scratch (takes a ton of upfront $$$)

  • Buy farmable land in Ontario - $100k (empty farmland is getting tougher to find in Ontario)
    • if you are buying vacant land, nobody will give you a mortgage for it, you'll need to pay cash
  • Build house on land - it should take at least $200k to build a house yourself, more if you're hiring someone to build it for you
    • need to prepare the house site, excavate, level, potentially build a driveway
    • since you're building it mostly yourself, you need LOTS of equipment... $$$
    • due to building codes, you can't get away with a super-cheap cob-built house for $5k like you might see on the internet. That said, with LOTS(like, lots and lots) of hard work, there are some great techniques out there to lower the cost of a code-approved house(e.g. stone construction, etc) - many great books have been written about it (see http://www.amazon.com/Living-Homes-Masonry-Strawbale-Construction/dp/1892784327)

      Option 2 - mortgage (less upfront capital)

  • Buy farmhouse + farmland in Ontario - $250k+
    • Bonus is that you can get a mortgage for the house, downside is that you can't have 10 people go together on a mortgage, the risk/responsibility needs to belong to one or two people
    • downside is you'll have an aging farmhouse to maintain, probably will not be built with "sustainability" in mind

      After looking at those options, I calculated how long it would take me to save up enough cash. I used my spreadsheet to motivate myself to save every last possible penny, and it worked!

      I found many like-minded people, but the mechanics of us actually merging into a commune for this effort were difficult, so I am founding a commune of 2 (my wife and I).

      As far as actually living on the land goes, find an Organic farm in Ontario and visit them(some have tours). You'll find that farming is a lot of work! It is very difficult to make a profit from it, however feeding yourself is quite doable. In Ontario, you'll want to get into preserving (fermentation/canning) to last through the winter.

      TL;DR it's the journey not the destination, if you think you'll enjoy the journey, GO FOR IT.