In 2002 my wife and I were given the chance to take over a bareland croft in the township of Skerray on the North coast of Scotland.
This gave us the opportunity to design and build our own house.
When we initially considered the idea, we knew that we wanted an enviromentally friendly house that would blend into the landscape.
We then heard about an "Earthship" that was being built on Craigencalt farm in Fife by SCI-Scotland and went to visit whilst it was being built.
Although we loved the idea of building an earthship, we felt that the concept is a little to limiting, might perhaps look a little too extreme and doesn't allow a second storey on the building.
At the same time we were also looking at building with strawbales, but we weren't too keen on a two storey house sitting on the site we had chosen.
It therefore seemed to make sense to put an earthship style lower floor into the side of the hill, with a strawbale "first" floor set above it. This is therefore what we did.
We also decided that a turf roof would be the most effective way to blend the house into the landscape.
Having finally decided on the designs and drawn up rough plans of the house, we set about going through all the red tape and a mere four years later we finally started to build !
This site is to keep anyone who is interested in enviromentally friendly building updated and hopefully inspired to try something of their own. We are also delighted to hear from anyone who would be interested in coming to visit and help out for a while. If you would like to get in touch, details are on the contact page.
This gave us the opportunity to design and build our own house.
When we initially considered the idea, we knew that we wanted an enviromentally friendly house that would blend into the landscape.
We then heard about an "Earthship" that was being built on Craigencalt farm in Fife by SCI-Scotland and went to visit whilst it was being built.
Although we loved the idea of building an earthship, we felt that the concept is a little to limiting, might perhaps look a little too extreme and doesn't allow a second storey on the building.
At the same time we were also looking at building with strawbales, but we weren't too keen on a two storey house sitting on the site we had chosen.
It therefore seemed to make sense to put an earthship style lower floor into the side of the hill, with a strawbale "first" floor set above it. This is therefore what we did.
We also decided that a turf roof would be the most effective way to blend the house into the landscape.
Having finally decided on the designs and drawn up rough plans of the house, we set about going through all the red tape and a mere four years later we finally started to build !
This site is to keep anyone who is interested in enviromentally friendly building updated and hopefully inspired to try something of their own. We are also delighted to hear from anyone who would be interested in coming to visit and help out for a while. If you would like to get in touch, details are on the contact page.
