The Woodland House - Hardcover

Law, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1856230317 ISBN 13: 9781856230315

Publisher: Permanent Publications, 2006

Synopsis

Full of colour photographs, this is a visual guide to how Ben Law built his home in the woods. It is also a practical manual and the story of a man realising a lifetime's dream to build one of the most sustainable and beautiful homes in Britain.
This book details the evolving design process, identification of material requirements, costings, project management and the actual building. It proves that low cost, low impact and high aesthetics can go hand in hand and that it is possible to build green and to build affordably.

About this title

About the Author:

Ben Law is an innovative woodsman who has lived and worked in West Sussex for over twenty years. He is a woodlands expert held in the highest regard and author of The Woodland Way: A Permaculture Approach to Sustainable Woodland Management .

Review:

Full of stunning color photographs, this book is a visual guide to how Ben built his outstandingly beautiful home in the woods. It is also a practical manual and the story of a man realizing his lifelong dream to build one of the most sustainable and beautiful homes in Britain. Ben's amazing chestnut timber framed house was hewn from his own woodland. He infilled the frame with local straw bales and plastered them with his own clay and locally sourced lime. the roof was made from chestnut shingles and the weatherboard is local hand-milled oak. He even made his own window frames out of hand planed ash. He built the whole structure for under 28,000 British pounds with the help of volunteers, with no crane, no waste, no skip and not a unit of electricity off the national grid. His electricity comes from the sun and wind, his heat from wood and solar hot water panels and his water from a spring and the sky. His greywater is purified by a reedbed system and his compost loo feeds the fruit trees in his orchard. The Woodland House gives details of the evolving design process, identifying materials, costs, project management, and the actual building. It proves that low cost, low impact, and high aesthetics can go hand in hand, and that it is possible to build green and to build affordably. In the United States, Ben will appear on the Home & Garden Network's The World's Most Extreme Homes, a series with more than seventeen million viewers per episode, in the spring of 2006.

About this edition

• Publisher: Permanent Publications
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1856230317
• ISBN 13: 9781856230315
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 93