Here’s another interesting video from Austin-based builder Matt Risinger about what he calls “practical advanced framing.” In this video, Risinger talks about the difference between 2×4 and 2×6 studs, 16″ and 24″ centers, plywood and OSB sheathing, three-stud and California corners, and uninsulated and insulated headers. Here are Risinger’s three tips for practical advanced framing:
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This week the father of tiny housing and founder of The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, Jay Shafer, resigned from Tumbleweed and started a new company called Four Lights Tiny House Company. Shafer started Four Lights for “more freedom and more manageability,” according to a statement published on The Tiny Life. At Four Lights, Shafer will roll out building workshops, a tiny house village, and portable house plans ranging in size from 100 to 500 square feet.
There’s so much media pertaining to green prefab lately, I can hardly keep up! New World Home co-founder Mark Jupiter was on CNBC recently to discuss modular homes, prefab houses, and the benefits of modular construction relative to traditional site-built homes. He said, in short: “All houses should be built in a factory. It is the future. And we’re just preempting that and started this company before that future takes hold.”
I was noodling some recent journalist potshots about headlines for “the greenest …” when I landed on this video piece from the Nightly News. NBC’s Kiko Itasaki wonders if this home in Unst, one of the northern Shetland Islands of Scotland, is the greenest in the world. Everyone knows the question has no answer, but I think Michael and Dorothy Rea have accomplished something worth noticing that’s for sure.
Recall for a second a project called Rubble Floor by Dave Hakkens. Hakkens recently published another project called “Wind-Oil” to show how to use industrial processes at home to create good food. He made an oil pressing machine that’s powered by a small-wind turbine. The machine has a worm drive that presses nuts and seeds — walnuts, peanuts, sesame seeds, linseeds, hazelnuts, etc — and spits out oil in one bottle and a food pulp in another.
