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Building with Pallets and other Recycled Waste Materials - PDF eBook

Build your own eco friendly home or cabin by recycling pallets and other waste materials.

Building with Pallets and other Recycled Waste Materials

US$19.95
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Building with Pallets - sustainable design & building techniques with recycled waste materials. 146 full colour A4 pages, incl. fully detailed set of A3 cabin plans.

Author: , Designer
Published: 2012
Delivery: PDF Download
Building with Pallets and other recycled materials - PDF eBook

Download Book Preview Download the 16 page taster of this new book (1.5MB PDF)

Building with Pallets?

Pallet Panel Assembly and Load Test Demonstration Video - to be viewed in conjunction with reading the additional detail in the ebook; Building with Pallets.

Wooden shipping pallets can easily be made into structurally-sound assemblies for floor, wall and roof framing that will remain durable for the life of the building if kept dry. Why risk your family’s health and safety? Let my book show you the safe way to build with pallets!

Build your own eco home from pallets

The purpose of this work and book, is to share the knowledge that anyone can indeed build a true eco home for less money than a conventional home. To keep things simple, the book shows you how to build a safe, healthy and comfortable cabin of less than 10m² such that you may take on an achievable goal and avoid having to apply for a building consent.

The method for building this cabin is no different from building a small home; for those adventurous enough to experiment further. Plans describing how to build a one or two bedroom home from pallets and other recycled waste materials will be available for download soon and will include advice on how to achieve a building consent for these 'alternative' buildings, watch this space!

As well as pallets, the book demonstrates the use of: waste polystyrene packaging for insulation; old carpet uplifts for wall and ceiling linings (coated with a natural clay paint you can make yourself); building site waste for various uses; used corrugated roofing iron for cladding and roofing; and other waste stream ideas like using old tyre treads for weatherboards or roof shingles.

Interior of Pallet Cabin showing clay painted carpet lined walls with panel joint cover battens/architraves. Note 'Truth window' below actual window which shows pallet structure. Photo: Emma Heke Building with waste streams (IE Garbage) is a win, win, win, win scenario:
  1. It provides affordable DIY houses;
  2. It requires almost no demand for additional new materials, saving more trees and more truckloads of ore from mining;
  3. It saves a huge amount of energy in three separate processes:
    1. mining/harvesting
    2. manufacturing
    3. transportation
  4. It saves ever more garbage from our increasing landfill which pollutes our soil and water.

I am not the first to recognise that the material of choice for concerned individuals in the 21st century, who recognise the folly of pillaging ever more new materials from a stressed planet, is the refuse from our industrialised society. I am also not the first to realise that in Nature there is no such concept as 'waste' – that the bi-products from one organism are the nourishment for another. Nature produces an ever balanced cycle which is the only real sustainable system. If our species is to survive on this planet, we must start emulating Nature and following her lessons before it is too late.

Book Review: Building with Pallets and other Recycled Waste Materials

by Rob Gourdie, Earthship NZ

Often books about environmentally sustainable design & building techniques are either well meaning geek monologues or greenwashed books by celebrity architects that sit on coffee tables, inside opulent McMansions in gated suburbs.

So open the window and let the fresh air in with Mark Fielding’s recently published eBook 'Building with Pallets and other Recycled Waste Materials'.

Mark Fielding is a New Zealand 'Licensed Building Practitioner' with over 35 years experience, who runs an architectural design business building environmentally sustainable homes. But actually Fielding is clearly much more than that. He is a visionary, a perfectionist, a scientist and a questioner of conventional wisdom. The 146 page pallet building compendium is comprehensive and follows the latest New Zealand building regulations. The global appeal and applicability of this book is clear from the perspective of one who has previously had to comply with codes in the UK as well as NZ.

Fielding brings much needed professional and practical credibility to the recycled/free building sector. Indeed the first time I ever met the author, he regaled me with his pallet building solution and showed me pictures of him measuring displacement under load of his unique pallet-joining solution.

Read the full book review here »

Download Book Review as PDF Download the book review as PDF


Recycle Wood Pallets

Join the revolution of 'Garbage Warriors' and help to save the planet.
(thanks to Michael Reynolds and Oliver Hodge for the inspiration!)

Become a Design Outlaw and Renegade Builder!

Note that the Author and Solabode Ltd Director; Mark Fielding is a professional architectural designer and NZ Licenced Building Practitioner with more than 35 years experience.


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