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You can build any house anywhere you want (in residential zones, or outside of city limits to avoid zoning issues), but you have to meet certain standards that we as a society/government have set for safety-related issues. The scope of these standards was more-or-less set before anyone thought of renewable housing, and simply updated over the years, so it's quite unlikely the provisions were written simply to exclude these houses.

So without knowing more (thanks for providing a link...) I expect the reason his housing projects are blocked is because they do not conform to building codes, not because they threaten the establishment. I am a libertarian and oppose government building codes, but it's simply dishonest to portray a building-code issue as a man-keeping-us-down-for-profit issue. If that's not what's going on, maybe you should have posted a few links to solid information so I wouldn't jump to the obvious conclusions.

He's talking about Earthships.

And yes it's building codes and permits that are often the problems.

However the houses built in this manner are stronger and safer than conventional housing AND they use up waste resources as well as being sustainable.

Furthermore you can really build them anywhere you can put in a well or rain catchment.

I'm in Australia, so sunlight is in plentiful supply anywhere more than a few hundred km/mi north of Melbourne on the south coast. I'll happily cede that solar is a whole lot more viable over here than in the UK.

There are a few applications to which solar lends itself, and some of them need to be planned for - a modest battery setup and DC wiring for lighting with compact fluorescent lightbulbs is an excellent example. A lot of other applications require a bit of a rethink with regards to consumption - houses can be designed to require minimal heating and cooling, and appliances can be a hell of a lot more efficient than the stuff most of us have in our homes. On top of that, lifestyle changes and *gasp* small sacrifices here and there would also go a long way.

Me, I want a goddamn earthship.

You can filter grey water (from baths, showers, sinks and such) so that it is clean enough to be used to flush toilets, water the garden, wash cars and so on. Have a look at the design of the water system in an Earthship, which uses rainwater and careful filtering to provide enough water for a house and its occupants.

Sombeody should tell this architect about earthships. They are durable and self-sustainable houses, they don't need to be connected to the community's power grid, water distribution or waste evacuation systems, by using solar power and by recycling water (and capturing rain water and condensation).

The sustainable architecture movement will be happy about that. Especially the Earthship folks.

I live a little east of Moore(Stella, Newalla, Little Axe area) and we barely got any rain, if it wasn't for my trusty Midland Model 74-210 Weather Radio I would have been totally oblivous to the whole storm. I really think it is something all Okies should have! You can program your County in and you get a siren followed by an anouncement about the weather.(Even wakes me up at 2:00 in the morning sometimes! Something the Local Siren does not do) I live in a Mobile home on 5 acres of Wilderness, but a relative down the street has a Storm Shelter that a lot of the "Neighborhood" goes to. Since the Radio has battery backup, I just pluck it from the wall and throw it in the car with a few essentials(and the kids :)
Dang Tornados! This is why I want to build an Earthship!

Im surprised no one has mentioned earthships. I heard about them about a year ago. Imagine a house built partly into the ground that used solar panels to regulate temperature more efficiently. Alternatively you could have your house built out of dirt cheap materials. (Used Tires) Economically it is inexpensive, efficient and I believe durable. Well, the website is http://www.earthship.org

The oldest church in South Carolina is made of rammed earth as well as the oldest church in the San Francisco area (towers that Hanibal built in Spain are also still standing). The new techniques of using rebar to tie the pad and rehinforcing top beam together is great. Here's a good book on it.

We're planning on having a rammed earth ground floor with a timber framed second story. The ground floor is going to be designed for additions to be added on as needed (large doorways in exterior walls).

For interior use, we're going to use a manifold system that will pipe water to where ever it's to be used. You can think of it as two hubs, one hot, one cold and flexible pcv/vinal lines that run, in the ceiling, from the hub to the faucet. This gives you flexibility in placing sinks and such or even repurposing rooms. For sewage, that'll run under the floor. This'll be accessable from the basement. We're looking into grey water recovery as we'll be doing this in New Mexico (not that any place can't stand some water conservation).

For networking, am going to be running hamster tunnels (smurf tunnels?) along the base of the walls as well as along the top of the walls, between ceiling and upper floor. Don't know about adding wireless access points/antennas to the system.

The layout of the house will also make use of berming along the north walls and a porch along the south walls that will block most of the summer sun but allow winter sun to heat the place. Some of this design will come from earthships being built in New Mexico. We'd like to be totally off the net, but our love of tech makes this a distant dream (unless low power laptops take over for just about everything).

I was just yesterday talking to some friends about Earthships.

Packed dirt not only offers thermal mass to help with heating and cooling costs, but also might be "hypo-allergenic".

Would the rammed-earth tire design of earthships cause this guy problems?

Who in their right mind would want to live inside a giant PDA, riddled with gizmos? This "future" -- like so many others -- has built into it all the assumptions of the present. A more appealing vision of the future is something like this: Earth Ships -- energy-independent, passive-solar, captures and cleans its own water, and it's built out of old tires. That's our future, here in the industrialized west -- trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do with all this trash.

Once you start doing the math for wooden structures, the cost quickly skyrockets. On top of high costs to support such loading, you have yet to deal with the issue of water seepage, insect vulnerabilities (termites) and wood rot.

That leaves us the two building materials. Steel and concrete.

Their main building material is tires rammed with earth, and a wood roof on top. They build it into a hillside facing South (if you are in the northern hemisphere) and put big, double paned windows in it. Then the whole thing is buried (except for the windows, obviously).