How To Build A Hobbit House (That You’d Actually Want To Live In!)

ByGroovy Green Dec 31, 2006

Just found this link to a beautiful ‘How-To’ that takes you through the steps of building your very own low-impact woodland home. It’s appearance is very similar to the Hobbit homes featured in Lord of the Rings, but the aesthetics of the design also make it a piece you might find in Better Homes and Gardens. The cost? The author estimates total expenditures of about $6,000. This, and about 1000-1500 labor hours to put everything together. From the site,

“Take one baby, a toddler and a building site. Mix well with a generous helping of mud, combine with 6 weeks of solid welsh rain whilst living under canvas. Do this in candle light without a bathroom or electricity for three months. Chuck in living with your father for good measure. Top with an assortment of large slugs. The result a hand crafted home of beauty, warmth and health for about 3,000.”

Some of the home highlights include: Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter, stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc., frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland, reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do, straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building, and tons of more fascinatingly green features.

“The house was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature. Being your own (have a go) architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself and the land rather than, at worst, a mass produced box designed for maximum profit and convenience of the construction industry. Building from natural materials does away with producers profits and the cocktail of carcinogenic poisons that fill most modern buildings.”

There are even plans in place to construct a woodland eco-village in SW Wales and their offering courses and opportunities to participate in return for your time. Sounds like a fantastic way to spend a summer! When did modern architecture become so boring?