‘Home Power’ Magazine Gets Passive Solar, Off-grid Headquarters

Reader Contribution by Lloyd Kahn
Published on February 21, 2018
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The following is an excerpted from Home Work: Hand Built Shelter (Shelter Publications, 2004) by long-time MOTHER EARTH NEWS contributor Lloyd Kahn. The book features more than 1,500 photos illustrate various innovative architectural styles and natural building materials that have gained popularity in the last two decades, such as cob, papercrete, bamboo, adobe, strawbale, timber framing and earthbags. If you love fine, fun or funky buildings, you will want to own this splendid book.

The wide open spaces are the reason we live in the mountains. Our nearest full-time neighbor is more than six miles away.

I first saw Home Power magazine in the 1980s. It was a funky looking yet technically loaded and serious journal of (mainly) solar, wind, and water-generated electricity. Not only has it survived, but it’s gotten increasingly better. It’s now an all-color compendium of the latest in home energy.

Richard and Karen Perez are the heart and soul of Home Power, and after some years of living in funky sheds in the woods, they built their own home-powered home/of?ce/hangout in the Oregon woods. I ?nd it just amazing to look at a place like this: off-the-grid, its heat and power provided by sun and wind (and ?rewood). And they are running the computers and network that produces their magazine from the same clean electricity. These guys are walkin’ the walk!

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