The Mountain Home
This section has two separate focuses. One where the occupant shares his/her experience with building a variety of homes such as ram earth, straw bail, log, underground concrete or conventional construction. The other offers important specific information on buying or building in the high mountain environment. This section identifies key housing choices in design, construction and site location that either create an infinite number of pitfalls or advantages. Here knowledge makes all the difference. Video and articles on both topics are not only entertaining to a future mountain home buyer, but offer unique and hard to find information as well.
Roofs and Heavy Snows
Electrical Power?
Boot Gordon
Boot and his wife My senior year at CU, I already knew I wanted to move to Aspen after graduating. In 1968, Loveland was opening in October and all serious skiers were there. I instructed at Loveland part time and I found myself riding up the chairlift with another instructor from Aspen. All the way
A Shower at -20 Below Zero
When I was building my home on a mountaintop overlooking Breckenridge, I took a shower before the house was closed in. The adjacent audio to the right tells about the lessons of that shower while my video and b&w images are overlaid to show the beauty of the region. The story is also told with
Grandma Builds an Earthship
https://vimeo.com/106468411 An award winning documentary (video trailer below) of a 67-year-old grandmother building her totally off-the-grid home. Pascha actually dug the trenches, placed the timbers, wired the outlets, milled the cabinets and trawled the walls of her Earthship. Pascha’s 12-year pioneering effort fought through a mountain of regulatory barriers to bring alternative (nonstandard) construction methods
Sheri Zepplin
Anna Day Heiser (Sheri Zepplin) in her home. Bob Bennett, Sheri Zepplin and I all went to CU during the same period. Sheri married a successful attorney and eventually moved next to the Breckenridge ski area. While going through a divorce, she decided to build her own home next door to my home. The
