What do you mean by finding a balance? In my mind if you are using WordPress with a proper theme and an SEO plugin then you are good to go and need to do nothing else.

However ... I stand by the title of the post Content is more valuable then SEO. No amount of SEO is going to "make it stay at the top". Good content that gets linked to a lot and people that keep choosing it over and over in the search results ... that has a better chance of doing that.

Hello Jim,

Thank you for your comment.

Indeed I feel that there is an entire wisdom on farming / self sufficiency that is being lost to modern comforts. I feel fortunate to be able to witness it here in Romania where half of the population is still said to be peasants. However, as a consequence of it being present, I can also see the "attack" of modern life on these precious life skills. Young generations are being lured away from a mentality of self-reliance to that of financial slavery. I wrote about this in another post on my personal blog: http://iamronen.com/2012/01/comfort-apple-in-chin...

I lived most of my life in total ignorance of such things (super-market food generation). I am grateful fate sent me a wake up call ... otherwise I too may have missed out on these things completely.

All Things Good

:)

Ronen

I wonder if that correlates with Yama & Niyama + a little religion thrown into the mix for social coherency?

Hello Bob,

I looked briefly at the ZED concept (two floors and double-shell) and set it aside as I don't see how it can be applied to an Earthship (single floor single shell structure).

We don't have a climate in which earth freezes several meters down - that sounds to me like a permafrost situation and I have not given such a scenario a thought (maybe underground is simply not a good option in such cases?). In our climate frost depth is about 90cm (unless it is mitigated by insulation). Our water supply infrastructure runs at around 1 meter underground and we have no freezing problems. Romanian pantries are typically built just below the surface and don't suffer from freezing either.

As for floor insulation. The umbrella concept converts the earth surrounding the house into a huge thermal-mass-battery that is very slowly charged in summer and very slowly discharged in winter. If you insulate the floor you disconnect the house from the earth beneath it - so it charges less efficiently and cannot conduct heat into the house in winter.

However, before this discussion deteriorates into a long-standing argument on floor insulation in Earthships, let me reiterate that this is true ONLY if the entire PAHS strategy is applied including water diversion, an insulated and water-proof umbrella (wet earth drains heat from the house), passive breathing ventilation (intake and outlet earth-tubes) and a house design that makes it an efficient summer heat collector (not too much and not too little).

In the end it's quite simple, if you do not heat the earth around (including under) the house to the temperature you would like it to be in the winter then heat will be conducted out of the house to the surrounding earth (in which case you are better off putting in insulation).

I completely agree with you that the goal should be to reduce fossil fuel dependency to a minimum. I want to cut down as few trees as possible.

I warmly recommend you read the book end-to-end. It is one of the most impressive books I have encountered on these issues.

Already started doing that here: http://bhudeva.org/blog/2012/01/23/building-an-ea...

Now looking to integrate with existing Earthship design ... stay tuned

I will address the issue of ventilation in a separate post ... it is, I believe an important and neglected topic in Earthship design - especially for cold climates. To me, in the climate we live, releasing precious heat into the cold air is a very poor solution. I am happy to say that I already know of a better solution. I am now researching it and how it can apply to an Earthship. I promise to write about it extensively. It is a very important issue.

Hello Douglas & Sara,

Thank you for stopping by to have a look :)

We hope to find a protected place for the bench outside somewhere ... but if that doesn't work out we'll give you a heads up on it :)

The shower was a project that came with the sin of pride :) I will write about it extensively and how it came to be :) The stove in our bedroom is a rocket stove and yes we did build it (you can follow the link to its story in the post). The lime plaster was done by local builders before we moved in since our first attempts at fixing the walls failed miserably (we had a lot less knowledge then we do now) ... but they didn't do that great a job. Eventually this house, if it is to stay on the face of the planet, will need a major overhaul - but that is a thing of the future :)

Wishing you a warm winter and hoping to cross paths soon.

Andreea & Ronen

I stand corrected on the generalization Jackie ... however I would also turn that mirror for you to look into. No not All Romanians are hard working individuals ... some are, some aren't. My impression, from Romanians both in Romania and in Israel is that your statement is not true. They work as much as they have to, little more. They are not endowed with a sense of initiative and I think Sam did an excellent job of outlining how that came to be.

Having said all that I also think that Romanians are MUCH better off then Americans because they do still know how to bake a loaf of bread, grow food and milk a cow. The problems I see for Romania is that the "city people" look down at this beautiful and sustainable lifestyle ... and as a result it is a dying lifestyle and culture. What remains of it is mostly old people ... who work their asses off doing things the hard way (they haven't heard of permaculture).

Romania and Romanians do not seem to value what is truly precious in this country. Instead they seem to be gravitating to some imaginary western lifestyle which is in the shits.

That to me is idiocy!

Thank you Mitch :)

My wife is from the other side of Romania.

I have met school teachers that couldn't afford to drive their car or move out of home in Israel ... and I'm sure they exist in the USA too.

We are here in Romania on the wings of finances from my past life. We now make a limited financial living and all of it comes from Romania.

To me Romania is unique in how much you can for yourself IF you make an effort to do so. There was nothing I could have done back in Israel to make a life for myself ... no amount of effort would have made a difference. Here, with land and water, all of my efforts make a difference and are directly invaluable to our life. But what is much more promising is the ability to make a life where much less finances are needed.

We have opted to place our bets on a, we believe, doable sustainable life here in Romania rather then a life of slavery to an income.

Andreea's contribution to this is that while she was a foreign worker in Israel her family was always curious about how much money she was making ... and it was always a lot of money by Romanian standards. They never inquired or took into consideration that that some of money was not nearly enough to support yourself within a pleasant quality of life.

Most of this country is still peasant country. That's a future we believe in and chose to partake in.

Hello Mitch,

First - I did you a favor and censored your comment so that I could publish it. The original version is not welcome here and even this one is borderline. Critical conversation is welcome ... personal violent attack is not.

I don't know what research you are reading but living here, as Sam does and as do I, gives a different picture. Life here is very different than other places in the world, certainly the USA (though if the USA stays true to its current course it may end in a more difficult position then Romania). Food is not rationed here in winter - there is an overflowing abundance of it. It used to be rationed here ... as was everything when the place was ruled by a dictator ... but that is history. As I said in the post ... I think Sam nailed it on the head. By the way, so does my wife who is Romanian and spent most her life in Romania, including when that dictator was still calling the shots here. You may be surprised to hear that MANY Romanians look back at that era as "good times".

Sometimes being an outsider gives you an "out of the box" perspective that others nearby of far off cannot see.

Have you got something personal against Sam?