construction

Building this house has been a constant learning experience, and today was no exception. My original plan was to build the walls from special insulated structural panels from Kama-Eebs, add some simple "X" braces to control shear, and throw on some housewrap before attaching my siding. And that would have been the cheapest and most ideal solution, but the more I looked at the final Kama panels installed the more I began to question the wisdom of that idea.

Even though I spend most of my time thinking about geothermal heating systems and backyard solar plants for my green home, in the end, a house is a house; holes must be dug, foundations must be laid, steel delivered and erected, and so on. Here's a look at our progress in that less glamorous but wholly necessary department.

Is this a death-defying demonstration requiring a level of mastery only arrived at after years of intensive martial arts training, or is it a theatrical display based more on physics than on chi?

Built for tasks like lifting 55-ton generators to the top of 300-foot windmills, the Liebherr 11200-9.1 might just be the world’s most monstrous truck. The 108-ton 18-wheeler doubles in weight when the boom—-which with extensions can reach 47 stories—-is attached. Fully assembled, it can lift up to 2.6 million pounds. Without the boom, it can drive on public roads, so getting it to a job site requires five fewer trucks than it would take to haul in and assemble an equally large fixed crane. It’s also far easier to move from place to place once it’s on-site.