The old classic summer cabins on resorts around here are tiny.  

The newer replacements are more like the one you are talking about bio-d.  It would be nice to see the old designs replicated in super insulated, composting toilet, green mode.  With the same small footprint of the originals and zero carbon footprint.

There would be status in a resort like that, a 100% green resort, with the classic style of the old summer lodge, camp grounds, and cabins.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

That reminds me of the BS compost heap frame at the botanic garden at Regensburg University: Four pillars made of concrete, and boards waterproofed with chemical stuff. Next to that sad thing they have non-impregnated wood logs for insect housing.

I'm waiting for the invention of the compostable compost heap frame, 100% organic.

that used to run, showing a McCabin on top of a mountain. This thing was humungous, and presiding over it was an earth mother type. Made you have a momentary burst of sympathy for the ELF. A small episode where your Eco-Id was released from its lair.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Using steel panels instead of traditional floor joists is a commercial construction technique that reduces the amount of wood required for framing.
And which increases the amount of steel and concrete required. These are both materials with bad CO2 rap sheets. While not all environmental issues are to do with carbon emissions, the use of plantation-grown wood in construction actually sequesters carbon for the life of the building, and with appropriate re-use, even beyond. Why would we discourage this?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

If this couple was going to build an above-averaged sized second home anyway, at least they took the time to add a few green touches.  

I take your larger point, but let's not lose sight of the fact that green has become sexy.  It may not all fit our personal definitions of greenery, and it may not be a green style that all can afford economically, or that the globe can afford all to deploy environmentally.  But the directional impulse to think about less-energy intensive materials, add PV, etc. is not a bad one - and I think we're better off acknowledging those tentative first steps and encouraging more than just blasting these efforts as misguided greenwashing.

Behaving in an ecologically-responsible way is complicated.  Some are new to the game.  Just as you wouldn't yell at your kid when they start talking because their grammar sucks, we shouldn't bash these first steps either without also acknowledging their improvement over the that which preceded.

As long as we're trying to sort out which status symbols to mock, wouldn't be better to mock 2nd (or 3rd, etc.) homes that make no efforts with respect to environmental friendliness?  At least the owners here are trying to minimize the negative impact of the home on others, and that is better than not trying.

But you must be right about the PV system.  Possibly over the year it generates more electricity than the house uses, but overall energy consumption has got to be much higher than the solar system can generate (or else the house is much much more impressive than they are letting on).

are the problem.  Of course it's not as bad if they're built in a less environmentally harmful manner, but "development" is per se harmful, because what it really is is destruction of natural areas, including killing of plants, covering and compacting the soil, and destroying habitat for animals that live there.  So what we need to be saying is that people need to reign in their gluttonous consumption.  Of course that should be said in a diplomatic way that has a chance of convincing people, and we could start by showing them all the harm they're doing by having unnecessary homes built on natural land.

 I suppose what pisses me off the most about people like this is that their political views are often detrimental to the very landscape they seek to live on. Not to mention that most of these tools locate themselves near OUR federal lands and benefit from OUR tax support of National Parks, BLM, National Forest, Riverways, etc., thereby enjoying the vistas provided by our guardianship, all the while voting for and contributing to mostly Republican efforts to ravage the land WE THE PEOPLE have set aside for future generations. I'm pretty certain Mt. Hood and vicinity are located in National Forest lands, and that these folks are directly benefitting from this proximity. Not to mention the people who have been priced out of these areas because of development and escalating property prices and taxes. How many miles does a restaurant worker have to drive to get to her job in Jackson Hole?  

The mellotron is your friend.

Cottages that are easy to move, on a lightweight fiber concrete pad can be relocated every few years to let the wilderness revover, just as camp sites are moved.

10 by 14 feet is fine, pre-built with all the low impact stuff built in.  SolarPV/heat, composting toilet, gravity water supply, ultra-efficient tiny wood heater for really cold weather.  

People would realize they could do without that huge carbon footprint, and be much happier.  That would be a real green vacation.  maybe a plugin hybrid shuttle ride to and from the train too?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

- That is such nonsense! The cabin would take more land away from the local wildlife, and when people get there they are not there to mix into the natural life. Instead they leave trash, hunt local wildlife, cause more buildings to go up as their friends now want a second home too!

Honestly, why not just have a tent and go camping, pick up your stuff at the end and than go home.

Why do humans like to make very thing so much more complicated than it has to be. Why do we insist on using up every last resources to have more sh!t that we actually need. There is no other species that causes this level of destruction that we do every day!

I only have this one life, so I am going to try my very best to make a positive change. --- The Happy & Healthy Vegan ---

I live in a 1970 beach house that used to be somebody's "summer cabin" and have been fixing it up.  At 30 x 30 feet, 900 square feet, it is perfect for the two of us and even a guest. I like it, even with the "blow-out" walls for the downstairs garage in case of a hurricane.

But to me, a "cabin" was always like 20 x 20 or smaller, like the size of a one or two car garage.  No way a house over 1,500 square feet could be considered a cabin. Sounds like marketing smack-talk for the uber-rich.

Cabins, by their very definition, were not insulated in the old days, often no more than glorified tarpaper shacks. Maybe I'm just an old fart but the minute you start talking about energy efficiency, insulation, heat pumps, and PV, you're not talking "cabin" anymore. In this case it sounds more like "second McMansion."  -sam

Onward through the fog

I suppose that a lot of these baby boomers building 2nd homes/cabins on their little piece of paradise were the long hairs who stuck ecology logo stickers on their cars, but never bothered to read Aldo Leopold's "Sand Country Almanac".  Environmental lite.  

Aldo himself took a run down shack on a run down farm in Wisconsin and made a retreat of it, but he used it wisely as a base for nature writing and promoting land conservation and land ethics.

Many of these 2nd homes are being built in critical areas of wildlife habitat including grizzly bear range.  In some cases they are driving up the price of land and are competing for prized areas with private conservation organizations. With your tax support, much of fire fighting in the west now focuses on protecting these developments.  And they must also be interfering with the ability of conservation agencies to manage prescribed burns. There was a recent instance in Montana of the Forest Service or the Interior Dept. giving some luxury home developer the green light to blacktop logging roads on public land leading into their development. Plus, this puts financial pressure on local communities by greatly extending their range of support services.    

Additionally, the truly wealthy get to their properties via private or commercial jet.  So, compute the carbon footprint on these folks.  In these cases of luxurious consumption I prefer "carbon assprint".  

Putting any kind of green label on any of these properties is some delusional thinking.  But when you start out with a base point of a truly delusional and alien sense of "ownership" then it is easy to jump to this distortion or disregard of land values and ethics.    

I guess this thread is going into the proverbial Grist trash can, at the end of the list, but I fail to see how such second custom homes, even engineered with all the "green" accoutrements, are anything more than making obscene amounts of money while paving the wilderness.  

That goes to some very failed land policies about building expensive houses in forested areas, which need to be protected (at very high taxpayer cost) from wildfires and other natural disasters.

So you're right, Hal, if some government agency is silly enough to allow such wonton destruction, you can build all the "green" homes you want.

But there once was a time when real cabins, some made of logs and quite energy efficient, had a very small footprint. No land was cleared except for a narrow dirt lane and enough to sink posts into the ground for foundation pilings. Such cabins were used by fishermen and hunters and might only have a few cots, an oil lamp, and a potbelly stove. I will say that when spaced far and wide, these real cabins were sustainable (some are approaching 80 years old). Completely different vision, bruddah, and I'd love to see how long these richie-rich people could last in really rustic conditions.

Onward through the fog