Sustainable housing in a cold climate - Page 2

[OceanMomma]

The only problem I have had noise-wise from rain on a tin roof is if you have one of those really really heavy downpours when you are on the phone. But I can live with that. My kids make way more noise!

[Calm]

Be wary of building the house out of metal materials. It can block the electromagnetic resonance of the earth etc. In Japan, it was found that a certain group of sicknesses in the Japanese were because they worked in steel office buildings, while the people in the other office buildings did not suffer from it. It is similar to the "space sickness" astronauts suffered from being away from the earth's atmosphere. They now use a machine to simulate the earth's resonance in the crafts.

Of course, the more of these materials the house is made of, the worse it is, so I am not sure how bad just a roof would be. However I have heard that it shouldn't even be a steel frame. Our bodies require this connection with electromagnetism generated by the earth for health, as the whole body works out of electromagnetism like a circuit.

For what that is worth. If anyone is open to this stuff, it would be MDC mamas.

[OceanMomma]

None of the houses I've lived in with tin roofs have ever had steel frames. Only wood. On this train of thought, I think electromagnetic pollution is a big factor to watch out for as well. I am planning to have the sleeping areas in our new house able to be individually totally depowered at night.

[HerthElde]

I've got dh reading "The Straw Bale House" right now, and it's putting some great ideas in his head. We're going to have switches to prevent power getting to the outlets to avoid all the electromagnetic problems. And he's really liking the idea of the concrete foundation with straw bale instead of rebar (crossed rebar can cause some kind of effect, can't remember the name of it, but it's also bad on an energy level). Being all for going way above and beyond minimum standards, he's thinking post and beam as opposed to load-bearing bales, but we found a place nearby that actually reclaims wood! Also we were thinking that we may end up buying land with an about-to-fall-down house that we may be able to reclaim wood from (of course, it all depends on what's available).
So, can anyone tell me about geothermal heat? What about roofs made from recycled tires? Or should I start some new threads, do you think?