I'm going to be looking into this further and I will post what I find. I've built a few traditional houses, but I've always been interested in building a house that would work well off grid and in a place that had the right weather conditions to pull it off. Has anyone here built an off grid home? I was out in Taos a year ago looking at the earthships. Recenty, I was on the Earthship web page looking at their seminar schedule. I think it would be fun to attend one of them. I've been reading the book on how to build one. It doesn't look any harder than building a traditional house. Oregon would seem like a good place to begin. My biggest concern would be to begin a project like this and then half way through the building inspector shuts it down. I was thinking of an area other than Taos. The winter there may be to much for me. I'm hoping to find a place where it was encouraged.