Welcome to the Belize Eco Village Bulletin 16 update. We are eager to share our values, virtues, and visions to connect with like minded souls with various backgrounds and interests to consider our BEV project as an investment haven. After extensive travel it was back to Belize in August for more planning and progress. This blog will share some pictures and progress since my May 2019 trip which ended with an educational and exciting trip to Corozal to meet with Rodney McGraw and Grady Davidson to see their domes homes. Seeing Ecoshell 1 dome homes in Belize was a big boost to my mindset and morale. I have been researching the process to build them ever since.
In June I received news and pictures of a grass fire that jumped the Southern highway and burned many acres and hundreds of our food trees. That will require a lot of work to replace and replant them. It was another tough setback to deal with. Anything can happen and nothing is easy in Belize so be sure you have the burning desire and determination to see your destiny and dream to reality. Thanks to our four BEV visitors: Carol, Gabriella, Mark and Luis that came to check our houses and project progress.
Two SCEB Homes Complete
Our first two Stabilized Compressed Earth Block (SVEB) homes are complete. Yeah! Celebrate. It was nice to celebrate the milestone and helped reinforce the desire and drive to press on. The caretaker family moved in early June and is very happy living in House 1. House 2 will be occupied by a contractor and his crew. This gives us a base of operations to begin focusing on landscaping, logistics and longer term planning. The electrical for both houses and the two septic systems are complete. The security bars and doors for house 1 and 2 are installed. The rain catch tanks for house 1 and 2 are in place and operational. The front pipe gate has been installed and is lockable. Now it is time to landscape around the house and plant food plants around the septic fields.
Wow hard to believe it took one year and three month overall timeline (10 months actual construction time) to complete two basic SCEB houses. The original contractor estimate and plan was to have them both done in five months maximum. Just goes to show what the weather and working in Belize can yield in the way of surprises. It ended up costing twice the projected labor, money and time to complete both houses build as close to simultaneous as possible.
As a result we are taking a sabbatical from SCEB houses and shifting our focus to building two Ecoshell 1 dome homes from Monolithic Dome Institute (MDI) for our next homes. I am currently learning from them and people like Van Smith and others the best practices, design considerations, key factors and optimal methods to determine what shape and size will be optimal for our Belize Eco Village project. Since an airform and the equipment costs a pretty penny to acquire and ship to Belize it is key to have the right one from the beginning since they are designed to last for a hundred uses. Stay tuned for my next blog after I travel back to MDI in Italy, Texas to discuss the optimal Ecoshell 1 for our BEV project.
The goal of the Morningstar NEWS is to condense hours of research down to two minutes of education, information and inspiration for a healthy lifestyle and mindset. While we consider our SCEB homes a healthy and sustainable living success we learned their are better ways to build them with a better block. Now it is time to put the Ecoshell 1 dome homes to the test in our BEV community. Remember to check out and share our Beltraide Executive Investment Summary on their website. All comments, questions, and shares are greatly appreciated.
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I’ve been looking into building my own eco-home in Belize, and recently I reached out to Michael Morningstar with a question [regarding compressed earth block homes, or CEB]. He not only answered my email in a timely manner but then called to personally lead me in the right direction while sharing his extensive knowledge of what he’s learned in the past near decade through his own trials and tribulations. From great advice to helpful methods to research on my own, he has gone out of his way to help me along my process on such a self-less note. Michael is invested in doing great things and takes the time to share his light with the world.
Thank you, Michael.
Here’s to looking forward in building a healthy world!
– Maria L