Sustainable Living
PCEI’s Palouse Nature Center has a number of projects aimed at reducing our footprint on our surrounding environment. From a composting toilet to water catchment systems, the Nature Center is a great place to learn about alternative building, renewable energy, and native plants. Click on the links below to learn more about our sustainable living projects.
Artist Studio
PCEI’s Artist Studio is an example of Timber Framing. Timber Framing is a building method using heavy timbers instead of commercialized lumber. The timbers are milled, squared off and fit exactly within one another and held by a hardwood peg, also known as mortise and tenon joinery. Keep reading…
GeoWeb Parking Lot
When asked to pave their parking lot by the City of Moscow, PCEI wanted to show the town alternatives to pavement. The GeoWeb was installed by PCEI volunteers, and construction of the parking lot took about one week. Keep reading…
Living Roofs
The Palouse Nature Center has two living roofs. The first was constructed along with and on top of our straw bale bike pavilion in 2005 with the help of architect student volunteers from the University of Idaho under the direction of Kurt Rathman. Keep reading…
Straw Bale Bike Shelter
Straw bale construction is a building method using bales of straw as structural elements, building insulation or both. Straw is an agricultural by-product—the dry stalk of a grain plant left over after the grain is harvested. Keep reading…
Water Catchment System
The water catchment system at PCEI was introduced during the summer of 2007. With a 1,600 gallon rainwater cistern already in place at PCEI’s Nature Center, former AmeriCorps member, Jim Ekins, began work on the solar-powered pump system that moves rainwater from the cistern to the pantry garden. Keep reading…