Photos: Atmautluak builds innovative new homes to save costs

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Men move a support beam into position. Atmautluak is experiementing with different ways to cope with life on the sometimes-frozen tundra of western Alaska, including innovative ways to level homes and ways to cut heating fuel costs.

A pair of three-bedroom houses erected this summer in a Southwest Alaska village have residents hoping that they will revolutionize home-building in the Bush. The homes come with dehydrating toilets that allow human waste to be burned as fuel chips. They sport foundations that can be adjusted with a wrench -- in case thawing permafrost throws the houses off-kilter. Metal roofs and siding should last decades in the brutally cold region.

But it's the pre-assembled framing -- floor beams, wall studs and roof joists come pre-joined -- that has residents from the impoverished region eyeing new economic opportunity.

Four men can carry each of the wall-floor-truss assemblies by hand and raise them along the length of a foundation, creating the wooden skeleton of a home in a matter of days.

"Simple, fast, easy," said Edward Nicholai, who oversaw the project for the tribe in Atmautluak, a village of 300 on the tundra not far from Bethel.

Families moved in this September, he said. The tribal government is forming a company to build more of the houses in Atmautluak and nearby villages. They'd like to create jobs and replace drafty, moldy homes that cost a fortune to heat and are all too common in rural Alaska.

"From here we'll start from this village, then expand later on, help out other villages," he said. "We're just beginning."

READ MORE: Rural Alaskans hope to save big bucks with innovative housing design