Terms of service

Pangea Academy is a New Mexico non-profit corporation. These terms cover pangeaacademy.org, including the course system at /learn/. Using the site means you accept them. If you do not, do not use it.

Your account

One account, one person, and the details on it should be true — a certificate with the wrong name on it is worth nothing to you. Keep your password to yourself; you are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us if you think someone else has got into it.

You can delete your account at any time from your account page. We can suspend or close an account that is being used to abuse the system, to redistribute the curriculum commercially, or to harass anyone — and if we do that to you and you think we are wrong, write to us and a person will look at it.

What the courses cost

The curriculum is free today. Fourteen courses, 274 lessons, the assessments and the certificates, with an account and no card.

That is changing. We intend to introduce a paid subscription for the online curriculum at $25 per month, or $240 per year. We will say so on the site before it starts. Three things do not change when it does:

• The foundation course, Regenerative Design Philosophy, stays free permanently, with its certificate.
• If you hold an account before the subscription begins, everything you have enrolled in stays free to you for one year from that date.
• Any certificate you have already earned stays yours and stays verifiable, whether or not you ever subscribe.

Field sessions are priced separately and are not included in a subscription. Booking a field session does include access to the online curriculum.

The COBOD BOD2 Level 1 certification is separate and is not free. It costs $250, paid once. It is not part of the subscription and a subscription does not include it. Your access to it does not expire: once you have bought it, it is yours, whether or not you ever subscribe to anything else and whether or not the subscription price changes later. It is open to anyone — no construction background and no access to a printer is required.

Level 1 is theoretical and preparatory. It does not authorize you to operate a 3D construction printer, and its certificate says so on its face. Operating authority is earned at Level 2, on site and supervised.

The homebuyer education course is different: it is run by eHome America, on their site, and they charge their own fee. That is between you and them.

Paying

Card payments are taken by Stripe, on Stripe's own pages. We never see your card number. Prices are in US dollars and include no tax; if your bank charges you for a foreign transaction, that is between you and your bank.

• A subscription renews automatically at the same price and interval until you cancel it. We will tell you before we change the price of a subscription you already hold, and you can cancel rather than accept it.
• Cancel any time from your billing page. Your access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for, and then stops. We do not pro-rate a part-used month or year.
• If something is wrong, write to us. We would rather refund a course somebody genuinely could not use than argue about it, and we will say yes to any reasonable request made within 30 days. We will say no to a request made after you have finished the course and collected the certificate, because at that point you have had the thing you bought.
• A certificate earned on a refunded purchase is revoked, and its verification code stops confirming.
• If you cannot afford a fee, say so before you pay it. The scholarship fund covers course fees, the certification and field sessions. Asking costs nothing and we would rather you asked.

Certificates

Finish a course, pass its assessments, and you get a certificate with a verification code. Anyone with that code can check it at /learn/verify, which is what makes it worth showing to an employer.

A certificate is a record that you completed our course. It is not a license, not a trade qualification, not a permit, and not a substitute for whatever your state, county or building department requires. Nothing here makes you a licensed contractor, engineer, electrician, plumber or architect. We will revoke a certificate obtained dishonestly.

What you can do with the material

We are a non-profit and we publish our methods rather than licensing them, so: use what you learn. Build with it, on your own projects or on projects you are paid for. Teach it to your crew. Quote it, with attribution. That is the entire point of the Academy, and none of it needs our permission.

What you may not do is republish the course material itself — the lessons, the drawings, the assessments — as your own, or sell access to it, or pass your account around so that other people use it instead of making their own. The knowledge is meant to spread. The courseware is how we fund spreading it.

The advice problem, stated plainly

Everything on this site is education. It is not engineering, legal, financial or code-compliance advice for your building, because we have not seen your site, your soil, your climate, your drawings or your jurisdiction.

Buildings are governed locally and the rules differ everywhere. Before you build: get your design reviewed by a licensed professional where required, pull the permits your jurisdiction requires, and have the inspections done. Structural, electrical, plumbing and septic work carries real consequences when it is wrong, and the consequences land on whoever lives in the building. We will teach you how these systems work and why. We cannot sign off on yours.

Field sessions and campus programs

In-person programs have their own terms, which we give you when you book, and their own waiver of liability — a working building site is not a classroom, and the waiver is signed on paper when you arrive.

Program fees, deposits and cancellation terms are set per session and stated when you book. Travel, insurance and anything a border asks you for are yours to arrange. We do not provide medical, accident or travel insurance, and you should carry your own.

Donations

Pangea Academy is a New Mexico non-profit recognized by the IRS as exempt under section 501(c)(3), EIN 33-2155076. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent United States law allows.

You get your written acknowledgment immediately, at a link of your own shown the moment your gift goes through. It names the amount, the date, our EIN, and states that nothing was given to you in return — which is what the IRS requires for any single gift of $250 or more. Keep the link: the page stays there, and you can print it. The receipt Stripe emails you is a payment receipt, not that document. If you would rather have a signed letter on paper, ask and we will post one.

Donations are not refundable, because we spend them. A donation does not buy influence over the curriculum, a seat in a program, or a place in the Chamisa Verde lottery. If you tell us which fund a gift is for, we will spend it on that; if a fund is ever oversubscribed or wound up, we will use the balance for the purpose closest to the one you chose rather than return it, and we will say so publicly.

Housing programs

Nothing on this site is an offer to sell a home, and registering interest in Chamisa Verde is not an application and gives you no priority. Eligibility, the lottery and the deed restriction are governed by the recorded documents and by our agreement with the Town of Taos, and those documents control over anything said on this website. Read the restriction in full, with your own attorney, before you commit to anything.

What we do not promise

The site is provided as it is. We do not guarantee it will be available without interruption, that every figure in 274 lessons is free of error, or that following the curriculum produces a particular result on your project. Where the law allows us to limit our liability, we do — and where it does not, it does not. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence, because that cannot be limited and should not be.

Changes

We may change these terms. If a change matters — pricing, certificates, what you may do with the material — we will say so on the site and change the effective date above. Carrying on using the site after that means you accept the new version.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Mexico, and the state and federal courts of Taos County, New Mexico are where disputes about them are heard. Programs that run outside the United States may carry additional terms specific to that country.