Natural Building Sustainable Living
Everyone from techies (check out the solar and communication systems) to Luddites (check out the small cob and straw bale homes) should find something of interest here, although some who think they’re living the “green life” may feel challenged after looking at this site.
In the natural building arena, I’ll be touching on all aspects of natural building from codes, materials, energy performance, creative uses of local resources, to beautiful natural finishes made with products from your kitchen or garden. I’ll also be delving into some deeper aspects of natural building as it pertains to sustainable living.
Sustainable living is a very broad category so I’ve narrowed the issues to the most pressing concerns we face today; global warming and resource depletion and how these things pertain to our production of materials, energy, water, and food.
Its A Pocket Book Issue, Stupid
Clintons note to himself (“its the economy, stupid”) when running for President the first time, has relevance here (for the record, I never voted for Clinton, but I’ll vote for Al Gore if he runs in ‘08). I could write all day about the many environmental advantages of incorporating these issues into your life, but many will yawn and click to another blog. What I really want you to know about are the financial benefits of adopting these technologies. The environmental benefits will fall into place on their own.
Natural Building Defined
What is natural building and why would anyone want to do it? As much as possible, natural building employs the use of locally derived natural resources in a minimally processed state, using local labor, to create buildings. Creative souls living in rural areas with relatively intact habitats will find this an easy task. City folks, don’t despair, this can be done in the city, it just takes a bit more creativity. Its important to understand that there is a difference between “natural building” and “green building” (more on this issue later). If you see these two terms used interchangeably by someone, then you can be sure of one or two things; either 1) they don’t know what they’re talking about, and or 2), they’re on the payroll of some corporation thats trying to usurp the natural building movement much as corporate America has usurped the organic movement.
Another incorrect assumption is that natural homes are barley a step above living in a cave. If you take the time to view some of the photos on this site you’ll see that these homes can be just as comfortable and even more elegant in an earthy (read that, ‘less greenhouse gases’) way, than contemporary homes. Of its own accord, the eastern philosophy that “less is more”, bubbles to the top here.
Primitive construction shares many of the same technologies as natural construction, so this will also be a part of my discussions.
Why Natural?
For most people, the construction or purchase of a new home will represent the single largest environmental impact they will have on the planet in their lifetime. Unfortunately, awareness of this is scant. The Development Center for Appropriate Technology (DCAT) in Tucson, AZ has statistics that show that if everyone on the planet were to build a typical American home, that we would need 3 more planet earths to supply the needed resources. Obviously, we are using way more than our share of this planets resources. For the average American to live as they do means that others have to go without. This inequity alone is reason enough to go natural.
In addition, most of us can go back to the first sentence of the previous paragraph and substitute the word “bank account” for the word “planet”. Amazingly, many people allow only passing consideration to the exorbitant cost of a new home today. Their idea of researching alternatives is to head down to the local real estate office to see what’s available. The powers that be have been very effective at convincing everyone that both spouses must slave away their lives to make the mortgage payments. I have good news; well conceived and designed natural homes can cost a fraction of contemporary homes.
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Environmental and economic advantages garnered when incorporating natural solutions certainly set it apart from contemporary construction, but its also one of the main reasons why natural building is not to be confused with green building. Only natural building can provide; vast reductions in the production of CO2, sequestration of CO2, great savings in energy consumption and last but not least, great financial savings as well, all in one fell swoop. Stay with me here... Green builders use government energy statistics (“Energy Star” ratings) based on the performance of a house, once its completed, as a means to point out the advantage of building with their “green” systems. Indeed, these systems often create a finished home that, from an ongoing energy consumption standpoint, can outperform homes made with “conventional” systems. However, the materials used in green systems are often the same as conventional systems and just like conventional systems, the energy that goes into mining, processing and transporting those materials are not calculated into the performance statistics of a finished home. In these days of increasing energy scarcity and wars being fought over control of major oil fields, the void left by not calculating what natural builders call the “embodied energy” of building materials into performance statistics of a finished home, is glaring.
One example; cement. Cement consumes vast amounts of energy to be mined (possibly in another country), transported to kilns, fired to high temperatures, processed, transported to the cement mixing plant or to your building material supplier, then to your home to be mixed and/or poured on site.. This is why the world wide production of cement accounts for over 9% of all man made greenhouse gases and is why natural builders are always striving to reduce the amount of cement they use. Add to this the fact that many green building systems use more cement than conventional systems (Rostra being a good example) and these “green building” systems begin to look more brown than green.
So the natural builder who uses local stone as a foundation material, earth from the site for walls and local trees for rafters, has just leapt over everyone else in terms of reducing embodied energy in his materials. If he then employs a smart passive solar design, his ongoing energy consumption will most likely be lower than most green buildings. If he then captures rainwater from the roof of his new home to water newly planted trees around the home, he then earns carbon credits for sequestering CO2. He may even want to put a living roof on the house so that the house itself becomes a means of CO2 sequestration. This natural builder has just become part of the solution to global warming.
Another advantage of building with local natural materials is the development of a vernacular style of architecture. The result is a style of building that says, “we belong here in this locale, we are of this place, we were not mindlessly conceived in some far flung architectural office and built without consideration of the landscape that surrounds us”. Those of you who have been to Europe or Latin America and have seen the old villages that date to an era before rail lines and trucking, know of what I speak. Each village has its own unique, charming character defined by the construction materials that were locally available. The homogenous approach that our “national” homebuilders incorporate has left this country bereft of the charm and character that defines that earlier age. I once picked up an English architectural student hitchhiking across the U.S. He told me that if someone were to blindfold him and take him to any part of England that he could tell where he was just by looking at a few buildings. He was bemoaning the lack of a local or even regional vernacular architectural style in the U.S. I pointed out to him the fact that there was once several regional styles; the southwest with its Hacienda and Territorial styles; New england with its Clapboard houses, but that even these areas had succumbed to the hegemony of the corporate homebuilders.
Perhaps the greatest reward of going natural is the bottom line. It stands to reason that less processing means less cost and using local materials translates to less transportation costs. An example; when building earthen wall systems (adobe, cob, rammed earth, puddled adobe, quint, nara dake etc.) with soil from the site excavation, your wall material costs drop to nominal levels. That same soil can also be used to create forgiving floors, creative counter tops and (more on that later) and pretty but practical plasters.
Another positive financial result of going the natural route is that when you spend money for your materials and labor locally, much of that money will stay in the local economy instead of being siphoned off into the pocket of some already wealthy corporate head in another state or country who could care less about your local economy. At some point some of that locally spent money will find its way back into your pocket when you go to do business within your community. This is another point that distinguishes natural builders from green builders, natural builders do not consider Home Depot a local resource.
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A Few of My Experiences
When I helped a friend build a passive solar adobe house near Moab, Utah in 1981, little did I know that that experience would lead to a lifelong pursuit of natural building. That first house was a great example of what natural construction is; naturally occurring local materials (adobe soil from the site excavation was used to make the block and all posts, vigas, rough bucks, lentils, etc. came from snags we felled in the nearby La Salle mountains) minimally processed and assembled into a home with local labor.
In 1987 through the early 90’s, I had the opportunity to work with Quinten Branch, owner of Rammed Earth Solar Homes in Tucson, Arizona. Their approach is more commercial requiring the addition of cement (about 3 to 5 %) as a stabilizer to the rammed earth, but whenever possible the soil came from the site. If the home had a traditional southwestern viga and latilla roof, those materials usually came from Arizona mountains. Not quite as elegantly sustainable as the adobe house near Moab, but light years ahead of 99% of homes being built in the U.S.
Early in 1990 while living in Tucson I had the good fortune to meet Matts Myrman, one of the godfathers of the straw bale movement. He is best known for introducing straw bale construction to the U.S. when the raising of the straw bale walls for his “Moms House” was featured on “Good Morning America”. I helped him raise the walls on the second straw bale home in Arizona. That same year, a man walked up my driveway one day to buy some bamboo plants from me (see Bamboo, Mud and Straw!). That man was Bill Steen. He and his wife Athena, were working on a book at the time called “The Straw Bale House” which became the all time best seller in the alternative home building category. Several years later at the first “Natural Building Colloquium” in Kingston N.M., Bill and Athena asked me to join them on a project they had just begun in Obregon, Sonora Mexico building low income straw bale homes in conjunction with The Save the Children Foundation (Fundacion Apoyo del Infantil, FAI). They then went on to design and build a 4,000 sq. ft. straw bale office building for the Foundation using local straw and clay from on site, local labor and no power tools. In between early trips to Obregon, I founded the Tierra Seca chapter of the American Bamboo Society and was its first president. The membership voted to embark on a project to introduce construction grade species of bamboo for use in constructing low income homes and as a new sustainable crop for the campasinos of southern Sonora. By the time the office building was complete, approximately 60 new bamboo plants were growing on the 4 hectares that surrounded the office. Three years ago I was able to conduct a workshop building a bamboo mud and straw cabana with poles harvested from those bamboo plants (see photos).
In 1998, I bought 23 acres of raw land near Arivaca, Az and began to develop a small organic farm incorporating all of the concepts of this site. The work on this property is ongoing (see photos) and will entail much of my blogs.
The photos above were all taken in Costa Rica. I choose these photos for the welcome page because they represent what we need to do in the U.S. on a national basis. If little ol’ Costa Rica can do it, surely big ol’ U.S. of A. can do it. The large photo shows two bamboo houses under construction that are part of the Costa Rican National Bamboo Project (see page on this). The top center photo is a demonstration of building techniques used in the “Project”. The bottom center photo is a permaculture catchment at a friends farm. The photo to the right is of Manuel and Mario Retana, Marios wife, Pete Fust of the Black Range Lodge and Francisco Plaza. The bamboo plant is part of the Reteana brothers bamboo farm and furniture factory (see page on this). Some of bamboo’s phenomenal attributes include; producing the most sustainable wood on earth and sequestering more CO2 faster than any tree.
Welcome to the Natural Building/Sustainable Living Site. The “podcast” heading will take you to the podcasts. The “Natural Building Sustainable Living” heading will take you to the blogs. Clicking on photos here and there will take you to some of the photo pages. The “Photo Pages” will take you to thumbnails of topical photo pages which also have a brief description of the subject. The RSS subscription is free. Lets change the world.
