Tag Archive: greywater

Quail Springs Permaculture Farm

Instructor Sasha Rabin

http://www.quailsprings.org

This fall Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm will host a long awaited 8-day natural building workshop taught by Sasha Rabin of 7 Generations Natural Builders and Vertical Clay.

WHEN: October 9-16, 2010

WHERE: New Cuyama, CA – Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm in the Upper Cuyama Valley in Southern California

WHO IS THIS WORKSHOP FOR?

This workshop is designed for first-time builders, as well as professional builders and contractors who want to delve into building with natural materials.

WHAT WILL THE WORKSHOP OFFER?

We will join together to build a community bathhouse/sauna* with the teaching and guidance of Sasha Rabin. We will focus on earthen building, offering hands on experience with cob, light straw clay (slip straw), adobe block, and wattle and daub. Students will learn to smoothly integrate a variety of natural building materials to create the best possible building solution for each individual Situation. Sasha will demonstrate how to prospect and test for appropriate building sediment, how to mix cob,
various cob wall building techniques, the installation of windows into cob walls, methods for attachment of
wood (e.g. doors, roofs), and how to sculpt niches, shelves and furniture.
As a complement to the hands-on building portion of the course there will be slide shows and discussion
sessions about the philosophical and theoretical aspects of natural building. These sessions cover building design and siting, passive solar design, foundations and drainage, natural plasters and earthen floors, roofs, and electric and plumbing for earthen buildings. There will also be opportunity to gain some skills in simple wood working for those with minimal or no wood working experience.

*Project Description: Cob bathhouse & sauna with 2 inside showers and Dressing areas, 2 outside showers, interior bath and sauna space, attached greywater system and plantings.

SASHA RABIN has been building and teaching others to build with natural materials since co-founding Seven Generations Natural Builders  in 2002, and is a partner in Vertical Clay. Sasha has a degree in Ecological Design from Evergreen State College and
apprenticed at the Cob Cottage Company. She has taught natural building classes at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School, The Solar Living Institute, and starting this year she will teach at the Institute of Urban Homesteading. She is currently living, learning and working on a suburban permaculture and natural building home and demonstration site in El Sobrante, CA (villasobrante.blogspot.com).

COST: $675 early bird by September 1 / $800 thereafter ($200 deposit holds your space). Includes the intensive, hands-on natural building workshop as well as catered homegrown & locally-grown organic food (our own goatmilk, cheeses, chicken, fresh eggs, and fall harvest vegetables), tent camping, swimming in the pond, nature walks, and after good days of Satisfying work – inspiring presentations, discussions on natural building, and high desert star gazing.

Referral opportunity: Receive $50 off the course fee when a participant registers who was referred by you.
The workshop is limited to 10 students and early registration is advised.

Contact to register: Kolmi at info@quailsprings.org or 805-886-7239
We look forward to sharing this harvest-time building-adventure with you!

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Quail Springs is a working farm dedicated to demonstrating and teaching holistic ways of designing human environments, and to facilitating deeper understandings of ourselves and one another through immersion experiences in nature. www.quailsprings.org

In Historic Move, California Building Standards Commission Green Visionaries Approve New Graywater Standard — July 31st, 2009

Dawn of a new era
Half of all carbon emissions are from buildings. Buildings built to current codes are sucking the groundwater out from under California. Graywater permits are part of an outdated system that focuses on microscopic risk as our species is engulfed by huge, emerging risks.

“On August 4th, 2009, California can legally install simple laundry and single fixture systems without a permit. For the first time, licensed professionals can legally help
with the 1.7 million existing graywater systems in the state. ”
–Art Ludwig, graywater researcher and educator

NBN Member Art Ludwig will be giving a press conference Tuesday August 4th, 2009 from 9:00 to 9:30 am, at the Santa Barbara Library Main Branch Downtown, at the start of his free, City of Santa Barbara-Sponsored workshop on Laundry to Landscape systems currently with over 100 registrants. Ludwig, who participated in the historic graywater code adoption meeting last week in Sacramento at the behest of the City of Santa Barbara Water Resources Division, will tell the story of this code’s process (which involved the biggest stakeholder meetings for any code promulgated by CA Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD)). He will also discuss the significance of the Building Standards Commission’s historic shift from considering only occupant  safety to also taking into account off-site and future impacts of a building’s systems. (California Building Standards Commission (www.bsc.ca.gov) is currently revising California’s Green Building standards, another sea change).

A collision of world views was in full evidence at the July 31st hearing of the California Building Standards Commission that considered the CA Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD)’s proposed new graywater standards. Emergency standards pertaining to new Graywater Standards for residential construction (EF 01-09)

In a hearing lasting all day, highly qualified stakeholders spoke passionately for and against the adoption of the new standards as the hearing roller-coastered  dramatically to its historic conclusion.

The commissioners are to be congratulated for their leadership.  It is always more work to set up a new system than to fit into an existing one.

It would have been a lot easier to stand aside as legal buildings continue to waste resources and pollute the environment.  However, in the face of deeply entrenched, powerful opposition, the commission is rising to the challenge of revising all of California’s building codes to allow/ require better building systems and besides its emergency approval of the new graywater standards yesterday, the California Building Standards Commission is also revising California’s Green Building Standards to include many new mandatory and voluntary measures to reduce negative impacts and increase positive impacts of California buildings.

RESOURCES
Media resources, links to how to educational materials for  the public http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/press/

BACKGROUND

On June 4, 2008 Governor Schwarzenegger signed Executive Order S-06-08 proclaiming that a statewide drought condition existed and directed the Department of Water Resources (DWR)www.water.ca.gov/ to take specific action to counter the drought.

In 2008, Senate Bill 1258 (Ch. 172, Stats. Of 2008) was signed by the Governor enacting new statues in the Health and Safety Code(section 17922.12 and 18941.7) and amending existing statute in the Water Code ()Section 14877.1) These statutes, effective January 1, 2009, including requirements that directed the Department of Housing and Community Development(HCD) to propose to the California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) building standards for the construction, installation, and alteration of graywater systems for residential indoor and outdoor uses.

On Feb 27 , 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger issued a proclamation declaring a drought to be in existence and a state of emergency to exist in California. This proclamation was based upon the circumstances of severe drought conditions that by the reason of their magnitude is beyond the control of the services , personnel, equipment and facilities of any one local entity and requires the combined forces of a mutual aid region or regions to combat.

Existing Graywater standards contained in the California Code of Regulations (CCR) Title 24, California Plumbing Code, Part 5, Appendix G are based upon requirements for private sewage disposal. Theses standards have been found to be overly prescriptive and antiquated, and not readily usable by persons seeking to install graywater systems for the purpose of water conservation.

The graywater regulation revolution was started in 1989 in Santa Barbara, California. It spread from there to four other communities, then the whole state, via the Uniform Plumbing Code, in 1992.

The approach the commission has now adopted is being used successfully in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and soon Nevada, Montana, and Oregon. With this change, California is regaining its leadership role for graywater reuse.

Janaia Donaldson, of Peak Moment TV, show cases a fully permitted greywater system created by Trathen Heckman, the Executitve Director of Daily Acts and Green Sangha in Petaluma, California.  In the video Trathen mentions, NBN Member, Art Ludwig’s book “Create an Oasis with Greywater“.

Mayne Island, B.C.

Cobworks is currently interviewing for 4 apprentices to work with us this summer. Apprentices will take all of the Mayne Island summer courses as well as work on individual projects with Patrick Hennebery. During the summer, apprentices will learn to: build dry-stack stone foundations, work with a minimal amount of concrete, select and collect sustainable roundwood from forest and beaches, run a small bandsaw mill, turning logs to lumber, design and build a greywater system for a cob house, learn to safely operate power construction tools, build a round log frame building, participate in 2 cob workshops [bench/garden wall and 400sq,ft.house], finish a cob bath house using earthen plasters and natural finishes, learn a quick and strong notching method for round post and beam construction, install an earthen floor, and work in an organic garden and learn basic permaculture principles. Participants will camp in community at Fernhollow Campground on Mayne Island. All food will be local and organic when possible. Apprentices will share in food prep and community living. For more information or to request an interview, please email pat@cobworks.com