Our understanding of what is ‘natural’ building has evolved during the past two decades. We have refined our process of experimentation and evaluation, as we have built our two homes together. We have tried to make both homes beautiful and comfortable, as well as healthy environments to live and work within. Welcome to our natural building journey.

Recently several Builders Without Borders members and colleagues returned from reconnaissance visits to Haiti.
They found the people there to be both traumatized and resilient. And there is need for many new homes.

But what should be built? Designs should be seismically resistant, sustainable, affordable and aesthetically pleasing to the people living there. Many systems could meet these criteria. There is certainly a lot of broken concrete available, and Andy Mueller found a large amount of rice growing near Port Au Prince.

Builders Without Borders is developing a pilot project to try out a few different building methodologies in Haiti, which will probably include rice straw-bales and rice hulls, bamboo, clay and urbanite, and other locally available resources. Architect Martin Hammer, a BWB representative, is currently in Haiti meeting with potential partners, and looking at potential building locations. BWB is currently accepting donations to fund this project.
Donations should be earmarked: Haiti Housing Solutions

BWB partner PAKSBAB (Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building) is also considering a pilot project in Haiti. They envision bringing their building team from Pakistan, to share their super seismically-resistant housing design with Haiti. Paksbab is currently completing their 17th straw-bale building in Pakistan, and need an additional $1000 per month to keep their local building crew employed. BWB is also accepting donations on their behalf, which should be earmarked: PAKSBAB

Thank you for your generosity.

Sincerely,
Catherine Wanek & Derek Roff
Co-directors
Builders Without Borders

www.builderswithoutborders.org
575-895-5400

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First Earth, Uncompromising Ecological Architecture

A documentary by David Sheen, about building healthy houses out of earth, creating social justice and evaluating the status quo of how ( and in what ) we live.  David traveled the world in search of ancient earthen buildings and sustainable cultures while interviewing top experts in the field.  This is the full film available on YouTube – for free.

Learn more at DavidSheen.com/firstearth

Imagine two builders in your community. One knows the building code as a set of minimum standards and builds only to those minimums, producing the worst building he legally can. The other always is pushing the envelope at the opposite end of the spectrum, trying to build the most energy- and resource-efficient, least toxic, most environmentally and socially responsible building possible. Which builder, do you think, holds the record for the fastest and easiest time getting a set of plans through the building department, and which holds the record for the longest and most brutal experience? Nobody intends to give a pass to the worst builder and to beat the crap out of the best one, but that’s what our system does.

What if building officials reviewed the plans of the best builders first instead of putting them on the bottom of the pile because of all the complications? What if officials met with builders to learn why they are doing what they’re doing, what the benefits are, and to whom those benefits accrue? What if we all saw our building departments as a community resource for the best houses, not just as the building police preventing the worst?

Seeing the larger context

According to the International Code Council (ICC), the purpose of the International Building Code is to “safeguard public health, safety and general welfare… from hazards attributed to the built environment.” The code then prescribes how to accomplish that purpose, detailing means of egress, fire safety, structural integrity, and so forth. In fact, our modern codes are extremely good at enabling us to design and build structures that rarely fall down, burn down, trap people in emergencies, electrocute people, expose them to raw sewage, let them fall from high places, or suffocate them.

Through the microscope of the building code, our responsibility for safeguarding public health, safety, and welfare appears to have been carried out. But when you take your eye away from that microscope, you see a set of risks many orders of magnitude greater—risks for billions of people, not just the occupants of specific buildings.

We have long assumed that the hazards caused by the built environment are limited to those that occur at a building site and during the life of a building. In reality, hazards begin with the acquisition of resources and extend through their processing, transport, and installation. The hazards include any waste and pollution generated during construction. They also include the environmental impacts of a building’s operation, maintenance, repair, and remodeling, and they extend into the future, far beyond the life of a building.

Whether we are talking about how buildings contribute to global warming; their dependence on fossil fuels and petrochemicals; the range of environmental impacts from pollution to deforestation to the use of nonrenewable resources to loss of habitat and productive farmland; or the range of impacts on water, air, and human health, many hazards attributable to the built environment are outside the scope of our current building code. And we are constructing millions of buildings every year without understanding this oversight.

What’s risky now?

When you look at how buildings are designed and constructed, you realize that many of our common practices, which previously have appeared extremely safe, begin to look rather risky. Likewise, many of the practices that look risky now begin to look far safer in this larger frame of reference.

If you design a home to heat, cool, and ventilate itself passively, without external power or mechanical systems, you are required by code to provide absolute proof that it will work—not just that it will be safe, but that it will perform to quite narrow and unnatural comfort parameters. You also are required to add backup mechanical systems to ensure that you can maintain those comfort levels. Yet the code has no problem with homes that flaunt passive-solar design principles, that have inoperable windows and rooms without natural light or ventilation, and that require massive mechanical life-support systems to maintain minimum utility, making houses dangerous or possibly lethal when they lose their external power supplies. Oddly, the building code requires no natural backup systems to make these homes safe when, inevitably, they lose power—no provisions for emergency lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilating.

The benefits of passive-design strategies extend beyond energy savings. People can subsist in a well-insulated building designed at least partially to heat and cool itself and to provide fresh air to each room until power is restored.

The building code also readily allows the use of industrialized materials and systems that travel thousands of miles to a building site and have huge ecological footprints. At the same time, tremendous scrutiny is focused on natural materials such as rammed earth, straw bales, or timber from your own land that hasn’t gone through an industrial process. When you consider the negative impact of the acquisition of raw materials; the waste, pollution, and energy intensity of manufacturing processes; and the risks associated with the ultimate disposal of the materials that go into our buildings, many lower-tech, more-local materials and systems seem to be less-risky alternative

Awareness is the key

Our building code is a gate, and code officials are the gatekeepers for the crucial and enormous changes that must happen in the next decade if we are to avoid the catastrophic consequences of global warming, peak oil prices, and the impact of 6.5 billion of us on this planet. Fortunately, some building departments around the country already are beginning to view the code in a larger, more sustainable context.

Seattle, for instance, is committed to becoming a sustainable city. City leaders began by combining the planning and zoning department with the building department, creating the department of planning and development. This reorganization clarified the relationship between the regulatory realm and the city’s sustainability goals and comprehensive plan. The department also hired a green-building expert to oversee the proper handling of green projects and to teach the staff about green building.

When the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance requiring municipal building projects to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver standard, the city trained a couple of dozen staff people in various departments to be certified as LEED-accredited professionals. The energy and morale of Seattle officials are high because they see themselves as partnered with and supporting the best designers, builders, developers, and projects. The building department has created great information resources for professionals and the public, and the staff’s commitment goes far beyond just talking about how to do it.

“If you want to see these kinds of changes where you live, get involved locally.”

The ICC is internalizing these changes as well. The council recently moved its headquarters into a green building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.—a LEED silver building. The board of directors has passed a sustainability and green-building policy statement, and is moving to develop a guide to sustainability and green building for code officials through a partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council.

If you want to see these kinds of changes where you live, get involved locally. If you don’t think your building department has well-trained or well-qualified people, then advocate for adequate training resources related to sustainable building and development practices, and for hiring more-qualified people. Think about what the ideal building department would be like, and begin creatively and constructively introducing those ideas through your everyday encounters and communications with elected officials and others in your local government. If you aren’t getting the government you think you deserve, but you aren’t engaged in changing it, then you have no basis for complaining.

Yes, specific portions of the building code need to change, and that will take time. But once we all are aware of the full range of risks that our buildings create, and where and for whom those risks occur, the transition toward sustainable buildings and communities won’t be derailed by building codes or by the people who enforce them. The same codes can be enforced either to protect the narrowest interpretation of risk or the broadest. Awareness of what we all have at stake is the key.

Watch an excerpt from the author’s DVD, Building Codes for a Small Planet, which includes a visit to an off-the-grid straw-bale house in Santa Margarita, Calif.
This article first appeared in the July 2007 issue of Fine Homebuilding, 63 South Main St., Newtown, CT 06470, www.finehomebuilding.com.

• The average size of a US house has doubled since 1949 to 2250 square feet. (Listen to a related NPR story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283) or Read the Los Angeles Times article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/national/la-na-mcmansions23jul23,1,5997419.story?ctrack=3&cset=true
• In the next 50 years more buildings will be built than in human history to date.
• Since Lewis and Clark first reached the Pacific shore Americans have consumed nearly 80% of our old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. If this had not been stopped they would have vanished in 2006. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00384.x
• The average US home has 13,000 board feet of lumber (one square foot of wood one inch thick). This equals one football field of clearcut for each house. http://www.esf.edu/PUBPROG/house/default.htm
• The most effective strategy is for Americans to live in smaller, more space and energy efficient dwellings and businesses. http://www.resourcesforlife.com/groups/smallhousesociety/resources.htm
• 10-30% of our community landfills are construction debris and discarded buildings. http://peakstoprairies.org/p2bande/Construction/C&DWaste/whatsC&D.cfm http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/debris-new/basic.htm http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/sqg/c&d-rpt.pdf
• 30% of the money the average American spends on heating and cooling their home is lost through leaky ducts, windows, walls, ceilings, etc – $140 per home in 2006. Each year leaky windows alone cost an estimated $26 billion dollars currently. http://www.epa.gov/naturalevents/fightfrost.html http://www.hubbertpeak.com/pimentel/bioscience/conservation/conservation.pdf
• The average American consumes 46,414 pounds of materials in a year. This includes coal (7,400 lbs), oil (6,420 lbs – the weight of 1,069 gallons of gasoline), natural gas (3,240 lbs – the weight of 72,000 cu. ft.), cement (902 lbs), iron ore (440 lbs), and clays (290 lbs). This is about 7 times the weight of the food eaten (2200 lbs). http://www.energybulletin.net/14143.html
• In the United States, approximately 4 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent (almost 9,000 pounds) per person per year (about 17% of total U.S. emissions) are emitted from people’s homes – how long it stays in the atmosphere is debatable – from a dozen years or so to several thousand. http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_home.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gases
• According to GCL: Global Cement and Lime Magazine concrete production is responsible for 8% of the human contribution to greenhouse gas emissions as each pound of concrete produced adds one pound of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. www.propubs.com/climate/climate.html
• The National Academy of Sciences reports that 15% of the US population have some degree of environmental illness from cumulative exposure to carcinogens and toxins (many present in building materials and carpets).
• The California Children’s Environmental Health Protection Act notes the health risks of formaldehyde – a solvent present in clothing, upholstery, drapery, paints, carpets, cabinets, adhesives and cleaning products. (http://www.oehha.ca.gov/air/toxic_contaminants/pdf_zip/formaldehyde_final.pdf)
• According to the Environmental Protection Agency the average American spends 80% of their lives indoors and 30% of our lives in bedrooms.
• The EPA also reports that 90% of all regulated toxins are more prevalent indoors than out.
• The World Health Organization reports that 30% of all US homes contain toxic levels sufficient to create environmental illness. (http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/sbs.html)
• The Natural Resources Defense Council has reported that in the last 50 years 70,000 chemicals have been created that have never before been seen by the human body.
• Only 1,000 of those chemicals have been tested for effects on our nervous system.
• Only 100 of those are regulated in their use.
• 250,000 violations of those regulations are recorded every 2 years.

“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”
-Winston Churchill.

The creation of a home is, by no means, a simple act. Thousands of decisions will go into that process and those decisions will be based on stated or unstated cultural values. A home built with the intention of being the largest space for the least amount of money will look, feel and act very differently than one where the driving force of the design is “authenticity”, the health of the occupant and concern for our ecology. It costs a little more per square foot to build a home that won’t harm our health and more again to build one that will deeply nurture us. No one expects a superbly engineered Mercedes to cost the same as a compact economy car because we understand the quality factor. But when it comes to assessment of real estate there is a disproportionate emphasis on initial “cost per square foot” and this remains a stumbling block for home owners who would choose quality over quantity. Our homes are our greatest investment not just financially but in our health, the health of the environment and in our children’s future. Becoming informed home buyers and occupants is the surest way to find and maintain a good home. The act of dwelling and all its associated systems was once innate cultural knowledge passed on from generation to generation in homes that were also passed on from generation to generation. Now understanding home is considered to be specialized knowledge. In fact most home energy rating systems assume occupant ignorance. For example mechanized occupant sensors to turn lights on and off and operate mechanical ventilation systems are rewarded on green score cards. But mechanical systems inevitably break long before the life of a home is played out. Wouldn’t it be smarter to reward built-in opportunities for occupants to operate their homes wisely over the expected life of the building? In our high desert climate, with large daily temperature swings, a combination of shading, cross ventilation and interior mass walls works well to cool a home without the need for mechanical intervention if occupants open their windows at night. These same mass walls, if heated by a radiant heat source, help to keep a home comfortably warm in the winter. We know that less need for mechanical intervention means less energy use but it can also mean a healthier living environment. The ideal indoor climate would emulate the feel of the outdoor climate on a fine day. Heating air and blowing it around through duct work changes the nature of that air. The indoor air is depleted of health enhancing negative ions because they cling to metal and synthetic ductwork. Circulating heat via forced air tends to create stratified temperature differentials and makes us uncomfortable. Forced air systems are noisy. Baseboard heaters trap and fry dust and create pollution. Electric baseboard heaters emit high magnetic fields. Radiant floor heating, perhaps one of the more comfortable options, has long response times and creates temperature monotony. Does it not make ultimate sense to first design a home with the least need for mechanical intervention and then choose our intervention wisely?

Paula Baker-Laporte FAIA is an architect and a certified building biology practitioner. She is the principle of Baker-Laporte and Associates and EcoNest Design. She is primary author of “Prescriptions for a Healthy House” and co-author with husband Robert Laporte of “Econest-Creating Sustainable Sanctuaries of Clay, Straw and Timber”

By permission of Santa Fe Real Estate Guide