SB: Cement, cars, buildings, and stuff

[Mark Piepkorn <duckchow@greenbuilder.com>]

         As long as people are strapping on the sombreros and ranting 
here... I posted this on another list, but considering that content from 
TLS actually comprises most of it (written by Shay Salomon and Ted Butchart 
respectively) figured I'd post it here too. For the old-timers, there might 
not be much if anything particularly new.

-----

         I'll be honest: I haven't sucked the marrow out of this thread. 
I've barely brushed the skin of its teeth. But is that gonna stop me from 
chiming in? Nooooo.   :)   So maybe some of the following has already been 
introduced and I missed it; but it probably bears saying again anyway. (How 
egotistical was that?!)

         I've done inner battles with that demon cement. Yeah, its 
production is one of the biggest global contributors to greenhouse gas - 
but it trails very distantly behind internal combustion engines. I've read 
that the production of a pound of cement introduces a pound of C02 to the 
atmosphere; I've also read that the average car produces its own weight in 
C02 every year. That's not an apology for cement - it's a strong reason for 
using cement and gas-powered-anything only when necessary. (Especially the 
latter. I'm not a cement fan, but I'd much rather have it happen that there 
weren't enough dead tires available for earthships due to lack of consumer 
demand for single-family cars than to have cement production stopped for 
environmental reasons. If I had to choose. Both would be fine with me, though.)

         Wrapped up inside the whole C02 thing is that buildings account 
for one-fourth (that's 25%, a quarter of the whole pie) of the world's wood 
harvest, two-fifths (40%, nearly half) of its material and energy usage, 
and one-sixth (pushing 17%)  of the world's fresh water usage. These 
figures are a global snapshot at a point when just two billion of the 
planet's nearly six billion  people (that's one-third of them) live and 
work in modern, resource-intensive buildings. Given trends over the past 
decades, what's that ratio gonna do but close up, then reverse?

         It was my pleasure to have a museum-hopping fun day in Washington 
DC not long ago with David Eisenberg of The Development Center for 
Appropriate Technology ( http://www.dcat.net ), his wife, and my fiance. 
(It was DE's birthday, in fact.) Changing subway trains at Metro Center - a 
cavernous, underground meeting-of-the-rails made with a helluva lot of 
reinforced concrete - I asked him if it was appropriate, considering all 
the cement and steel. (I knew what his answer would be, but listening to 
him talk on subjects like that is just such a treat.) Without hesitation, 
he said that it absolutely was. Think it through for yourself and see if 
you agree.

         There are times when cement and concrete make sense. (Alas. But 
it's true.) If a house can be made of Rastra in such a way that it reduces 
energy consumption significantly over the lifespan of the house, it can be 
a more environmentally-friendly choice than other more (or less) typical 
things. It pains me to say so, being such an impatient person; I want 
things sane off the starting block - which is to say, I want things to 
conform to my own ideals at all times. But I'll settle for any small amount 
of forward movement if that's all I'm going to get.

         Would I endorse Rastra to just anyone, particularly to build a 
whole house out of? No. I'm not a fan of the stuff. But the fact remains 
that a small, energy-efficient Rastra house in an extreme heating climate 
(I come from Minnesota originally) could be far more 
environmentally-friendly over its lifespan than an under-insulated three-U 
earthship built by somebody who read "Earthship I" and knew nothing 
further. Far more environmentally-friendly than a cob house built by 
somebody who read "The Cob Cottage" and knew nothing else. Everything just 
depends.

         In the given situation, with all things considered (like the MCS, 
which is an enormous factor in this particular equation), it seems like a 
reasonable option.

-----

         Jumping threads briefly, somebody posted about padobe/fidobe 
recently; I think it was on this list. They said it was pulped paper and 
cement in a 50/50 mix. That's papercrete. Padobe/fidobe doesn't use cement 
as the binder, it uses clay.

         Also, they suggested putting a six-inch layer on the outside of a 
steel building. That's the equivalent of a three-inch-thick wall of solid 
cement. Not concrete, but cement. That's a *lotta* cement, and adds up to 
some heavy-duty environmental karma.

-----

         What's anything I've written so far worth? Dunno. But whatever 
value it might have pales in comparison to what's coming below.

         In the January 1999 issue of Environmental Building News, Alex 
Wilson wrote, "It is easier to reduce the embodied energy of a house by 
making the house smaller than by searching for low-embodied-energy 
materials." I absolutely believe that. The same issue presents a chart 
showing graphically how the relationship between the number of people per 
household, the number of square feet of the average house, and the number 
of square feet of conditioned space per person has changed since 1940. 
(Results: House size has more than doubled in that time, while the number 
of people living in the average house has dropped by over half. Do the 
math. Or at least use your imagination.)

         Does this mean I'm anti-big-house? Generally, yes. Once again, 
everything depends.

         Shay Salomon wrote a brilliant introduction to the Summer 2000 
issue of The Last Straw ( http://www.strawhomes.com ) dedicated to small 
houses (it says "Size Matters" in big letters on the cover) that she 
guest-edited. I'm inserting excerpts of it here 'cause I can. Following it 
is an excellent article from the same issue, penned by Ted Butchart. (As 
former editor of the journal, I feel comfortable taking certain liberties 
from time to time.) (Shay, BTW, is now working on a book on this subject, 
under contract to New Society Publishers.) (For some photos of a gorgeous 
little strawbale vault with cordwood gable-ends and printing-plate roofing 
she built with a non-professional all-woman crew in northern New Mexico, 
see http://www.strawhomes.com/build/here/now2001/pics/adams/bhn/11.html )

-----

(Excerpts from Shay's introduction.)

Remember when you first heard about the "Housing Crisis?" Was it in the 
1980s, when "Homelessness" suddenly became a national issue? Growing 
numbers of people slept outside, stood on street comers, at subway stops. 
Charity missions popped up to address the problem; first with shelters, and 
then building programs. Habitat for Humanity's membership soared. We 
couldn't get enough houses built quick enough to house all these people!

But another trend was developing simultaneously: Even though family size 
and number of hours spent at home was decreasing, house size between 1950 
and 1990 more than doubled - taking its biggest leap in the 1980s. During 
that time, as more and more homemakers became paid employees, and farmers 
left family farms to become 9-to-5 workers, houses grew emptier and 
emptier. In the U.S. today, we have almost 800-sf per person, without 
taking into account high vacancy rates (for luxury houses) nor second 
residences of all sorts. Yet, nobody's home.

We are learning that just as famine isn't exactly caused by a lack of food, 
homelessness has little to do with the quantity of housing.

Do we have a housing crisis? Maybe - but it isn't of the kind we thought we 
had. Maybe we could call it the "Homing Crisis."

I came to Straw-Bale Construction after working in "third-world 
development," a vague word that describes the promotion of post-industrial 
knowledge and thinking to people who have somehow avoided it all these 
years. After about six years, my enjoyment of local hospitality and 
excitement at being treated like royalty simply because of my blue passport 
evolved into guilt at my counter-productiveness.

I remember in particular one week where I watched a little boy die during a 
rice shortage in the Dominican Republic, a rice-producing nation. An old 
man drew a diagram for me in the dirt. He explained how the "Eee emay efay" 
(that is, IMF - "in other words, your president," he explained) required 
payment from el presidente. El presidente had to pay in dollars. The people 
had no dollars. Only rice. So el presidente sold the rice overseas. That's 
why no one had rice here to eat. "Is your president so poor?" he asked with 
a twinkle in his eye. "Why does he require so many dollars from our 
presidente?"

Over the next few years, and after a few more similar scenes, I got the 
gist of what folks were telling me: If you could just go home and stop the 
bombing, the exportation of our raw materials, the loan payments, whatever 
ails us, we can take care of our own water cisterns, solar power and 
reforestation, thank you very much.

So I went home.

With a group of friends, we tried to piece together some kind of community 
response to the world situation. We were affiliated with a group that was 
quite involved with the straw-bale revival, so when we wanted to enlarge 
our house, strawbale seemed like the natural choice. This was in '93, and 
the revival was just taking off.

We were swept up in it. I became part of a women's group that hosted 
workshops where eager couples shared their dreams. The movement grew, and 
our group got more and more calls. The houses grew, too. The process was 
exciting. But I started to notice that sinking feeling I had felt overseas: 
what was this really about? I watched the bulldozers stir the soil until 
our beloved blue sky turned brown. I noticed animals I had seen wild in our 
backyard as a child become pictures on fundraising brochures for endangered 
species protection. I noticed the ugly divorces that come out of 
financially-strained marriages, and the "for sale" signs that pop up on 
those big houses.

"But surely we must keep building - people have to live somewhere," Someone 
always insists at the talks I give. Well surely, we must live. But if we 
learned to live in 350-sf each, we wouldn't have to build another thing 
until our population doubled. Again.

"Globalization" is everywhere today. The IMF makes headlines. Worldwatch 
reports that two billion people now live in "modern" resource-intensive 
buildings. They predict in 2050 the number may reach 80 billion. The 
promise of the voluntary simplicity movement is the answer to 
globalization: if our choice to live smaller makes us happier as 
individuals, we can succeed as a globalized species.

(Shay Salomon lives with friends in a too-big house. Please contact her 
with news of small houses. <wbhwbhwbh@aol.com>)

-----

(Ted Butchart's article, "A Day At The Zoo")

If we are to turn away from the cliff before our culture rushes over it, we 
clearly have to learn to curb our appetites. Living smaller and more simply 
is a necessity. But for many of us, the thought of living in a truly small 
house gives rise to visions of cabin fever, at best. So how do we 
transition to that state? There are ways of creating small space to make it 
feel large, and ways of being that reduce the need for space. The new 
vision is woven of many threads, none of which is sufficient in itself.

The first thread is mental. I am reminded of a day at the zoo many years 
ago. I watched as an attendant put a dolphin through a series of tricks. 
Irritated, I approached the man, "Isn't it bad enough to pen them up? Why 
make them do tricks on top of that?" "Ah, but you don't understand. Even 
though the pool walls are highly complex, the dolphins are so intelligent 
that within a day or two they've completely mapped it. From that point on 
they'll become neurotic if not stimulated with new learning."

Another reason not to pen them up, of course, but what stayed with me was 
that a dolphin could so quickly understand its environment - and then 
tended to degrade.

The environments we humans make for ourselves tend to be cubical boxes of 
no spatial complexity at all. How long does it take for us to understand 
our environment? Surely for many the slide to neurosis has already begun. 
Others fight it, partly by adding ever more cubical boxes to their houses 
so they can escape to another room. Not a good solution.

So the bedrock of my approach to making small houses livable is to make 
them complex. We are thinking beasts and we need puzzles to figure out. 
This doesn't mean to make a maze out of the house. It means to be spatially 
complex. interpenetrating spaces, changes of height, volume, light and 
shadow. The most complex form is a curve. Arches, rounded walls, niches. 
Complexity also means a thoughtful pallet of materials and textures and 
colors. The building should speak to all the senses. You should be able to 
feel the textures with your eyes. It should keep giving to your exploration 
like a deep work of art.

Complexity does not run counter to simplicity. It should be simple in 
construction, simple in plan, yet intellectually complex. Look at 
traditional Japanese buildings for an example.

The next thread is to provide a sense of security. Surely part of the drive 
for bigger and bigger is to give one the sense of being secure in a hostile 
world. Those thick, solid, bale walls go a long way in this regard. But 
there is an interesting psychological trick we can employ here. If you 
watch animals, many of them prefer to rest in a place that has both refuge 
and prospect: they are hidden, but they can see out. So let's build in a 
sense of refuge and prospect into our houses. That can be a loft, a tight 
little nook under the eaves, or any place you can put your back to a wall 
and took out, like those delightful straw-bale window seats.

Another thread in this fabric: we will never be content in a small place 
when our spirits are restless. One of the more obvious causes of our 
rampant consumerism is our lack of inner peace. So it would appear that the 
internal changes would have to precede the ability to live in a tight 
space. But my experience is that the building can be a strong component of 
that inner healing. My design work is approached primarily as healing work. 
There are ways we can build to support the spirit in general, and to 
support the spirit of the occupants in particular.

Although this is not quite how I work, consider this: The ancient stupeda 
vedic tradition in India included very prescriptive laws for building. One 
requirement was for a central space, the brahma-stan, that was not used for 
any specific function. It was just the quiet center of the house. Wow! An 
unused space as a way to get to smaller houses? But listen to this: my 
informant reported that houses he built in this way were "so quiet, so 
calm, that there was no need for elaborate trim work or interior decorating 
to make the house seem complete." Just paying attention and making the 
house calm removed a lot of "need" for further consumption and provided a 
house that supported the occupants' psychological health. My work stems 
more from Chinese Medicine, but the results are similar.

Yet another clue: we don't have to enclose all the space we use. Whether we 
live in climates with too much sun or too much rain, we can use expansive 
covered porches during a great portion of the year. All you need is a roof. 
No expensive walls or fancy floor coverings. In fact, in the non-rainy 
regions the roof can be a simple frame for grapes to grow over. Build, heat 
and maintain only the spaces that really need to be separated from the 
outside - and for those spaces, maintain a strong connection to the 
exterior environment.

This means keeping windows low, no more than about 2'6" off the floor, and 
give yourself enough windows that you can be aware of the movement of the 
sun and moon.

But what of that big black thread of ego competition that drives the 
creation of huge houses? That's easy. Just change the rules of the ego 
game. As that font of great quotes lanto Evans once said, "Cob houses are 
for the elite." Once the word gets out that big houses are seriously 
un-hip, and that the cutting-edge people are all building well-crafted 
houses of straw and cob (and having no end of fun with the savings), well, 
the rush will be on to see who can have the smallest house on the block.

The final thread, and the one most likely to lead us out of the maze, is 
love. A house built with love, and inhabited with love, probably could be 
the plainest cube imaginable and still the occupants would thrive in the 
small space. But look at love in a bigger context. It should support 
conviviality, building bonds across the larger community.

A Pattern Language [a book by Christopher Alexander et al] speaks of 
providing sleeping spaces so friends can spend the night easily. Not extra 
bedrooms, but sleeping spaces: deep window seats that pull out into beds 
for instance, or a screened porch for sleeping. And why on earth do we 
duplicate all the support systems? If we share a laundry facility, all of 
us can immediately delete one room and some expensive equipment from our 
houses. If we share a library, or a dance space, PRESTO! Our houses shrink 
with no loss (in fact a gain) of comforts.

A bit of love and trust allows us to cluster, share and reduce our footprints.

Put all the threads together and you return, once again, to Build It With 
Bales co-author Steve MacDonald's heartful mantra: "Keep it small, keep it 
simple, and stay out of debt."

(Ted Butchart is the Director & Head of Design at GreenFire Institute in 
Winthrop, WA. "All we do is Straw Bale Design and Education, along with 
other natural materials & techniques. So far we have 45 straw houses 
permitted and built, with four more currently in design. We particularly 
enjoy working with owner-builders, although we do an equal number of 
designs for contractor-built homes. Our approach to design incorporates 
insights from Chinese Medicine and aims for a design for the entire 
occupant - body to spirit." <greenfire@igc.org> [Note that at the time of 
this posting, Ted is retiring from building to follow a more direct path as 
a healer. His strawbale house and acreage are for sale.])



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