Gleefully Dirty – Eco-Sense May 2007 update!

Chickens feathers and slugs have given way to pumice and curved walls. As May comes to a close who would have imagined that playing in the mud, learning code and experimenting with pumice would garner so much interest, and that so much fun and excitement could come out of a little bit of arbutus, recycled glass blocks, a roto tiller, our first workshop of the season, and Boo learning to herd the chickens. For us May has been an inspirational month of breakthroughs which have catapulted sustainable cob building up to the forefront, demonstrating that it can out compete conventional methods. OK here it is… “WOW!”

Last month we left you on your seat about some exciting news, and we promised to keep you on the leading edge. In response to your emails and excitement; no, Ann is not pregnant! No, Gord is not pregnant! The exciting news is that The Knowledge Network is filming three segments (short albeit) on the house and the progress. The program is called The Leading Edge: Innovation in BC. The program will air in 2008. A little different than other filming; as Ann and I start to spew and get excited we are asked to “cut”… and “can you do that again”. Yikes. Six hours of filming for 8 minutes. We hope this is standard and not just our bad acting! We suspect that they will portray the goals of the project and the people accurately, as their episodes online are very professional and well done.

How can 24 minutes of TV cover what there is to show and teach; compare it to what was taught in our first of three workshops. We had a wonderful group of students; Bob, Mike, Colin, Liz, Ben, Bryan, and Karen. Backgrounds of this diverse group range from filming, pilot, student, carpenter, online education systems design, philosophical leadership, and emerging natural builders. The week long workshop left them with information overload on natural building, passive solar design considerations, interior space design, site location, philosophies, earthen floors, solar systems, heating systems, living roofs, grey water systems, code, cement alternatives, resource websites, rain water harvesting, living roofs, waterless toilets… and we still just touched on these items. They were even lucky enough to participate in dumping the buckets! We thank all of them as they each enriched our lives and our soils.

Although cob construction has many desirable features, there have also been a few reasons for not becoming a contemporary building method (in North America). Cob has been considered labour intensive, slow, has low insulation value, and does not come as a pre-manufactured box with engineering numbers. This month with our experimenting and research we have dismantled all the excuses as why not to build with cob and through a series of breakthroughs feel that cob is at the leading edge. We have learned to mix lots very quickly, build high, incorporate natural breathable insulation into the wall, make it load bearing and seismically stable, build affordably, make it lighter, stronger, and do this all with engineers stamp and code approval. Perhaps the only reason for not choosing to build with cob now is our cultural programming about living in a dirt home. That’s where tours and education come in. Check out http://www.islandnet.com/~anngord/cobworkshop.html for information on tours and workshops this year.

Mixing quickly: Utilizing a rototiller to make cob; LOTS of cob! In four days of building we managed to put up 1/5 of the lower floors walls. Each mix takes ½ hour and makes between 1.0 – 1.5 m3, the equivalent to eight hours of two people doing foot mixes. Adding to the excitement is the fact that the soil does not require any sifting. Ann and I have placed a bet on the amount of fuel required to mix our entire cob home; Ann thinks 20 liters of gas, while I think 24 liters. After two weeks and 1/2 of the lower floor done we are at 6 liters. It is now feasible to compare time and resources for cob building to conventional building.

A conventional building uses all the resources of the forest industry (loggers, chains saws, road makers, saw mills, shippers and wholesalers, etc.), the mining industry, the petroleum industry, the manufacturing industry (shingles, flashing, gypsum, plastics, paints, siding, etc.), the electricians, plumbers, framers, finishers, roofers, painters, drywallers, floorers, landscapers etc. . . . Oh and the marketing industry to sell you what a home is supposed to look like. In three months this large group of people work simultaneously to make a conventional house. For the first time cob houses can be erected in the same time frame, using a much smaller arsenal of labour, a miniscule amount of fossil fuel, a relatively tiny amount of manufactured materials, a labour group which works as a cohesive unit, sharing tasks, ideas, and pride. Add to the mix that a well designed cob house will last perhaps 500 years (compared to 80 years for conventional stick frame), and there is no comparison to the smart choice. There is no doubt in our minds that a small group could build a 1500 sqft family home in three months or less at a fraction of the cost; financially and environmentally!

Pumice: Another breakthrough to building. Compression testing for Pumice Cob shows excellent strength. The mixture seems very foreign to traditional cob as it has a lot of aggregate, yet it does not slump, thus allowing for higher wall lifts per day meaning the walls can be built quicker. Also because the walls do not slump (or splooge as it is technically called) there is less trimming. The cob material is lighter to work with, and as a result has a higher compression tolerance as there is less weight in the wall system. The main added benefit of the pumice is the insulation value; we plan on testing the R-Value of the walls, but suspect we will be beyond our initial guesses of R-20. We’re so excited we’re splooging!

Load bearing: With the insight of our engineer Kris, we look to have the first seismically stable, high occupancy, code approved load bearing cob structure in North America. Elke Cole (www.elkecole.com) with her years of experience is excited to be discussing this project at the Natural Building Colloquium in Texas this summer.

Affordability: There has been the myth that building with dirt is dirt cheap, mostly due to the small size of the homes being built and the amount of labour invested that is “free” or not accounted for. With the use of our load bearing systems, the rototiller, the pumice and the building speed, all of a sudden the labour requirements drop considerably and the materials are still dirt cheap. Hundreds of hours of sifting and mixing labour are replaced with a couple hours of rototiller mixing. We also realized that engineering can save you money as Kris, our engineer, worked with our list of used lumber materials to design the roof, meaning he has saved us thousands of dollars on timber. The pumice, although expensive at $80 a yard, replaces the cost of insulation and since the walls breathe, no vapour barrier is required. Further savings result from the ability to use relatively unskilled labour (Ann and myself), and capitalize on child labour (Emily and Parker).

These breakthroughs translate into QUICK, DURABLE, EFFICIENT, INSULATED, SUSTAINABLE, HEALTHY, AFFORDABLE, FUNCTIONAL, FUN and BEAUTIFUL housing. I think the triple bottom line is in there somewhere?

Gord did not work hard enough to get the hydronic tubes buried before the workshop started so the students had to give him a lesson on “getten ‘er done!” A mixture of sand (80%), clay (10%) and lime (10%) made up the 2 inches of mix that covered the floor tubes, and with a regular cob mixture covering the tubes in the living room bench…yes; our living room couches are heated. Once the roof is on we will make up the final 1 ½ inches of cob to finish off the floor.

And more inspiring news! We have been pleased to see a jelling of an emerging group of people interested in sustainable building, with architects, drafts people, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and cobbers alike. We suspect that once the house is complete that there will be a local workforce ready to take on the next project. What a comparison to the regular workforce where there is a lack of labour to meet the workload. Here we have an exuberance of enthusiasm of gainfully employed people willing to apply their new skills, to dive in and get dirty, and feel excitement about a job/project/home/creation/dream, in keeping with their values. Who said sustainability would lead us to economic collapse, oh yeah the environmental (collapse) minister, John Baird.

Speaking of dirty, where would we be without Boo… and chickens? We have thoughtfully named the rooster Mr. Doo. We also thought it would be quaint to name the hen DooMe, with two future hens being DooMeToo and DooMeAlso. On second thought to avoid being straddled with a restraining order we refrained and allowed the kids to name the hen Spring (Chicken). Mr. Doo loves to roost on Gord’s shoulder in the evenings and pluck his grey hairs; unfortunately some of those are in his nose. Ann has been a rock in training Boo not to beg at the table; every rock has its weak point – have you ever seen begging chickens? Ann can demonstrate! Boo has matured quickly with daily water torture; (bird dog) lab retriever instincts crossed with obsessive boarder collie herding tendencies posed a LITTLE problem. We are glad to report that Boo, Doo, and Spring are buddies; Boo herds them in at night on command, by nose butting their bums… maybe he is just looking for some treats?

From the May issue of Focus Magazine we pulled out a couple pertinent quotes from an article on Paul Hawken written by Leslie Campbell that really hit home for us.

Citing historian Arnold Toynbee Paul Hawken warns that “the rise of uniformity consistently marks [civilization’s] decline”

“Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever is preventing the system from healing itself. Social restoration is no different.”

With this we leave you with our observations, the more we try to be like one another, and inhibit diversity the more likely we will decline and collapse, and if we remove what is aiding this trend to homogeneity we are likely more able to thrive; look to nature which grows from the ground up, grassroots and biodiversity are the answer.

Gleefully dirty (in the best sense),

Ann and Gord

Less life stuff…More life style