A mud hut for the 21st century

Julie Beun-Chown, Canwest News Service

Published: Tuesday, September 30, 2008

You drive a hybrid car, use a composter in the backyard, push a rotary lawn mower and ride a bicycle to work.When it comes to going green, you’re practically chartreuse. The Joneses next door have nothing on you.Just don’t try keeping up with the Bairds.
Ann, 41, and Gord, 39, who live in the British Columbia highlands 15 minutes from Victoria, quit their jobs as co-op manager and autobody shop owner two years ago to build their dream home: a so-green-it-glows two storey cob (clay, sand and straw) house that generates its own solar electricity, uses virtually no ground water and is so exquisitely situated on eight acres of land visiting architects have been struck dumb.
Built with eight dump trucks each of clay and sand, 52 yards of pumice for insulation and 50 bales of straw, the house is a marvel of conservancy: it is made with 90 per cent locally recycled wood, has hot-water tubes running under the earthen floors for heat and a living roof that will be covered with pumice and soil to gather rainwater. The list goes on, but the bottom line does not. By the time the Bairds have lived in the $300,000 duplex for a year, it could become Canada ’s first dwelling to meet the Living Building standard, a 16-point sustainable building code that exceeds the current Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accreditation.
It’s already North America ’s first code-approved load-bearing, high-occupancy cob building.”We’re fairly pleased with what we’ve accomplished,” says Ann, who says that their groundbreaking building is setting so many precedents, they’re often left scratching their heads for solutions. “We’ve worked our butts off and we run into problems. But we keep stewing on it, and eventually the answer comes. It inspires us to attempt even more.”It’s hard to imagine what that would be.
The couple, who will live in half of the house with Gord’s young children, with Ann’s parents next door, have laboured for hours over every detail of the house they designed themselves, from the experimental high fly ash concrete foundation to the colourful and undulating earthen couches that stretch through the family room.
“I’ve been passionate about sustainability for along time. I even lived off the grid on a small Gulf Island for a while,” says Ann, who sold that waterfront property to co-fund the project. “When I met Gord, we wanted to do something that would maintain the standards our culture is used to, but do it in a different way, focusing on lifestyle and not life stuff. We wanted to live a life that we were passionate about.”
Their dream found its roots on a block of land previously owned by a junk collector and later, a holistic healer who intended to build a retreat there.By the time the Bairds purchased it, there was only an incomplete septic system, which they were obliged by building codes to finish at a cost of $30,000 but have no intention of using.
To reduce their water consumption, they use rain water for the garden, grey water for irrigation and a small amount of well water for drinking and washing, delivered through low-flow taps.
They also have a $300 composting system that treats all toilet waste with heat-generating bacteria that pasteurizes the manure and kills human pathogens.”Then we’ll use it for gardening. We don’t have waste,” she laughs.”The waste of one creates the food for another.”
The same goes for their electrical supply, which comes from 12 170-watt solar panels, which power their charge controllers and feed into the BC Hydro grid.
Their eco-efforts haven’t gone unnoticed by Jason McLennan, the CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council and the architect behind the Living Building Challenge.”Their home is inspiring to see, because it was built affordably,” says McLennan, who is confident the Bairds will meet many of the Living Building prerequisites.”Some things may be more expensive, but it’s not unaffordable depending on your values and what you want to trade off on. If you decide you don’t want a three-car garage and you build with solar panels, there’s a cost savings.” For the Bairds, the bottom line remains to be seen.
For the moment, they anticipate that the long hours of making mud walls, mixing homemade milk paint and framing doors will pay off in next-to-nothing heating and water bills.
“The bank account is empty now, so we’re trying to make a living through education and doing things related to our core value of sustainability,” says Ann, who operates their website, eco-sense.ca. “But in the end, we wanted to create a home that was comfortable and functions as part of nature. Aside from being the first, we’ve love the challenge of doing it. It’s been our life’s work.”

www.eco-sense.ca

Termites

Ann is no skinny b itch and I am not really a fat b astard (at least not anymore). The kids don’t eat unidentified processed food objects and we have all learned to enjoy the subtleties of garden fresh foods grown locally. Our dinner tonight was another one dish meal comprised of roasted beets, potatoes, beans, onions, garlic, carrots and rosemary from our garden, a garden that we started while we began our home last year. For dessert, we had a homemade blackberry bar that was made with our own eggs, local goat milk whey, and blackberries.

As we listened to the CBC this evening discussing the new book, “Skinny B itch” about veganism, we agreed with the idea that if you eat right, your body will look after itself. If you eat too much meat… not good; eat too much fat… not good; eat too much anything… that’s right… just not good. (Though dark beer is OK, right?)

Your body doesn’t care what it looks like only what it is given to look after itself. A garden works the same way, and more importantly so does the rest of nature. When things are allowed to get their needs met in healthy natural ways they just turn out beautiful in all their shapes and foliage.

As a matter of fact as I am writing this, Ann is displaying wonderful foliage of her own. OOOps, wrong medium to share this.

Update

As the house is coming very near completion we continue to discover more things to inspire us, and our passions are expanding if you can believe it. Wow looking back over the past three years it is interesting to see where passion has led. From our first date three years ago, to marriage 6 months later, buying our land with mom and dad joining in the fun, completion of our cob wood working shop, building our sustainable earthen home, education programs, tours, publicity, policy, politics, and gardens. All while weaving much learning into each of these phases. Passions outside of our manufactured culture has provided us more personal reward in such a short period than either of us had known throughout all our previous years. We hear the stories about following your passions, or the importance to choose a job that fulfills your passion, but at every step of our lives we are veered away from them, towards… earning an income.

Even as the rains fell the day of the tour for the Board of Directors of the BCSEA, there was a passion for collecting rain water. In one day, our 2500 ft2 roof collected 1250 gallons of rain water. So despite digging into the damped humanure compost to show off our composted manure, with us soaking wet, we were happy as pigs in “good stuff” knowing that our recently emptied rain cisterns were being filled. One inch (2.5 cm) of rain basically gives us 1300 gallons of water. (For the nerds 2500 ft2 at 1 inch depth translates into 360,000 cubic inches; 1 imperial gallon equals 277.4 in3 thus 1 inch of rain equates to 1297 gallons).

When do we move in?

Seeing as we are speaking numbers, here’s another. Forty-Four! No not Ann’s age. This is the number of working days until we can move in, +/- 100 of course. Hopefully by the end of November we will be reuniting with old clothes that seem new, and be leaving our comfy little mildew ridden filth soaked (opposite of heaven) hole of a trailer. Yes a mud home never looked so good. All the used lighting is virtually up, all the ceilings done, most of the interior brown coat complete. Just have to finish the final plasters, build range hoods, finish the earthen floors, build exterior deck, bathroom cabinets, some window sills, install trim, sand and seal all the kitchen cabinets, some milk paints, and that is it. Wow does finishing ever take a long time!

Insulation

This past while we have observed how insulation of buildings has become the icon of green, from products sold from green businesses, to discussions on the radio, and with the redefining and greening of the building code. Interestingly many professionals seem to agree that in our climate, insulation is only one small part of building a sustainable home. Considering insulation as the end-all be-all while ignoring thermal mass, embodied energy of products used, and lifespan of the building is quite irresponsible. Even more irresponsible are the manufacturers of all these “products” who are driving green building in unsustainable directions. As someone pointed out to us, living in an insulated sealed plastic bag drives him crazy so he opens his windows… ahh building science defeated by good common sense, and fresh air.

Redefining Green

Talk, talk, talk and more talk about climate change, economic failures, and environmental degradation. And even more talk about what to do about it. From the debates on carbon taxes, cap and trade, political bickering, and the endless talk of where to get our energy. It is all sounding so complicated to get ourselves out of the expanding mess we created.

But wait a minute…we are trying to solve these complicated problems with the same complex thinking that got us into this crisis in the first place.

What if we took a step back and looked at the problem from a different perspective, a simpler perspective.

Instead of looking for solutions to maintain the current status quo of increasing energy use and increasing consumption of natural resources, why don’t we consider changing the entire way we think and live? Maybe we don’t have an energy crisis at all but instead a social opportunity; an opportunity to create a more fulfilling life.

We all complain about how busy we are working to pay for all of our stuff, from our mortgages and fuel, to our food.

Stop focusing on the problem…Focus on the solution.

How many people out there crave to have more time to work around the home, garden, attend community events, have friends over for family meals, or just some down time? Instead of having this big problem that makes all of our heads spin to the point where many of us actually prefer to remain ignorant, why don’t we just get rid of the problem and the guilt by creating a better way to live? A life built upon a close knit community where food and shelter become the focus of our lives enabling greater individual fulfillment.

Take housing for one. (Property developers and builders looking for big profit need not read further). What if we were to redefine what green building was? If all new dwellings were truly green or sustainable they would meet the following criteria.

1. Less than 400ft2 per occupant. This smaller size means less embodied energy to create the home, less energy to heat/cool the home, and less space to store stuff. More time spent outdoors means fitter healthier bodies and less health concerns. More time bumping into our neighbors and the natural environment translates into feelings of belonging and individual value.

2. Simple homes that have a life expectancy of more than 500 years. If simpler more affordable homes were created suddenly we have less homeless and struggling families, less social ills, and more land to grow food. Sustainable energies power these homes either from the grid, community power, self generating, and our own healthy well fed bodies.

3. Less stuff to plug in. These homes dramatically reduce their energy requirements because of their size, passive solar design, natural and LED lighting, and the occupants choosing to buy less stuff to plug in.

All we need to do now is to figure out how to get off of the current rollercoaster and onto fulfilling sustainability.

The grand finale of the month

What do termites and a cob house have in common? Absolutely nothing! Termites won’t eat our home! After dinner we talked about how scared our culture was to eat what some other cultures eat, like termites. But what about termites… actually Isopterans. (Ann used to work as an entomologist). Well Ann discussed how nervous she was to try one…and could only think about how unappealing they look under a high powered microscope during dissection, so Parker and Emily to the rescue. Emily was the first to eat a termite, tearing the wings off and eating the butt then the head. Then, not to outdone, Ann ate one, as I looked on disgustedly. Then Grandma Merrily and Parker, while Ann cheered. Boo of course had always eaten the flying protein morsels and his acrobatic leaps provided much entertainment. I couldn’t be shamed as they continued to go down the hatches. So… as Emily collected a whole pile of heads… which she is saving as dessert, I couldn’t be outdone. So I did it, tore the wings off and down it went, followed by a sip of rum of course. Papa Howie declined watching us all in disbelief.

I only hope after this update that the kids aren’t taken away…as the kids mom called while they were eating termites. Parker was explaining to his mother very matter of factly about eating termites, while he yelled at his sister, “Emily, those are my heads”! Hearing this comment, Ann collapsed laughing and rolling on the trailer floor trying not to be heard by the kids’ Mom on the other end of the phone.

We learned that organic locally processed (wings removed) protein is at our fingertips… goodbye Maple Leaf Foods. We spent the rest of the evening making sure the chickens got their share too as we all ran around in circles being chased by five happy hens.

I had finished the update… until we decided on tomorrow nights dinner. Ann suggested rabbit as we had one in the freezer shot and dressed (actually undressed) by our local goat farmer. Parker was the first to ok it. I can’t explain my reaction… to Parker’s response “If we can eat termites then we can eat rabbit!”

Welcome to reprogramming. As Papa Howie said, “Bugs Bunny it is then”.

Termites are also the world’s most efficient bioreactors turning cellulose into hydrogen. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite#Termites_as_a_source_of_power

Do you enjoy our long wordy updates? We send out to about 400 and always enjoy your feedback. Thanks!

Ann and Gord