permaculture

[eric + michiko <emstorm@metro.net>]

Dear Dawn (aka gardenbetty),

I admire your goals and wish you all the best.  I had similar thoughts when
I started building, but didn't do such rigorous research.  I did look into
many alternatives, evaluating each.  As I got into the project,
"practicality" raised its ugly head and distracted me from more important
things.  I continually found pros and cons to products - no clear answers-,
and we had self-imposed limits on time and money.  And as John Schinnerer
wrote, there are many ways of explaining what is "MOST" eco-friendly /
sustainable.

In the end, I feel that any house that is built to code (in our area at
least) or "palatable to the more mainstream visitor", as you say, will not
be sustainable in the truest sense.  I hear many people talk about building
houses, and most of the talk is about wall systems (i.e. strawbale, cob,
post and beam, rammed earth, etc.)  Walls represent 15% of a house, so
there are a lot of other concerns.  Much of the "hardware" (wire, nails,
electrical gadgets, plumbing parts, etc.) is not manufactured in anyway
close to "sustainable".  That is also true of many energy saving products,
such as good windows and doors, fiberglass insulation, energy-efficient
appliances, etc.  I think it comes down to clearifying the question.  Is
the point to build the "most" (i.e. as good as possible / practical?) earth
friendly house, given that the house will not be a dramatic diversion from
what most poeple in our culture consider a "house" and the things it
contains?  Or is the point to build a house that IS sustainable, making it
as comfortable and "palatable" as possible within that framework?

I suspect that you will have a hard time finding hard information on truely
sustainable products because they are rarely used in the building industry
and are often made on site, by do-it-yourselfers. [I am currrently of the
opinion that just about anything that is "manufacutured" and shipped any
distance is not sustainable.]

I hate to sound so negative.  It's just that I have been going throught
this process for the last few years and have had little success finding
balance, let alone harmony,  between accepted / palatable building
materials / methods and sustainable building materials and methods.  The
house that I have ended up with, is not the house that I started out to
build.  I am in the process of re-thinking the whole concept of "house" and
looking for ways to work within a sustainable framework.  I do wish you
much luck and would love to hear what you find out.  I would love to be
proven wrong!  It would be great for the building industry.
  
Thoughtfully,
Eric Storm
Sebastopol, CA


Dawn wrote:

This summer I am hoping to start a sustainable building demonstration project
(my new house!) and wish to use the MOST environmentally/human-friendly
materials available. In addition to using these materials, I want to produce
literature comparing these materials to conventional and other types of
alternative materials.

Well, there are a lot of materials that go into a house and I am trying to
find research and data comparing the TOTAL economic benefit of different
building materials. For example: how does fiberglass insulation compare to
cellulose, cotton, straw, etc. for price, environmental impact, health impact,
labor impact, insulation quality, recyclability, etc...

I am hoping to find this info for roofing materials, wall materials (interior
and exterior), windows, doors, insulation, flooring, etc.

Haven't had a lot of luck so far, just hard to read studies on the water
run-off quality from asphalt shingling versus metal roofing, etc. Any
anecdotes, assistance or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

-- 
I hope to produce a home which is not only environmentally sound, sustainable,
beautiful and comfortable, but we
might have. The general plan is to have lots of natural light, passive and
active solar energy and heat convection, non-toxic sustainable interior and
exterior materials, minimal use of metal, water catchment and greywater
filtration. We can also recycle materials from our old buildings.

The house will be strawbale, but beyond that, I am trying to assess the best
plastering, roofing, flooring, insulating materials, etc. I am
familiar/experienced with many types of sustainable building materials and am
pretty sure what is least impact, but I need hard numbers to produce a
convincing publication to give to visitors and regulators.

dawn 
aka gardenbetty