Smart
Shelter
by
Gary Duncan
 |
INTRODUCTION
Last April South Coast Permaculture Guild did a presentation on Earthships as a part of our monthly meeting at the Community Environmental Center in Santa Barbara. In the audience was Gary Duncan, from Smart Shelter Network in southwestern Colorado, and we were lucky enough to spend time with him before he left Santa Barbara and learn of his immense knowledge of natural building and alternative building design.
Strawbale, cob, and adobe. We’ve all heard about them, maybe even dreamed of building and owning one, but what exactly is involved in building one of these non- conventional structures? Since they have been around for so long, why don’t we see more of them built?
Gary Duncan had many of these same questions and a curiosity to learn more. He began Smart Shelter Network as a result of an illness caused from years of working with toxic building materials. He had also observed how many alternative building structures were being built in his area of southwestern Colorado, and dreamed of forming a network, to share and exchange knowledge. This network would not only share information on how to build, but what was involved in financing, insuring and permitting these structures. This wonderful vision became a reality, and now the network provides advocacy and education to code officials, bankers, material suppliers, the media and public. It is composed of members who form task forces dealing with specific issues such as water catchment, ferro cement, strawbale, bamboo, pressed earth block and more.
Gary Duncan will share some of the experiences in upcoming lecture and slide shows (see ad in this issue for specific details) with over 3000 slides of documented case studies he has collected over the last six years, and later in a half day workshop.
Margie Bushman
Where’s the positive way out? As news of the increasing destruction of our planet’s environment escalates, more and more people are seeing that effective personal action is not only advisable, but absolutely necessary. Gandhi kept turning our attention to personal responsibility. Pro-active environmentalism is necessary. We need to put pressure on the electric energy producers, the developers and auto manufacturers to turn the tide of global warming and resource depletion. But the lion’s share of effective changes will come not from those who produce commodities, but from changing what we consume.
Of all the purchases we make in a lifetime, the buildings we live and work in pack the largest environmental wallop. They are responsible for the loss of old-growth forests. They are heated and lit with electricity... the number one contributor to global climate change. According to the EPA and World Health Organization, 30% of materials used in construction harbor toxins sufficient to produce environmental illness in some dwellings.
There are a couple of beacons of hope on the horizon. Some of them are delightful surprises, which is often characteristic of profound solutions to perplexing problems.
Bucky Fuller’s concept of "Synergy" stated the seemingly impossible. He insisted that solutions could be found. Solutions which will produce more energy than they use. Strawbale Hybrid Solar Design is just such a solution. A natural home built of soil and bales not only reduces the slaughter of trees, it produces super-insulated, sound-proof, affordable homes for those with the spirit and desire to step out of the ordinary.
After you’ve felt the interior ambience of these "Natural Homes," of which I’ve been through a couple of hundred now, you realize Bucky’s synergy extends to the subjective and spiritual realm as well. These homes feel and live on levels impossible to describe until you’ve felt them and definitely far above that of conventional dwellings.
The second irony of natural homes has to do with their cost and the attitude of their owners. We have found here in Western Colorado that people who consider the environmental impacts of their homes end up paying 10-30% less than other traditionally built homes.
Much of the experimental era in Natural Building is over. The cutting edge explorers who were willing to tackle desert and isolation to create this new architecture laid the foundation for the most profound change in the American Building Industry. There is no longer any doubt that agricultural waste products and soil can save our forests and produce better buildings. Load Bearing Strawbale and hybrid designs are tried, tested, and in many jurisdictions, already approved. These techniques are now spreading from new construction projects to application in retrofitting existing homes. These are techniques you can use in your existing home. You don’t need to buy a new one.
Nationwide, there are several hotbeds of activity where natural building is flourishing. The area of Southwestern Colorado from Aspen to Pagosa Springs (roughly equivalent to the area from San Luis Obispo to San Diego) hosts 200 known strawbale buildings (of which 28 are load-bearing), 50 earthships, 2000 adobe structures and a healthy smattering of rammed earth, cob, poured adobe, non-toxic and reclaimed structures. This is the highest documented per-capita utilization of sustainable building techniques in the United States.
In the years to come, the availability of healthy homes (especially for those of us with environmental illnesses) and the right to build sustainably may depend on entities similar to the Smart Shelter Network which documents, studies, photographs and advocates natural building in this mountain area with bankers, insurers, builders, code officials and politicians. It acts as an independent, business-based entity to support sustainable building, in sharp contrast to the lobby interests of the multi-national corporations who produce manufactured building products and write the building codes.
Southern California already has some of the ingredients necessary to become a hotbed: California Strawbale Association, Sustainability Project, the Green Building Alliance in Santa Barbara, the Sustainable Building Council of the Central Coast and Ecohome Network located in Los Angeles and South Coast Permaculture Guild all work towards a similar goal. Some people in Southern California are actively involved, such as architect Jim Bell who brought us Santa Barbara’s first strawbale project, Dennis Allen of Allen and Associates and Wes Roe and Margie Bushman of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network.
Networks like Smart Shelter take natural building into the business realm, creating and supporting jobs and a professionalism dedicated to sustainability. It establishes credibility with politicians, financiers and code officials by objectively studying and documenting large numbers of natural building techniques. Entering its 5th year in Colorado, the Smart Shelter service area does not contain a single code jurisdiction which does not support strawbale construction. This works because Smart Shelter bases its resources and advocacy on the professional building community as well as the person building or remodeling their own home.
On Nov 8-10, Smart Shelter will tour the Central California Coast with a 1-1/2 hour slide show on natural building in Western Colorado... an armchair tour of some of the most vibrant natural architecture in America and the characters who helped pioneer this vibrant movement.
On Saturday, Nov 11 Smart Shelter will produce a half-day workshop creating a Network of this type in Southern California (1-6 pm, CEC Gildea Resource Center, Santa Barbara). For slide show and workshop information <sbpcnet@silcom.com> or see ad in this issue for details about the planned Ojai, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo presentations. For information about Smart Shelter Network, click to www.smartshelter.com. This event will be "FRAGRANCE FREE."