It begins with my
introduction to sustainable architecture. I discuss passive
solar, thermal mass, and other basic principles.
Then we visit a variety
of homes, grouped by categories:
Adobe:
Sean Sands talks
about his house made of adobe blocks. He created the blocks
in his yard, using a CinvaRam press and the soil on his land.
This house cost under $1000 and took Sean a summer to build.
Dar Al Islam: we'll
take a look at a spiritual center made almost entirely out
of adobe blocks, in lovely vaults and domes.
Ted Specker piled
adobe in a free-form, sculptural fashion to create an artistic
earthen abode.
Mario and Pat Bellestri
are a husband-and-wife team who operate a rammed-earth construction
business in New Mexico. Here we visit several of the houses
that they have built, and Mario describes how he does the
rammed earth process.
Straw Bale
Tom Luecke and Jeff
Rupert represent a construction company specializing in straw
bale. They discuss the attributes and special technology of
straw bale construction. Shown are two of their houses, a
load-bearing straw bale and another that is a combination
of load-bearing and non-load-bearing. (Load-bearing
means the bales themselves bear the weight of the load, and
non-load-bearing means that they don't because something
else does.)
Greg Griffen's post
and beam straw bale (non-load bearing) home demonstrates his
approach to building with straw bales. He discusses the use
of natural earthen plaster, and you see a big vat of cactus
juice brewing for use in the plaster.
Lance Du Rand designed
and directed the construction of an experimental straw and
clay catenary arch hermitage, and Ramloti tells us how it
feels to live in it.
Earth Sheltering
Nick Lamoureaux shows
us his Earthship under construction and discusses its merits.
He explains how earthships are made with tires, aluminum cans,
and mud plaster. This interview is followed by an artistic
tour of a variety of Earthships, accompanied by music.
Richard Kovach employs
one of noted cordwood expert Rob Roy's designs for a two-story
round earth-sheltered cordwood residence, located in Sequim,
Washington.
Ted Specker tells
us how he made an earth-covered, dug-out kiva which provides
cool habitat in the scorching summer of the southern New Mexico
desert.
Allen Newman shows
how he makes his innovative thin concrete domes formed with
a sectional mold. He chose to do an extremely compact design
(for almost no money), but his ideas can also be used on a
larger scale.
Papercrete
There's a good chance
that you have never heard of papercrete, so this section starts
with my explaining what it is and how I came to learn about
it. Eric Patterson and Mike McCain more or less simultaneously
invented it, so it must be an idea whose time has come!
Eric Patterson calls
his invention padobe. He tells how he discovered it
and how he used it to make a lovely bedroom addition to his
old adobe home. He also has a unique dome as an outbuilding.
Mike McCain, who
uses the term fibrous cement, shows how to do it at
a two-day workshop. You get some of the highlights.
Sean Sands and Mike
McCain collaborate in building some fanciful papercrete dome
structures.
Earthbags
Artist and philosopher
Shirley Tassencourt gives us a tour of her lovely compact
dome home and meditation space, made with soil-filled earthbags.
She built this with her teenage grandson.
Shirley's neighbor
also used earthbags — formed more conventionally into
a rectangular shell with a wood-framed roof.
Then you see my own
construction projects, an outbuilding and the beginning of
our home. Both are domes made from recycled rice bags filled
with scoria (crushed volcanic rock) and plastered mainly with
papercrete.
Hybrids
Joe Michalak used
hybrid construction for his family home: it's wood framed
and uses wood for siding, while straw bales provide insulation.
Recycled Containers
and Vehicles
My wife Rosana gives
a tour of the bus conversion motorhome that we lived in for
several years, a former Gray Line Hawaii tour bus about the
size of a Greyhound.
Final Thoughts
And the two-hour
program wraps up with a few final thoughts from me.
earthships, and more. 