Natural building myths: tiny homes and green roofs
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- The most attention-getting natural homes are often small and topped with a turf roof. Here, natural building expert, Michael G. Smith shows us a 3,000-sq-ft earth building and dispels the myths that all-natural building needs to be tiny and covered with a green roof.
The most attention-getting natural homes are often small and topped with a turf roof (see tiny cob cottages in Wales and Greece and our video of a modern hobbit house in North Carolina faircompanies.....
So when I visited the Emerald Earth Sanctuary in Mendocino County (CA) where they’re building a 3000-square-foot community center out of cob, straw bale, and slip straw, I was impressed and mentioned it to my host, natural building expert Michael G. Smith*.
“With a lot of the recent stuff you’re probably used to seeing smaller structures, but you live in Spain right, there are lots of really big earthen buildings over there and all of the oldest surviving structures in California are made out of adobe- the missions built by the Franciscans-. In some parts of the world, there are 8 and 10 story high earthen structures. In South Yemen, there’s a whole city made out of cob skyscrapers.”
In this video, Michael Smith dispels the myths that all-natural building needs to be small and covered with an earthen roof.
[* Michael co-authored the book The Hand-sculpted House which inspired the builders of the North Carolina hobbit house.]
faircompanies....
On *faircompanies: faircompanies....
I agree with everything but green roofs have one more advantage - they are not only cooling your house a little but help cooling the surroundings of your house, so they could cool cities maybe 2-3 C down. And that is another aspect of natural building I think. Not only think how the building materials and technologies affect me, but how they affect my local area.
Contrary to popular belief you can collect rainwater from a green roof as long as you don't use artificial fertilizers and pesticides on it just as you can drink water that is filtered by the earth the drainage you get from the roof is the same.
hmm.
The cost for a single 8' X8' wall would be approx. $240.00 ,not accounting for framing materials or nails. So a homes shell that was 40' long 8' high and 16',or the size of a small mobile home,would be approx $3360.00 . Also not counting nails and framing,just the wood. Cob is less expensive,and working at a rate of approx 2 1/2 ft of wall per day,just about as fast. The difference also being YOU end up with 4" thick walls that still need to be insulated because of such a low R value.
@dasalekhya It was also a common practice here in Spain in the traditionally-built homes, at least in my mother-in-law's hometown in the Extremadura region. Though this now seems to be changing with all the more modern homes.
there is a better way of making em. it stays warm in the winter and cold in the summer I lived in one till i.was 14. its nice the only thing we worried about was severe rain in monsoon. cuz the dry weather conditions before monsoon kills the little plants growing on the roof and the rain starts to wash away a layer. depends on the how many days of rain.
Back hundreds of years ago the native americans built natural houses using sod and earth to keep cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
Earthquakes in Japan are usually no problem. Their houses are essentially metal cages that might tilt over but never shatter. Having lived there if I built a house in Ca near San Andreas fault, I would reinforce walls with steel bars.
This is very inspring...thank you for posting so many great videos about natural homes!
Guys sounds like he hit a joint and hasnt exhaled yet. Hope his throat's okay.
Great video, the other benefit of steel roof is capturing rain water for drinking, you cant do this with earthen roof obviously :)
@dasalekhya A clean house and a healthy lifestyle and you don't have to worry about germs. your immune system will deal with them and make you stronger for it.
hey thats the commune in mendo! awesome video :)
you get used to voices like that after a while. my best mate at school used to stutter all the time, but coz I knew him well I knew what he was gonna say/where the conversation was going anyway.
Michael has a vocal abnormality, nothing annoying about it, I would suggest maybe looking into why you feel the way you do when you hear him speak and realize that it might not be his voice but your unwillingness to accept him because of a difference in what you consider normal. I wish you well
Damn, there are some really close minded and psycho rigid people here, english is not even my mother tongue and I have no problem understanding the Gentleman in the video, offcourse if you have a problem that means you lack the necessary tools to 'communicate' with others. Anyways, great video,i want to build a house in Kashmir and thinking of natural stufff.
@jpenneyatyahoodotcom you might want to re read my post as I said nothing negative about Micheal as I know him well, so I leave you with that and wish you also well.
the future of housing is poly-plastic and poly-glass, look it up sometime on you tube.
you can get a 200k house for 20k!
I want marathi vedio
do the math prove me wrong. my building ide is best . lowest cost, fastest time least amount of work. stacked 2x4 wall. there thats it. just stack 2x4's flat and nail them ontop of each other until you have a wall. add some old vynil windows and doors. use a pressure treatred built up 2x10 posts as a foundation. build floor and roof with 2x4 stacked on edge. no siding drywalll roofing flooring needed. im getting a 24x24 building for 8-10 usd per sq ft. and its faster than adobe
I'm sorry this is really cool but could no
A cob built home for instance uses natural chemical free building materials that come from the site. Is cheaper by the sq. foot. It needs no finishing ,has a much higher R value since it's walls are typically about 2' thick and can be built rather quickly under the right circumstances. Your idea is far from good.....period!!!!
3outhin Squaare Feaaat..