Build-design off the grid

Hey there. So I wanted to bring a new topic to the table here at Decorazzi. I have been discussing home building with my dad, who's an architect by education and trade. I passed an article to him from the Willamette Weekly (a local Portland, OR paper).

The article was focusing on renewable energies and green building.

My dad's response was very thought-provoking, and I thought all of you savvy readers would find it interesting as well. Here's his response to the article about heating a home with a hair dryer:

"I had the chance to read that article called "Futurehaus" in the Willamette Weekly that Pat referenced me.

It's a good article, but the basic method that the young architects are promoting consists of a double-walled enclosure, with an energy efficient exterior shell insulating and weather-protecting a conventional inner shell of standard wood frame construction; double the shell and double the expenses as a result. Cost will soon put the damper on this method, in spite of any perceived or real government and/or industry incentives or tax breaks.These guys are working within standards and codes now prevailing and are apparently doing a good job of it.

The problem is, the standards and codes they have to deal with are based on conventional and long-standing construction techniques that building officials and engineers are accustomed to dealing with; there is no standard existing nor engineering method established for the use of alternative construction methods, used elsewhere all over the world, now for thousands of years...that method, among others is routinely referred to as "adobe".

Mother nature has provided for us very well; our problem is, we ignore her too much and do it our own way too often.

The use of adobe was the first and still remains the most common way of providing housing all over the world. However, the U.S. Testing agencies, like the ASTM (American Society of Testing Materials), have never commissioned the analysis or testing of adobe buildings to determine their values for providing for compression and tension resistance using these simple construction methods and for this reason, adobe consruction is not recognized as an acceptable building system in the codes; the why of it is probably immersed in the politics and lobbyists protecting the staus quo of American industry for profitability reasons, pure and simple. The result of this is that local building departments will not accept it since they have no way of monitoring it to standards that don't exist.

Here's why that is a bad idea:

Adobe is an all natural, locally available (as in, on your building site) material that is unsurpassed in providing insulation for warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer...no material does this better, and I mean by a long, long ways adobe is self-finishing on the exterior (with an additive commonly found in the country, cow pies!) with a final finish coat that is impervious to weather; reapplication is a snap and is done no more often than one repaints a wood-sided house
adobe is self-finishing on the interior (with a modification of the standard adobe mix, no cow pies!) with a final finish coat that provides a hard interior finish similar to painted plaster or sheetrock adobe is naturally resistive to compressive forces, meaning it can bear substantial weight; tension is another story and it is here where we need tested standards adobe can be constructed with all power, lighting, HVAC and other utilities located within the walls, per standard construction methods there's nothing cheaper than dirt, especially when you already own it, assuming you already own your lot; constituencies in the soil are easily tested on site and any deficiencies in the existing soil can be augmented and brought to the site for achieving the proper mix adobe flooring is among one of the best floor systems available; yes, dirt floors can be made hard and shiny and will take wax finishes and patterns and colors may be incorporated as well. This means that the floors are also insulative.

Adobe is perhaps the easiest of all materials to maintain; if a gouge in a wall or floor should occur, the adobe is simply re-hydrated and patched with...more adobe! Patches done correctly are also invisible, therefore, no waste is incurred due to replacement activities. This applies to either interior or exterior damage/replacement I am sure I am leaving some points out, but for the sake of brevity...So what does all this mean?

It means that adobe is super cheap to build with; the exterior and interior finishes are already included in the material...there's no sheetrock, wallpaper, siding, insulation, structure, framing, building wrap or membranes...the only thing it has in common with current systems is the incorporation of windows and doors. Interior trim and built-ins can be formed with adobe during the wall construction...things like benches, mantles, chair rails, picture rails, shelving, countertops...the list is endless. Adobe can also accommodate standard light fixtures, cabinetwork, appliances and washroom fixtures...in short, anything a standard frame house can accommodate, abdobe can too.

I believe adobe will be U.S. standard in the years to come; the way things are going with cost, it will soon be the only available, affordable option for most Americans. Now you know why I want to build my off-the-grid retirement abode out of adobe...hey, that makes it an adobe-abode!"

**If you have any questions about the ideas or opinions above, please feel free to list them in the comments, directed towards my dad, and I'll pass them along. When I get his responses, I'll create a follow up post, or send them back directly to you.

Oh, the joys of home ownership

While I don't technically own my own home right now, my wonderful boyf, Paul, does. He owns this sweet little condo right at the cusp of downtown Seattle. He just passed the two year mark on the purchase, and on the whole, things have gone pretty well at the condo.

There have been the occassional issue, like the dishwasher overflowing the kitchen with soap suds (apparently you have to pre-wash the dishes and make sure there's no liquid soap left on any dish, because the dishwasher has an attitude problem), or like when we realized that the wiring for the lights and fans in the bathroom was not only messed up, but the jerks cut major corners by wiring the fan and heat lamp together, but accidently wired the fan to the regular lights (idiots).

So this past weekend I was in Bellingham helping my sister, Kate, with a wedding she had. We delivered all the beautiful flowers on Sunday morning/afternoon. As we got back into the car, I called Paul to check in, only to find out that there was some major plumbing leak under the kitchen sink.

Paul sent me some pictures/videos of the situation. Lucky for us, the leak only existed when you turned the sink on, and was coming from the drain pipe. It could have been MUCH worse, really.

So I drove back down to Seattle, checked it out, and sure enough we could tell the mess was coming from the drain (if the smell didn't give it away. GOD! talk about wrank)

This what Paul discovered when he went to take the trash out. The trash can was sopping wet, and stinky (he said "Babe, it's got to bad if even I think it stinks.")

Here's some of the nastyness coming down the wall, see that odd, rubbery looking white compound? Yeah, that's what the subcontrators called a "joint." I think they were smoking a joint when they put this together.

So basically, what happened is this: The subcontractor that did the kitchen build out cut some major corners. This is not even REMOTELY close to being up to code. The drain pipe coming out of the wall (concrete walls and floors) is metal. It's an 1.5" round. The drain coming out of the sink/disposal is made of PVC pipe. It's also 1.5" round. The metal pipe has threadings on it, and a metal nut at the end, which you would use to secure the drain pipe to the wall pipe, if you were using all metal. They butted the PVC pipe up against the wall drain pipe, and squished the rubber putty around the two pipes.

I swear, that's really what they did. The pipes are the same size, so it's not like one fits into the other one, creating a seal or anything. They just put the two pipes up against each other and covered it with some goo.

What really pissed me off is that after all was said and done, I fixed it for $6.43, two trips to Home Depot (where I met my new best friend, Larry, their plumbing expert), and 3 hours of diagnosis, labor and running around. That's all it took, and I know very little about plumbing (although clearly more than the clowns that did the job in the first place).

Of course, this was not exactly an entry level project, but I was not the least bit scared of ruining anything, afterall, their cockamamey set up lasted the last two years, so honestly I couldn't do worse!

Since I know how to measure and cut out the dry wall, shut off the water main, and employ common sense, I was good to go! I feel really accomplished, Paul is super relieved (and who wouldn't be? That's a huge bullet we dodged by catching it early and fixing it ourselves), and we're using the fan to dry out the soggy MDF and drywall back there (at least the portion we can see....but under the sub floor is concrete, so no worries of passing it on to the floor below us).

Here's a video of the final result: