Alternative Housing

Rammed Earth Construction Pros & Cons

Rammed earth construction is once again gaining in popularity for home builders looking for eco-friendly options.  With rammed earth, you're using the dirt under your feet (or from a local quarry) to build a house.  This is certainly a "green" practice since it usually makes use of local materials (local dirt!) and you don't need lumber, quarried stone, brick, etc. to be transported from long distances.

Rammed earth construction has its pros and cons of course.  Let's take a look at the positives and negatives.

Pros of Building with Rammed Earth

• A properly sited and designed rammed earth home is ideal for passive solar strategies, so it can be great for an off-the-grid house.  The thick, dense walls absorb the warmth from the sun all day and slowly release the heat into the interior of the house at night.  This helps keep heating bills low in the winter, and these homes tend to stay cool in the summer as well. 
• Dirt is an easy-to-acquire material and while there are some requirements (not all dirt is going to have the right mix of sand and clay), you ought to be able to get it locally, so this tends to be an eco-friendly building material.
• And let's not forget the coolness factor of having a house that is built out of something unique.  In many cases, homeowners wanting to save money help with the building process, and there are even DIY sites out there that will tell you how to make a house on the cheap using rammed earth construction.

Cons of Rammed Earth Construction

• Soil selection needs to be done carefully, and if you are able to use dirt from the building site, you'll end up with some big holes you need to figure out how to work into the landscape.
• Though it might seem that a house made out of dirt would be cheap, rammed earth construction actually tends to cost 5 to 15% more than conventional construction (due to the labor-intensive process of creating the rammed earth forms).
• It's difficult to impossible to create rounded or sculpturally shaped walls the way you can with other materials.  Homes made with rammed earth construction are going to be boxy in nature. 
• In colder climates, you'll probably need extra insulation (it's typical to add foam insulation to exterior walls and then cover it up with stucco).

Source: Living Homes: Sustainable Architecture and Design

Rammed Earth Homes--Eco-friendly, Long-lasting, and Just Plain Cool

 An alternative house building material that we haven't talked about before is rammed earth.  And, yes, it's exactly what it sounds like.  The walls are made from earth that is smashed into forms. 

Rammed earth has a long history around the world and was popular in the United States before railroads made the transportation of lumber and other building materials commonplace.  In recent years, the material has been seeing a resurgence as an eco-friendly option for home building.  It doesn't get much more natural than building a home right out of the ground around it!

How Building a Rammed Earth House Works

The building process starts out with a concrete foundation that protrudes above grade six to eight inches as a "stem wall."  The rammed earth wall will stick to the stem wall via gravity and pressure.

Mineral-laden soil (not topsoil--save that for the garden) is used for the walls.  A mixture of mostly sand with some clay works well.  On sight soil often isn't of the right consistency, so you may have to get it from a local quarry (this saves the problem of correcting gaping holes in your landscape anyway). 

Typically 3-10% portland cement is mixed into the soil for stabilization.  The mixture is then moistened to lubricate the soil particles and help with compaction. 

The earth is placed into box-like ramming forms (similar to forms used for creating concrete panels), which are attached to the stem walls.  The wall depths will be anywhere from 18 to 36 inches (in a two-story building the first-story walls are typically wider).  Plumbing and electrical are usually run within the forms, and windows and doors are framed out before the earth is rammed home.

In the end, the rammed earth walls will have a slightly textured surface and striations left from the ramming process.  Wall color depends on soil mixture.  You can, of course, paint but many homeowners want to be able to see and admire their natural rammed earth walls and will simply apply a clear sealant to interior walls to prevent flaking.  In cold climates, foam insulation is often added to exterior walls, which are then covered with stucco.

Rammed earth houses are a unique and eco-friendly way to build a home.

Source: Living Homes: Sustainable Architecture and Design

Finding Eco-friendly or "Sustainable" Wood

One of the nice things about building a home from scratch is you get to pick and choose the materials yourself.  If you want to build an eco-friendly house, you'll probably want to incorporate reclaimed woods or timbers from sustainable sources whenever possible.  So, what are your sources for eco-friendly sustainable wood?

Let's take a look at a few of your options:

River Wood

River wood is retrieved from the bottoms of rivers.  The recovered logs have typically been on the river bottoms for decades or centuries (originally lost by loggers bringing them downriver to the mills).  Also timbers from old pilings and piers are included in this category.

Wood from Managed or Certified Forests

A lot of today's new wood is coming from managed forests, which means new trees are planted to replace the old.  Caretakers make sure to avoid cutting down old-growth trees, and there are standards of sustainability that these forests have to maintain in order to qualify. This often includes the protection of wildlife habitats.

Reclaimed or Salvaged Wood

This is when beams, timbers, etc. are reclaimed from old barns, warehouses, houses, and other buildings that have been dismantled. It's a popular choice with people building eco-friendly homes, since no new trees need to be cut to provide the wood.

Standing Dead Timbers

This last category includes trees that have died due to fires, diseases, or other causes, but are still standing.  They can often be reclaimed for residential construction, and because they've already lost most of their moisture, these trees can be excellent choices for building homes.

Source: Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Smart HomeOwner

Straw Bale Homes are Eco-friendly and Affordable

If you're dreaming about building an affordable and environmentally friendly home, one material you may want to look into is straw.  Straw bales, to be exact. 

Contrary to what the Three Little Pigs would have you believe, a home built with straw can indeed withstand lots of huffing and puffing (AKA inclement weather conditions).  (And once the house is completely built no one will even know the inside of the walls are full of straw.  Of course, some homeowners who want to prove this will leave little peep holes, a cupboard or some such that opens to reveal the straw inside the walls.)

Thanks to the increasing popularity of building with straw, there are more and more books and resources available for people seriously interested in constructing this kind of home.

In Building a Straw Bale House:, the Red Feather Development Group offers a thorough guide to creating a home with straw.  When the group was founded in 1994, their mission was to build affordable and eco-friendly houses for American Indians, but widespread interest in building with environmentally friendly materials has spawned a whole industry of people who want to live in green homes.  Thus this book was born as a handbook and guide for anyone interested in building this way.

Check it out if you're thinking of building an eco-friendly home (that doesn't cost an arm and a leg) and let us know what you think!

Building a Straw Bale House:

Passive Solar Heating Can Save You Lots of Money

When most people think of solar heating for their home, they imagine huge arrays of solar panels up on the roof and expensive installation costs (tens of thousands of dollars, in fact).  It's actually possible to save a lot of money and build a more eco-friendly home just by designing your house with passive solar heating in mind.

A passive solar home faces south and takes advantage of natural sunlight with large windows and excellent installation.  The most common living areas are on the south side of the house, and even in the winter, the daylight streaming through the windows can go a long ways in lowering your heating bill.

Check out this article on passive solar home design for more information.

Adobe Floors

If you're looking for a flooring material for your eco-friendly home that doesn't require anything being cut down or destroyed, consider adobe floors.  Their materials come from the earth's floor, and they are simply refashioned to serve human needs. 

Adobe floors can be designed to be dry, durable, and well-insulated.  They absorb heat well and radiate it back through the night, so they can be used in homes with passive solar designs. 

Adobe is warmer and "softer" underfoot than concrete, brick, and other hard flooring materials.  Since these floors are made primarily of soil, they are entirely natural.

For more eco-friendly housing ideas, check out Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods

Stone and Mud Home Dug into Hillside = Super Eco-friendly

Doesn't this home look like something straight out of The Hobbit?

The "low impact woodland home" exists in Wales.  It was built by the owner with regard for the environment.  It's dug into the hillside, which means it's probably energy efficient too (see our article on underground homes).  The foundation and retaining walls are made with mud and stone. Straw bales in the floor, walls, and roof help insulate the home.  Reclaimed wood was used for the floor and fittings.

To read more about this incredible home, visit the owner's web site at Low Impact Woodland Home.

Upscale Treehouses Allow You to Live Green

I don't know about you, but I have two fantasies when it comes to building my own home (or maybe a vacation home): 1) make it eco-friendly and energy efficient, maybe even able to thrive "off the grid" and 2) make it in a tree!

Treehouses aren't just for kids.  The Treehouse Workshop of Seattle says so.

"The Seattle-based company, which employs seven lead builders, crafts 10 to 15 modern and sophisticated tree-top abodes each year, some outfitted with bathrooms, fireplaces, second stories, and suspension bridges.

Using mostly with reclaimed wood and recycled materials, from the flooring and doors to the paneling and windows, the company uses primarily recovered lumber and timber from old homes, as well as salvaged building products from Second Use Building Materials in Seattle."

If you've ever dreamed of having your very own treehouse (and an eco-friendly one too!), you'll definitely want to check those folks out.

--quote from Treehugger

Cut Your Energy Bills By Using Solar Power

You may dream of getting out of the city and living off-the-grid out in the wilderness somewhere in a home full of rain collectors and solar panels, a home where you'll never have to pay energy bills again because nature provides you everything you need.  You may dream about it, but most of us are stuck in the city or the suburbs, where solar power is just some distant wilderness fantasy.

Or is it?

More and more people are outfitting their existing homes with solar panels on the roof.  These panels draw energy from the sun all day and in some cases provide 100% of the energy required for a household's use.  The owners can even come out ahead by siphoning what they don't use back into the city's power grid.  At the worst case, you'll cut down on what you draw from the local power plant a lot.  Of course, the initial outlay is costly, but in some areas there are tax deductions and incentives to make going solar more appealing. 

This book does a wonderful of explaining how you can get started:

Got Sun? Go Solar: Get Free Renewable Energy to Power Your Grid-Tied Home

How Underground Houses Save You Money

Underground houses are a fun option if you're interested in building your own home from scratch and one of your primary goals is to save money on heating and cooling costs.  In the summer, underground homes stay cool without a lot of air conditioning pumping through the vents, and in the winter, they stay warmer than the outside air with less money spent on heating. 

How does this work?  Anybody who knows anything about dirt and the earth can tell you the ground isn't a very good insulator.  It is, however, a great capacitor.  As an electrical capacitor stores an electric charge, the ground is a capacitor that stores heat.  When the air is well below freezing in winter, the ground will remain warmer.  For example a constant 40F degree temperature is normal in the northeast part of the country.  So every underground wall pressed up against your home is 40 degrees, which in turn keeps your home close to that temperature, so that means you only need to heat the house 30 degrees to get it up to a comfortable room temperature (whereas you might have to heat the house 70 degrees if you live somewhere where the temperature drops to 0).

And in the summer, the earth acts as a good conductor.  The 40F degree earth will suck some of the hot air out of your house and keep it cool.

For a more thorough explanation on how this works, check out The Complete Book Of Underground Houses: How To Build A Low Cost Home