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| Green Building |
| To the right are a few links to green building projects at Maitreya. |
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Straw Bale Community Space
Cob Guest Cottage
Cob Wall
Bike Shed
Triplex
Slip chip
Windows
Renovation of Existing Buildings
Rainwater swale
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| Green Building As Opposed to Natural Building |
| by Robert Boleman |
Green Building is a very broad field. At its more timid end, Green Building can consist of something as simple as an otherwise ordinary house with a few ordinary building materials replaced with environmentally improved alternatives such as low VOC paints or FSC certified flooring. At its more radical end is the field of Natural Building where people are going on the assumption that natural materials are inherently safer and less toxic than factory made materials (asbestos being one notable exception). Natural builders will make every effort to avoid using toxic, industrially manufactured materials. They will build houses out of earth, straw and round wood. They will research making their own paint and plasters, etc.
While natural builders are to be commended on their tenacity, the more environmentally timid field of Green Building arguably has greater potential to make a bigger difference due to the far greater numbers of people likely to incorporate Green Building techniques into their work.
In the best of all worlds, the ideology of Natural Building would effect the building materials industry causing them to manufacture building products in a local, decentralized manner using only FSC certified wood and non-toxic substances. A more or less average house could be built using FSC certified wood, and if the various toxic products could be replaced with genuinely sustainable alternatives, you would have a dramatically improved house. For more information please take a look at:
Another issue to consider in arriving at a genuinely sustainable model of housing is longevity. Even a staunch conservative ought to be able to agree that paying 10% more for materials and 10% more for labor would make sense if the house can be expected to last four times longer. A major factor in creating long lasting houses is beauty. If a house is beautiful, people are going to love it, care for it, maintain it and cause it to last for generations. Every day in the U.S, butt-ugly, 40 year old track houses are dumped into landfills - an unsustainable practice if ever there was one.
Concrete & Steel are in and of themselves, more or less non-toxic (subject to debate, I'm sure), but they are very energy intensive. As extremely attractive building materials for their structural qualities and longevity, we can be expected to continue building with them while there's still energy but they must be built with in such a way that the building lasts long enough to amortise out the embodied energy costs. There are few things sillier than building a massive concrete building and then demolishing it 20 years later. Learn about the demise of the Seattle King Dome.
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