Was Natural Building Everything I Expected it to be?

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(Guys they had goats!!!)

Yes…… and no…… I really hate to put anything negative out there about eco building but I have to say the first week was trying to say the least. The property we are building this house on is sort of an intentional community. Except it isn’t working out well. Due to the strange social issues involved there was not any infrastructure for us volunteers. The people living on the property were supposed to provide pallets for construction of a bathroom/shower and a kitchen area. They were completely unprepared for our arrival. It took 5 days to get these facilities in place. After 5 days of going to the bathroom in the woods, worrying about where the food was going to come from and working our butts off in the Georgia heat to put in a shower I was ready to call it quits. Thankfully day 4 saw the completion of the bathroom which greatly improved morale so I decided to stick around. Day 5 we finished the kitchen and we’ve been chugging along ever since!

In addition to the strange social dynamics of the property the aspects of the building changed. It will no longer be a timber frame strawbale cabin. They decided to use conventional framing, I believe because of cost and time. They also decided to forgo permitting the build. I didn’t know this originally but the cabin was never going to be fitted with plumbing or electric. As a result I thought this was going to be a poor learning experience. The build went from being a perfect representation of what we would like to build in the future to a shadow of the building I thought it would be. Needless to say I was rather upset by this turn of events.

(the bottom floor all framed out)

Chris had driven 7 hours there and back to drop me off and when we get there almost everyone was asleep, I had no idea where the camp site is. One of the owner’s friends happened to up and let me in the gate and set me up in the house. This was crazy weird for me. I am not an outgoing person. I like to know what to expect and would never stay overnight in a stranger’s house let alone by myself hours from home without them even knowing I was there. It was definitely an uncomfortable situation.

(framing out the top floor)

Okay, enough about the bad bits let’s get into the building! Even though it did not end up being the kind of build I was expecting I learned a TON. The builder is experienced in both conventional building and natural build and was able to answer all of my questions about the logistics of the house we are planning. I mention the conventional building because having no experience with natural building I was able to ask about a particular part of regular building and what the equivalent would be in eco building. For example laying floors. I don’t want to use plywood so what do you put on the floor joists to support flooring? Having only seen eco builds on youtube I was unsure about things like how to plumb a building that is very susceptible to water damage or how to run electrical so that it can be replaced at some point. Those are extremely basic issues with building an earthen structure but no one ever addresses them in those videos. Then I had more specific questions about our planned build. While I appreciate the premise behind natural building (downsize, healthy for the environment etc.) I don’t enjoy the small dwellings that result from that philosophy. I know, I know, most people say that’s the whole point! Well just like homesteading I am interested in the health aspect. Living in a house that isn’t emitting VOCs and has generally poor air quality is what appeals to me. Before becoming interested in eco buildings I wanted to restore an old property but it is very hard to get around the conventional building materials and chemicals they are made with. And of course I enjoy the low environmental impact that eco building has. Because my mindset is coming from a different reasoning we plan to build a more traditional 2 story house. This opens up a lot of other issues like how do you divide out spaces upstairs? The 1st floor will have cob walls but can you put cob walls on the 2nd floor if they don’t match up with the ones on the 1st floor? Answers to questions like these were invaluable and allowed me to better visualize our future project and what was possible. Many thanks to our builder who answered all of my questions patiently (guys there were a lot).

(we finished the roof just as I left)

In addition to hashing out issues I had with our planned home I also learned about conventional framing. While I don’t think I will ever need this particular skill I did learn a lot about different tools and tricks of the trade. I am sure these will come in handy when we work on our various building projects around the property.

I had to leave the project early. There ended up being a break 2 weeks into the build and by the time we hit the end of 4 weeks only the framing had been completed. This was partially due to a delay in the strawbale delivery. I couldn’t justify leaving Chris to tend to the farm while working full time (among other personal reasons). Plus with it not being a true house I didn’t feel like I was going to learn as much as I would have liked. They are still working on the building and have moved on to the earthen plaster phase.

This was a very interesting experience and I am glad I went. I learned a ton and meet some pretty awesome people. I will be writing another post soon about my experiences outside of building. We were on a very neat piece of property so we got to see and experience some awesome things!!