Propose your green structures to house the entire planet
The Fork in the road post and others always have me wanting to see someone step forward with their complete solution to the future way to greenly house us all.
Like Allen says, 20,000 large homes being built annually in his Texas city.
Could Robert Riversong put out plans for completely green homes to be built there instead of ones that Allen is building with spray foam?
Can all foam, all carpet, all particleboard, all cement just not be used in any home built starting tomorrow.
Can we get everyone to agree to live in 2-300sqft each? I mention size because size was upsetting some. Please don’t limit discussion to size. What I would really like to hear is does anyone have a reasonable set of details for a natural green build that would be adapted by say Houston builders instead of foam, cement, etc. And then how do you “sell” this to them, carot…stick?
This is a serious post. Bring up ideas. First idea I would like to see is specs for a replacement home that will not have rot/moisture issues, or whatever else is an issue in Houston. No foam, no fiberglass batts? No concrete?
Are there any true solutions? Are there multiple solutions? Can we change direction today?
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Replies
Sorry, no easy answers. I seriously doubt 20,000 Texans could build even 200 SF each in a truly sustainable fashion. There's problem number one, the exploding number of humans.
Even the "greenest" modern homes start with the assumption that they should maintain thermal comfort year round and also last a long time. To achieve those goals they end up using a lot of resources for construction, seemingly a lot more than a "standard" home. Look at Passivhaus wall sections--lots of trees felled to keep their occupants warm.
To really take this idea seriously, you'd need to limit the material palette to what you could gather from the site with your hands. Examples would include birds nests, bee hives and crawfish mounds.
[Later edit: AJ, I see you have edited your post to clarify it. Thanks. MH]
AJ,
In response to your post about "an Allen home that uses less E" -- I'm going to remind you of the confusion you caused when you used the same idiosyncratic abbreviation in your comment on Allison Bailes' blog.
Although you appear to use E as if it stands for "energy," most people on this forum use E to stand for "emissivity" or "emittance."
If you slow down your typing speed and spell out your words, more people will understand your posts.
Would one build double walls say 10" deep filled with densepack cellulose and be building an Allen home that uses less non renewable resources (fossil fuel) than his sprayfoam homes?
Has anyone done this in your town Allen?
How about it natural green builders, Robert?
...