The pressing question for anyone contemplating their fate in a post-heated, post-peak oil world is "How am I going to live?"

Answers to this question arrive at the realization that directly meeting everyday needs will be essential, instead of relying on our profoundly indirect and abstract support systems currently in place.

A person's home will be central to a solution that can meet those needs. A proper home can provide year-round protection from the elements, the roof can provide water through rainfall collection, the windows can provide heat and light energy from the sun, and the land can provide the necessary food and provide for the management of wastes.

In any “going-to-live” scenario, a design for adaptability is also key, to help address all of the unknowns arising from the problems to be presented by global warming and low-energy.

A person's home would ideally be an "adaptable home" with the following requisites: be made of readily available, non-toxic building materials; be built using simple and accessible construction methods; be well suited for a range of environments; and be easily maintained and modified.

The conventional construction methods employed today do not fit any of these requirements. But we need not look far to find ones that do because they have existed for thousands of years. Before the cement-and-rebar phase of today, people built using what was readily available: mud, wood and rock. Some of the structures made with these elements are still standing today: the great wall of China, pyramids of Egypt, and cob homes in England.

This past summer I decided to learn more about these methods, aptly termed "Natural Building," by participating in a six-week apprenticeship course offered in southern Oregon. The course gave hands-on experience with straw-bale, earth-bag, cob, earthen plasters, and light-straw infill building methods.

The group was comprised of six individuals from across the US along with one Israeli and myself—four males and two females aged twenty to thirty all coming together from widely different backgrounds but sharing very similar interests. The sole intent was to pursue the dream of one day building our own homes, with our own designs, using our own hands.

The passion for this was immediately conveyed through the limited contents of our backpacks. Mixed in with peoples tents, sleeping bags and clothes were books on building, draft paper reams, drawing pencils and hand-tools. We came to not only learn but to also experience and practice a self-sufficient lifestyle reflective of the building process itself.

The 20-acre property had no transmission lines or other municipal infrastructure. The electricity on site came from an array of solar panels, batteries and inverters. Water was pumped from an underground well up to a holding tank that gravity fed out to the various buildings. A garden helped to provide food and the composting toilets completed the cycle. Solar water heaters provided hot water for the showers. Our daily water and energy requirements were minimal in comparison to how most of us normally live, yet, our quality of life was relatively the same, if not better.

A typical day began at 7 AM when the morning sun would break over the eastern mountains striking down into our tents making sleep impossible. The group would congregate in the nearby cob cottage, our communal gathering spot, to fire up hot drinks and snack on light foods in preparation for a day outside.

We would then converge on the build site, just steps away, to meet the instructors who would outline the day's agenda. Afterwards, we would divide into smaller groups and tackle specific tasks with the instructors working alongside us to answer any specific questions, offer advice and guidance. We would normally switch up the tasks throughout the day with short, informal lectures placed in between to demonstrate the skills, convey the theory, and explain the terminology.

The main project was to construct a small, single-room school house for the children in the area. The design of the building incorporated a variety of natural building methods.

The foundation was composed of earth-bags, a technique where woven-style bags are filled with an aggregate mix of gravel, sand, and cement. The bags are piled on top of each other, much like a wall of bricks, and as the contents cure, the bags settle, forming a solid, inter-locked structure on top of which the rest of the building stands.

The next step was the construction of the straw-bale walls. The progress on the walls was quick at first as we stacked the bales, but then slowed during the tying phase. Tying the bales together ensured that the wall would behave as one giant bale' On top of this, a level-layer of cob was applied for the roof poles to rest on.

Cob is the name given to a mixture of clay, sand, straw and water. Entire homes can be built out of cob. The idea is to press down layer upon layer of cob so that when it dries you're left with a single monolithic structure. The straw is what gives cob much of its strength and ties, or weaves, the over-lapping layers together. We mixed the cob on top of large tarps by gingerly stomping on the straw-mud mixture with our bare-feet. This always made for enjoyable team-building experiences.

The roof poles came from trees on the property, felled by hand-saws, striped of their bark and carried back to the work site. Once hoisted into place they were fastened with lag bolts. These poles provided great stability to the overall structure of the building.

The roof itself was of a living design, the main layer being a water-impermeable pond liner with a layer of soil spread on top and different grasses planted in it. The transpiration of water moisture from the living roof during the summer season helps keep the roof (and building) cool, instead of warming up.

For the interior, the floor and walls were constructed of earthen plasters made up of clay, sand, and water with the addition of finely-chopped straw for the earthen floor. We used various trowels to spread the plasters level. Once thoroughly dried linseed oil was applied to the floor which added further protection. This work went at a quick pace because everyone could participate concurrently.

At day’s end, a rotating group of two would help with the preparation of dinner. We followed a strict vegetarian diet during the apprenticeship. No one seemed to mind the culinary change, and the variety of meals kept things interesting. A solar-oven and wood-fired cob oven were used occasionally to help with the food preparation.

The evenings allowed for many different activities—from personal time for reading and writing, to technical slide shows and discussions on building techniques, along with nightly ping-pong tournaments.

The experience itself covered many aspects of “natural building” but it also taught important life lessons on how to live and learn as a group while working towards a common goal. This was a very similar experience to one I had while on a Habitat for Humanity build in the Dominican Republic earlier this year, where it was the sum of everyone's strengths and weaknesses that mattered more than what any one individual was capable of doing.

In a world increasingly dependent on non-renewable, finite resources, this course provided knowledge and skills on using proven alternatives for a future that will be constrained in every sense of that word.

For more info on natural building, see housealive.org

dcrawford@republic-news.org

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