Practically off the grid!

Appropriate Building Materials

With the popularity of natural building on the rise the book markets have been flooded with numerous books show casing various buildings that employ the techniques of cob, strawbale and rammed earth construction.  However, most of these are mere collections of photos accompanied by general descriptions of how one ought to go about building with these methods.  The attractive finished projects they present provide plenty of motivation to embark on a natural building adventure but leave you without the practical building details with which you can make your natural building dreams come to life.  I have found few books that stand out among this crowd by offering sufficient practical information.  The one I would like to share with you now is Appropriate Building Materials by Roland Stulz and Kiran Mukerji.

 There are many reasons why this book is at the top of my list in the category of natural building.  The first is that it presents natural building as it was originally and that is with local materials.  It is easy to get caught up the dream of building with a certain natural building method but these methods are not sustainable in any location.  Here in Saskatchewan, we have an excess of straw from our large agriculture industry and that combined with its insulative properties make it an excellent building material here in our cold dry climate.  It is not, however, sustainable to ship this straw to home builders in all other parts of the world.  The start of this book introduces the reader to a variety of building materials and their properties.  You can make a list of the resources you have on your building site and in your local community and use this book to learn about possible uses for those products.  Appropriately the most pages in this section are devoted to the analysis and possible uses of the soil found on your site.  The use of a variety of more energy intensive earth stabilizers are described in detail and other building materials like timber, bamboo, plastic and glass etc. are also included.  A complete read through this section will help you approach any site as a free supply of local building materials.

Next, the authors present a collection of fundamental building principles that apply to all structures.  This principles are valuable reminders about the purpose of each building element.  The necessary functions of foundations, walls and roofs are reviewed here and brief suggestions of appropriate building materials are listed for each function.  The understanding of these principles empowers the reader to start practicing building with their local materials and inventing successful methods of their own.  Most importantly, a review of these principles reminds us that a wall needs to support the roof, insulate and protect itself from water damage.  It does not need to be a wall of 2 x 4 studs insulated with fiberglass batts, covered with plastic barriers and clad with gypsum board and vinyl siding!  There are plenty of more natural and locally available materials that can meet the demands of each building element.

The heart of the book is the extensive collection of actual examples of these appropriate building methods.  This massive collection is divided into 50 unique building strategies or methods that can be used for part or all of a home construction.  These methods are not exclusively natural although many of them are.  Some depend on the use of concrete and others on metal.  The common element would be that they all are possible with simple technology and easily obtainable materials.  Every one of these 50 examples is rated in the following categories: special properties, economic aspects, stability, skills required, equipment required, resistance to earthquake, resistance to hurricane, resistance to insects, climatic suitability, and stage of experience.  These ratings are helpful in deciding which method is best for your application and the descriptions and actual building details provided for each method equip the reader with the knowledge to begin building.

You can see this book really does have it all.  Wait.  That’s a lie.  It doesn’t have it all.  It does not waste your time with pages of design images or wordy descriptions of what you might be able to build if you knew how.  It does have all of the basic information for anyone to build a shelter with simple technology anywhere in the world.  That makes this book very unique.  Sadly, it is also rare.  I was lucky to come across my copy in a used book store a few years ago but without such luck it may have been difficult to acquire.  My copy lists the editions printed and the number of copies made of each.  The total number of copies printed is only 9050 between 1981 and 1998.  Good luck to all of you in your search.  You won’t be disappointed with this one.  

The Natural Plaster Book by Cedar Rose and Guelberth and Dan Chiras has become my favorite source for all of my information relating to natural finishes.  When I have a question on this topic I don’t go to google and I don’t go to the library.  I simply pull this book off my shelf and review the basics. 

Natural plasters behave differently from stucco and other less forgiving finishes and these differences must be accounted for in the design of the building.  To help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of natural plaster the book carefully outlines the performance characteristics of various options for natural plaster and includes commentary on the necessary design considerations.  With an appropriate building design and some fine tuning of the base plaster recipes on site your natural plaster will match or exceed the performance of any commercial finish out there.

My experience has been primarily with clay based plasters and the book was helpful in this area but it also includes everything you would need to know to use lime based plasters.  Because natural plasters vary with the clay and sand that are available some degree of experimentation on site is inevitable.  This book won’t present you with a magic recipe that will work anywhere.  There is no such thing.  What it will do is present you with a proven process to develop the best plaster with the materials you have available.  In that sense it has saved me a lot of time and has helped me experience success much sooner than I would have trying to invent my own strategies from scratch.  

The book also includes finer finishes that could be applied with a brush, roller or even a sponge like alises, milk and flour based natural paints.  I have tried making my own milk and flour based paints and have been pretty satisfied with the results.  As with the plasters, assume that you will need to invest a bit of time in experimentation to find the best recipe but after that process is over, painting is a real treat.  There are no hazardous chemicals to work with and the air is not filled with VOCs.