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ASK THE EXPERTS
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Here is your opportunity to interact with the greenhomebuilding.com panel of experts. You are invited to ask ONE question of any of our distinguished panel. You can ask more than one expert, if you like, but please don't ask for more than ONE response of any of the experts, even over time. Please read the Questions and Answers that have already been published on the page that pertains to your question, before submitting your question...the answer may already be there! You can view the questions and answers for any given topic by clicking on the Q&A link in the table above. Also, please limit your question to their area of expertise, as defined by the category that they represent. If you would like more in-depth consultation with any expert, just state this in the space provided below and this request will be forwarded. Your question and the answer to it may eventually be published along with all of the others on the appropriate page of this website. Your name and e-mail address will not be made public, nor will this data be sold or otherwise transferred. Click this link for SUBMISSION FORM |
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Our Distinguished Panel of Advisor/Consultants |
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Dan Chiras has been involved in renewable energy since the mid-1970s when he retrofitted his first home for passive solar heating. He currently lives in an off-grid passive solar home that he helped to design in the foothills of the Rockies. Built from straw bales, rammed earth tires, and numerous green building materials, this home is heated almost entirely by the sun. Dan is author of numerous books on natural and sustainable building, including The Solar House: Passive Heating and Cooling, published by Chelsea Green in 2002. Dan embraces a comprehensive systems approach to building that offers a wide range of benefits to people, the planet, and our economy. He will field general questions on passive solar heating and cooling and offers consultation on project design and construction, as well as lectures and workshops on passive solar heating and cooling. |
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WATER CONSERVATION & PERMACULTURE
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Janine Bjornson is a natural builder and educator with a penchant for natural finishes. She has worked and studied in the natural building field since working with The Cob Cottage in 1996. She has been on the organizing committee for two Natural Building Colloquia. Janine does freelance natural finish work and teaches natural paints, plasters and pigments workshops in Canada. |
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Dan Chiras has been involved in natural and alternative building since 1994 and lives in an off-grid passive solar/solar electric home in the foothills of the Rockies. His house is built from straw bales, rammed earth tires, and numerous green building materials and is powered entirely by wind and solar energy. Dan is author of The Natural House: A Complete Guide to Healthy, Energy-Efficient, Environmental Homes, published by Chelsea Green; The Natural Plaster Book: Earthen, Lime, and Gypsum Plasters for Natural Homes (with Cedar Rose Guelberth), published by New Society Publishers; and numerous articles on natural building and sustainable design, which have appeared in Mother Earth News, Natural Home, and The Last Straw. Dan embraces a comprehensive systems approach to building that offers a wide range of benefits to people, the planet, and our economy. He will field general questions on natural building and offers consultation on project design and construction, as well as lectures and workshops on various aspects of natural and sustainable design and construction. |
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Mike Oehler is the author of The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book which describes his PSP system of building underground. Mike has been living in an underground home of his design for over twenty years, and swears by his methods. He has evolved some very well thought-out concepts for designing underground structures, which could also be used with other construction techniques. PSP stand for Post, Shoring, Polyethylene---the basic, rather low-tech approach to using posts, boards and plastic sheeting to build underground very inexpensively. Mike has also produced a video series that demonstrates his concepts. |
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Disclaimer
Of Liability And Warranty
For Email contact go to About UsEstablished in 2001, GreenHomeBuilding.com is primarily a labor of love. Kelly, and the GreenHomeBuilding team of experts, have answered thousands of questions for readers over the years, and we continue to publish up-to-date information about increasingly important sustainable architecture. If you feel moved to assist us in this work, your kind donation would be much appreciated; this can be easily done through our PayPal account:VISIT
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Sim Van der Ryn is a recognized pioneer and expert in sustainable architecture and planning practices. Through his varied experience as principal of several design firms, Professor of Architecture at the University of California Berkeley and California State Architect, he has provided countless examples of state-of-the art ecological design and has been a catalyst toward the current ground swell of interest and support for these practices. As President and Chief Designer at Van der Ryn Architects in Sausalito, he is currently designing a new generation of environmentally friendly buildings. The American Institute of Architecture designated his Real Goods Solar Living Center in Hopland, California as one of the nation's top 10 projects for Earth Day 1999. His current design for the West End Golden Gate Park Pavilion Community Center is the pilot project for the City of San Francisco's Green Building Program. Van der Ryn is author of several seminal books in the fast growing field of “green architecture” including Sustainable Communities (Sierra Club, 1986), 
Paulina Wojciechowska was born in Poland and spent her formative years in Afghanistan and India. She became fascinated by age-old architecture created by artisan builders. After studying architecture in Great Britain, she traveled to the United States and Mexico to study natural, alternative and indigenous building methods. She apprenticed with Nader Khalili at Cal-Earth, as well as with strawbale building pioneers Athena and Bill Steen at the Canelo Project. Out of this experience, she has written 
Kelly Hart is your host here at greenhomebuilding.com, and has been involved with green building concepts for much of his life. Kelly spent many years as a professional remodeler, during which time he became acquainted with many of the pitfalls of conventional construction. He has also worked in various fields of communication media, including still photography, cinematography, animation (he has a patent for a process for making animated films), video production and now website development. One of the more recent video programs that he produced is 
Jim Tolpin is a cabinetmaker-turned-journalist who has written a number of award-winning books on woodworking and home design. His book, 
Paul Shippee is director of Colorado Sunworks and is a solar designer and builder. He was the founding President of the Colorado Solar Energy Association, and a teacher. Paul holds a degree in Civil Engineering, with a major in Structural Engineering from the University of Connecticut. He helped plan housing experiments in energy conservation with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and designed and built the SunEarth House, which was the best-rated energy conservation, earth-sheltered home in a HUD-sponsored study. He holds a U.S. patent on a solar water heating system. Paul is currently living in a rammed-earth/strawbale home that he has designed as a personal residence in Colorado. His book, THE LANGUAGE OF SOLAR ENERGY: Heat Loss & Solar Gain for Buildings, is available from his website: 
Johnny Weiss is Cofounder and Executive Director of 
Graham Bell has lived in Scotland since 1988, having previously spent ten years in London. His work has taken him around Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the USA. He has a Master's Degree in Old English & Linguistics from Oxford University. It took him many years to actually make the connection that most of what he does is dependant on the use of language, and to revalue that educational start point. Graham teaches sustainable design, and has written two books on the subject 
Greg Nolan has been in the forestry business for 25 years. He started his career in Oregon, working for the US Forest Service. For ten years he worked as a fire fighter in the summer and did reforestation contract work in the spring and fall. He was recruited to leadership positions both in the Forest Service and working in the private contracting world. In 1980 he headed east two days before Mt. St. Helens blew her cork (was this a sign?) He settled on the back forty of the family farm in the Mississippi headwaters region of central Minnesota where he started 
Leon A. Frechette has 20 years experience in construction and home remodeling; he has been involved in tool development and product evaluation. He has authored feature articles in numerous trade magazines on a variety of home repair/remodeling topics. He has written several books, including Build Smarter with Alternative Materials (1999) published by Craftsman Book Company, which deals with alternative materials that can be used to build a home from the ground up. Published by McGraw-Hill, Accessible Housing (1996) addresses the barrier-free market, Builder's Guide to Decks (1995) offers straight talk for contractors concentrating on the deck market, and Remodeling A Bathroom (2004) is a no-nonsense, illustrative, how-to book for novice contractors and DIYers. Frechette also authored The Helping Hands™ Guide to Hiring a Remodeling Contractor, the first publication ever to address consumer concerns in hiring and working with remodeling contractors. An ongoing project is his web site, 
Kelly Hart , your host at greenhomebuilding.com, is an avid solar greenhouse gardener and has built many of them in a variety of climates. The most recent one he built can be seen on the 
Kelly Hart is your host at greenhomebuilding.com. He and Rosana created a large pantry (about 150 Sqare feet) in their earthbag house, which can be seen on this page (above). Kelly has produced a video, titled 
Michael Black, who has designed three cohousing communities in CA, now also offers development and development consulting services through Community Life Development LLC. He is currently spearheading two elder cohousing communities, one near Austin and one on the northern CA coast, and is assisting an aging-in-place cohousing community in Austin, TX. Michael Black & Associates has been providing consensus-based community planning and architectural services to a wide variety of clients for over twenty-five years. Michael is now partnering with other architects, while focusing his design and community-building skills on aging-in-place and elder cohousing. He can be reached at 707-579-4181 and his website is 
John Connell founded the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in 1980 and the Yestermorrow Building Group Inc. (later to become 2morrow Studio in 1982.) He taught at Yale's school of architecture for five years after which he authored the book 
Quentin Wilson and Associates, specializes in solar adobe design and construction. He grew up in the South Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico where he watched adobe bricks being made. In the fifth grade, he made miniature adobes on cookie sheets in his mother’s oven in order to construct house models for a class assignment. By age thirteen he made full-sized adobes in the back yard and ruined the grass. Later, he traveled a bit, went through the Army, and graduated eventually from the University of New Mexico with a major in physics, minors in math, chemistry, and education in 1970. After teaching high school two years and community college math for three more, Quentin moved into professional solaradobe construction in 1976 as the Project Manager and Instructor for the Sundwellings Demonstration Project at Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, NM. He became a licensed general contractor in the State of New Mexico in 1982. He has been building homes and teaching seminars and workshops ever since. In the fall of 1995 he established and taught the full-time Adobe Construction Program at Northern New Mexico Community College. His website, 
Michael G. Smith has a background in environmental engineering, ecology, and sustainable resource management. In 1993, along with Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley, he started the Cob Cottage Company, a research and teaching group focused on reviving and improving traditional forms of earthen construction. He is the author of 
Leonard Jones, P.E. is a Colorado Professional Engineer with over 30 years diverse experience in designing, operating, and trouble-shooting energy systems. A graduate of the Colorado School of Mines with a B.S. in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, he also holds a M.B.A. from Nova Southeastern University and a M.S. in Information Science from Regis University. Jones began his career as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where he received an introduction to the use of modified soils as construction materials as well as building with vernacular materials. His subsequent professional assignments have included engineering and cogeneration operation at a large mine and mill complex, managing energy systems engineering for a large midwestern natural gas utility, and facilities management at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. While currently employed in Information Technology for a large telecommunications company, his primary current interests include earth building and evaluating alternative technologies. He maintains a professional engineering practice assisting non-traditional builders with engineering documents and building permit applications. Jones is currently building a low-energy rammed earth house at Crestone, Colorado, and is interested in discussing possible consulting assignments with potential clients. Leonard's website, 
Michael Frerking began 
Dr. Owen Geiger, Ph.D.( in Social and Economic Development,) is the former Director of Builders Without Borders and current member of the BWB Steering Committee. Dr. Geiger is Founder and Director of the Geiger Research Institute of Sustainable Building (
Rob Roy is Director of the Earthwood Building School, which has specialized in cordwood masonry instruction since 1980. Rob and his wife, Jaki, have built four innovative cordwood homes for themselves since 1975, including the Earthwood home where they have lived for over two decades. Earthwood is a 2400 SF two-story round, load-bearing cordwood home, earth-bermed and earth-roofed. Details of construction are in Rob's Complete Book of Cordwood Masonry Housebuilding: The Earthwood Method (Sterling, 1992), one of ten books he is written in the alternative building field. Rob and Jaki have taught cordwood masonry all over North America, as well as in Chile and New Zealand, and have helped dozens of owner-builders with their cordwood projects, including homes, saunas and outbuildings. Earthwood has produced two major videos on cordwood construction, which, with his books, can be accessed through the 
Jo Scheer has been deeply involved in working with bamboo for about two decades, having lived in Rincon, Puerto Rico, where he built a home for his family with mainly bamboo components. He has been designing, building, and marketing a wide range of beautiful bamboo creations that can be seen at his website 
Michael Reynolds, creator of the Earthship concept, is a world leader in environmental building. He is the author of five books and has 30 years experience designing and building fully self-sufficient homes. The innovative Earthship design combines passive solar heating with thermal mass construction to create buildings that heat and cool themselves without consuming fossil fuels. Earthships create all their own electrical power with sun and wind, collect and treat their own water with integrated water systems. The main building block of the Earthship makes use of one of the worlds most plentiful, and most troublesome “natural resources”, scrap automobile tires. Thousands of Earthships have been built all over the world in the US, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Japan, South Africa, Honduras and Belgium. Michael's 
Jose Garcia has been a landscape contractor for 24 years and has gravitated to doing a lot of rock work. He has built innumerable retaining walls of timbers, boulders, drystacked and mortared stone. He has built foundations out of stone and mortar and put rock veneer around the base of a straw bale building to raise the level of waterproofing. He lays about 20 tons of flagstone a year in patios and walkways. Over the last couple of years he has built a half dozen mortared flagstone staircases. In Colorado we are blessed with a wonderful red flagstone with great tensile strength that he uses to make benches. He tries to work with the stone's shape as it comes, and can generally lay out a patio with a minimal amount of cutting or chipping, and the benches are free form and distinctly shaped. Mostly He's out rolling boulders and flipping flagstone on a daily basis. 
Ed Hartz, through his business 
Chuck Henderson is founder of 
Jeff Ruppert is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Colorado. He has over 15 years of experience in the construction trades from laborer to general contractor to engineer, and he prefers to work on projects that will offer some aspect of reduced impact or consumption of our natural resources. From early 1996 to late 1999 Jeff worked as part founder and owner of a straw bale construction company in Boulder, Colorado, called StrawCrafters. During that time he oversaw and participated in the design and construction of 11 custom straw bale homes and provided professional assistance on well over 50 additional straw bale and natural building projects. To date, Jeff has consulted on well over 400 straw bale and natural building projects around the country. He has given many presentations to groups, such as the local AIA chapters and he sat on the Structural Panel at the 1999 International Straw Bale Conference in Marin, California. He is regarded as one of the leading structural engineers in the field of straw bale construction, and continues to participate and expand the breadth of knowledge and understanding at the national level. For more information about Jeff and his engineering company, go to 
Gary Reed
