A Guide to States with No Building Codes

No Building Codes: A Guide to States with No Building Codes is an e-book by Terry Herb, 2010. Owner-builders across the United States are frustrated with the vast array of building codes adopted by so many states. Thankfully, there are still states left where you can build the kind of home you want without dealing with inspections and fees. You just have to do it in the right location--where building codes don't exist. Why pay thousands of dollars to architects for engineered plans because the building code officials tell you they need them; but you don't need them? There is a simple solution for the pioneers and out-of-the-box thinkers of today who want to swing a hammer without the hot breath of a code inspector on their necks. This downloadable e-book contains: An outline map of each of the 50 states with counties outlined as well; current code information for every state; for states with no building code, insightful commentary and information is provided to steer you in the right direction to determine if a state is right for you; researched and validated information; web links to help you learn more about the states that may interest you.

A Green Infrastructure Unlocks Several Successful Environmental Initiatives

Guest blogger, Dan Grifen, has written the following:

The world is in a constant state of flux and the environment is no different. Lately, it seems as though flash flooding, earthquakes, and hurricanes are occurring all too often. The severity of them is seemingly unprecedented. Additionally, cities like Washington, D.C. - normally accustomed to mild winters - are experiencing record snow fall while those that expect heavy precipitation, like Syracuse, NY, are setting records for not having any of it. While this may or may not have anything to do with global warming, it certainly is a reminder that the environment is capable of a lot of unexpected changes and we should be doing what we can to balance our use of natural resources and minimize our carbon footprint. Otherwise, the odd, eyebrow-raising nature of weather patterns we’re currently experiencing may end up being catastrophic events down the road.

Yet, what can be done that isn’t currently being done? Cutting down on carbon emissions and recycling have been at the forefronts of the go green movement. However, some initiatives that target a completely new, green infrastructure have gone unnoticed but are essential to competitiveness, long term sustainability, job growth, energy independence and national security.

According to the Department of Energy, heating and cooling account for 50 to 70% of the energy used in the average American home. A large proportion of energy is lost through cracks in walls and ceilings. In terms of energy conservation, individuals can make immediate improvements to their energy profile simply by adding insulation to their home. Arguably, the best insulation for any green home is Cellulose which, according to the U.S. Green Building Council, requires less energy to make and is made of 75% recycled material. This is great for air quality in the home and also for the environment. There’s also renewable Cotton, abundant Fiberglass, and even Soy based foam insulation, which has the highest percentage of renewable resource ingredients in the industry with 60%. By doing this, any homeowner can add value to their home while conserving energy and reducing their utility bill. Long term savings outweigh upfront costs. The implementation of Smart Meters can help them find other areas of their home where energy can be used more efficiently. In some locations, local governments are providing residents with them for free. This seems to be the best strategy for getting residents the tools necessary to cut energy costs. The theory suggests that consumers will make necessary changes to their energy consumption if they can actually see exactly where it is being used inefficiently.

Aside from individual efforts, there are a lot of groups and organizations that people can get involved with that tackle larger projects. The University-National Park Energy Partnership Program (UNPEPP) is a great example. UNPEPP is a public private partnership (PPP) that puts federal grant money in the hands of young, impressionable university students eager to change the United States landscape one national park at a time. Universities all across America use the federal grant money to create internship opportunities for students to travel to a national park in their area and work with energy and environmental professors, experts and park personnel to perform energy audits, recommend energy conservation measures and implement renewable energy technology (RET) that ultimately save the parks thousands in energy costs and significantly reduce their carbon footprint. The UNPEPP 10 year Report is posted on the website. This type of partnership is a rewarding experience for everyone involved and similar PPPs should be on the forefront of the green energy movement.

A third component of building the green energy infrastructure involves business owners. While individual efforts generally result in relatively smaller improvements and PPPs sometimes get delayed by energy policies hung up by the legislative process, private businesses march to the beat of their own drum. They are in a position to tackle large scale projects that can create a large impact without delay. A lot of businesses see the potential for going green. Many of them have come on board. There is actually a scoring system that was devised in 1998, called LEED Certification to help gauge just how far a company has gone to incorporate green initiatives into their designs. Specifically, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System provides a benchmark for the environmentally sustainable creation and use of buildings and neighborhoods. According to USGBC, 72% of electricity consumption and 39% of energy use come from buildings in the United States alone. LEED certified buildings use efficient resources to improve performance with energy conservation, CO2 emissions reduction, and water efficiency all while enhancing the ecosystems they are a part of - rather than diminishing them.

One major company, Globetrotters Engineering Corporation (GEC), an architectural company founded by engineer and CEO, Niranjan Shah, is an example of a company that adheres to LEED certification. GEC is responsible for the management of many facets of modernization and expansion of O’Hare International Airport in Chicago (the first privately managed terminal in the United States). Niranjan Shah proved that implementation of green design can be successful, helpful to society and profitable all at the same time. An example of another company that earned LEED Certification is the Washington D.C. based mortgage company, Fannie Mae, which was responsible for the first-ever LEED data center. There are countless other companies that are earning LEED certification. Government incentives given to companies that earn LEED certification is a way to boost the number of participants and achieve the environmental sustainability results that environmentally friendly federal energy policies target but can’t necessarily get passed through legislation.

On a much larger scale, organizations like the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), founded by Bill Clinton and counselor Doug Band, are doing their part to bring the strongest political leaders together to tackle world problems. However, small projects at home, public private partnerships and LEED certification are methods that combine to allow everyone a chance to get involved to curtail inefficient energy use. The necessity to highlight them cannot be understated. The planet is home to all of us and the best way to ensure sustainability is to live and work as environmentally friendly as possible.

Magnesium Based Cement

There is a whole class of cement that was very popular in the days before the invention and manufacture of Portland cement quickly replaced its use. Generally classified as magnesium-based cement, this material was used in historic times in Europe, India, and China, among other countries. The Great Wall of China and many of the stupas in India, still standing today, were all made with magnesium-based cements. It is unfortunate that Portland cement has replaced the use of these magnesium products because there are many ways in which they are superior.

Primary among these is the fact that they require much less energy to produce and do not off-gas as much CO2 as Portland cement in their manufacture. The phosphates typically used to combine with the magnesium can even be sourced from animal wastes or fermented plants. Add to this fact that these cements develop considerably greater compressive and tension strengths compared to Portland cement, and you wonder why they are not more commonly used these days. The promotion and proliferation of Portland cement occurred when energy was cheap and health concerns of the public were simply not an issue.

Another advantage of Magnesium-based cements are that they have a natural affinity for cellulose materials, such as plant fibers or wood chips; Portland cement repels cellulose. So you can actually use wood chips as an aggregate to achieve lighter weight and more insulative products. Magnesium oxide when combined with clay and cellulose creates cements that breathe water vapor; they never rot because they always expel moisture. MgO cements do not conduct electricity, nor heat and cold, and have been used for flooring for radar stations and hospital operating rooms.

While a bag of Magnesium cement might cost 2 to 3 times the same weight of Portland cement, that doesn't mean that it is more costly to use. This is because with the attributes of the MgO cement, you can create very strong thin-shelled structures using a variety of lightweight and inexpensive fibers; something that ordinary Portland could never do.

An example of this is what Michael Collins, an artist/visionary/eco-builder, has been creating with magnesium cements. Since these cements completely cure within hours of application, amazing sculptural forms can be created almost spontaneously and become usable within a day. Michael points out that a team of workers could build a small house in one day, and people could be living in it the next. This opens up a huge opportunity for emergency shelters around the world to be constructed almost immediately. There is no off-gassing nor toxic residue to deal with; in fact the material seems to have health-giving benefits for the human body because of its electrical properties.

I asked Michael how much dry MgO/Phosphate cement would be needed to make a small two-room house, and he thought that it could be done with three 50 lb. bags, totaling perhaps $150 in materials. He has described one simple method of building this way which is posted on his questions and answers column. If you have any questions about the possibilities of building with this amazing material, Michael is happy to answer them for you. Just go to the Ask the Experts page. And I have posted a longer article about Magnesium based cements at www.greenhomebuilding.com, that links to several companies that manufacture products based on it.

An interesting example of how this technology is being used can be seen at www.arzbuilders.com where they sell what they call "Concrete Canvas," consisting of "a 3-dimensional fibre matrix containing a specially formulated dry concrete mix. A PVC backing on one surface of the cloth ensures the material is completely waterproof; while hydrophilic fibres on the opposite surface aid hydration by drawing the water into the cement. After hydration, Concrete Canvas hardens to a strong, durable, water proof and fire proof concrete surface."

This same company also sells an inflatable shelter, made with similar materials, that is large enough to serve as a hospital room in emergency situations. "The 25sqm variant can be deployed by 2 people without any training in under an hour and is ready to use in only 24 hours. The key to this Concrete Canvas Shelter is the use of inflation to create a surface that is optimized for compressive loading. This allows thin walled concrete structures to be formed which are both robust and lightweight." I understand that these inflatable kits cost around $25,000 each, making what Michael Collins suggest extremely affordable in comparison.

Green Electrical Contracting

According to a 2009 Booz Allen Hamilton study, green construction will skyrocket over the next five years. The report projects green construction to generate $554 billion dollars in GDP, provide $396 billion in labor earnings and support or create over 7.9 million jobs from 2009 to 2013. These figures are way up from the previous 8-year period. From 2000-2008, GDP from green construction was just $173 billion, labor earnings was $123 billion and number of jobs created was 2.4 million.

Much of this activity will be related to electrical work. In the next ten to twenty years, “electrical contractor” will no longer be a suitable job title for electricians. They will transition into “energy contractors” to support the fast-growing green construction market as home owners and corporations adopt alternative methods (e.g. solar, wind, etc) to power buildings. What’s driving this? Federal incentives, lower material costs and savings from reduced energy spending, as well as desire to adopt more sustainable levels of energy use.

To read more about this new wave of electrical contracting, see Houston Neal's article about it.

Responding to Catastrophe

The internet has been reverberating along with Haiti since their big earthquake with lots of discussion about how the rest of the world might respond. I have gotten a number of emails related to this, and here is one that I thought was particularly thoughtful:

“I would like for you and your colleagues together to present our president (probably through USAID) with a proposal for rebuilding Haiti with earthbag and other environmentally sustainable technologies. Such a project would serve the dual purpose of providing affordable, earthquake/hurricane resistant housing for Haitians as well as to advance the global shift toward a more sustainable green paradigm by example. Due to this humanitarian catastrophe, both the monies and the political will for such a project are at their peak. No better opportunity exists for the Haitian people to receive durable, affordable housing in the wake of this disaster and no better opportunity may be seen in our life times to demonstrate the utility and affordability of earthbag construction to the world and our posterity.”

In response I wrote:

The plight of Haitians in the wake of the earthquake is heart-wrenching in the extreme. These long-suffering people must now endure even greater hardship. It doesn’t seem fair, but life rarely does. How can those of us who are more fortunate in other parts of the world assist them?

I have been following the blog of Father Marc Boisvert (pwojeespwa.blogspot.com) who runs an orphanage outside of Port-au-Prince, where their facility was undamaged, but they must deal with lack of fuel, electricity, adequate food, and the suffering of friends and family members. They are expecting over a hundred new orphans to arrive from the city. Of course they can use all the money that might be sent to them (and I encourage you to visit their website www.freethekids.org and make a donation). Marc often ends his blog posts with “Keep us in your prayers.”

I first found out about this orphanage because they had built an earthbag house and were promoting this ecological way of building. You can see a description of this at earthbagbuilding.com. There are many reasons to recommend earthbag building in this impoverished country, and resistance to seismic events is among them. Just how resistant earthbag housing might be to earthquakes is not known for sure. Very little testing has been done to prove this one way or another. This initial seismic tests done at CalEarth and other places are encouraging, but not conclusive (see earthbagbuilding.com/testing). Some members of Engineers Without Borders are currently gearing up to do some more testing, so we will hopefully know more in awhile. This technology is still in its infancy, so there is much more to learn about its potential.

Earthbag housing can be used for emergency shelter, and we have posted a number of possible options at earthbagbuilding.com/emergency, including one proposal that Dr. Owen Geiger and Patti Stouter assembled to present to the UN. This sort of emergency housing has the advantage over tents and other immediate structures that it can often be used and improved over time to become more permanent.

Another kind of housing that can withstand practically any sort of catastrophe are shipping containers that are converted to dwelling places. These steel shells have become surplus items at many ports around the world because of trade imbalances. There have been some very innovative designs for incorporating these modular units into quite livable spaces (see an article I wrote at www.greenhomebuilding.com). I participated in assembling a proposal to the UN for arranging this concept to be employed in Haiti. Here is another proposal in the same direction: www.clemson.edu . Such structures do need to be insulated to make them livable in most climates, but this is possible and can be done with earthbags filled with a variety of materials.

I agree with you that in some ways the devastation in Haiti does present an opportunity to rebuild with green sustainable principles, and I hope that this can be manifested. We each can do our part.

Global Warming Denial is Alive and Kicking

Every year I look for new books that have been recently published in order to keep www.greenhomebuilding.com as up-to-date as possible. I had been under the impression that the controversy over whether global warming is really happening as a result of human activity was finally dying down, and that even the nay-sayers were beginning to accept the overwhelming science that proves this is the case. I was shocked to see how prevalent and vociferous the global warming deniers still are.

Out of 24 books I reviewed that were published in 2009 and relate to climate change and global warming, 9 of them (more than one third) were clearly denying the consensus of scientific opinion. With titles like "Global Warming False Alarm," "Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know," "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed," "Global Warming: Manmade or Man Made-Up?" it is clear that there is a significant emotional charge behind this writing.

So who is publishing this denial literature? Two of the publishers appear to general trade publishers, two are highly conservative publishers, two are religiously oriented, two were self-published, and one was came out of the Cato Institute, self-proclaimed as "libertarian."

Fortunately, there are also many well-researched and thoughtful books that are intended to be more constructive, evaluating the options available for mitigating global warming. I counted 7 in this category, along with 3 more that delve deeply into the science confirming global warming as human-caused. One book, "When the Planet Rages: Natural Disasters, Global Warming and the Future of the Earth," takes a long-range historical perspective.

Another hot topic seems to be the controversy itself, with books like "Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming" and "Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort through the Noise around Global Warming..."

And then there are some books that point out how businesses are taking advantage of the frenzy over global warming for economic gain. These include "Global Warming Is Good for Business: How Savvy Entrepreneurs, Large Corporations, and Others are Making Money While Saving the Planet" and "The Plot to Save the Planet: How Visionary Entrepreneurs and Corporate Titans Are Creating Real Solutions to Global Warming."

Climate change and how we should, or should not, deal with it is clearly one of the major issues of the day, and probably of this century. I encourage everyone to become fully informed and make choices from a position of sober analysis rather than from emotional reaction.

Small Cob Buildings without Permits!

I would like to introduce you to a new member of the team of architects and designers at www.DreamGreenHomes.com: John Fordice. He is presenting a series of small (under 120 sq. ft.) cob homes or studios that can be built in most localities without the need for a building permit, because they fall below the minimum square footage that is set by the standard International Residential Code.

I met John at the 2008 Natural Building Colloquium in Santa Barbara, California, and instantly recognized his gentle soul and passion for designing and building small cob structures. I invited him right away to join the DreamGreenHomes team, and am very pleased that he has climbed on board. John combines his architectural expertise with his sculptural experience in presenting unique plans that will satisfy on many levels.

John says, "Ever since I can remember, I've always loved making things. I've been around building in one form or another for most of my life. I first studied building technology, followed by architecture, then finally fine arts and sculpture. My working life has been in construction, architectural drafting, hand crafts design and production, and for the past almost 30 years professional architecture. About 10 years ago I discovered cob and absolutely fell in love with the mud. Cob is an amazing material which allows an unparalleled simplicity and freedom of design. So here I am offering cob building designs to you. Cob has so much to offer."

The first plan in this small cob series is his Solar Oval One. This plan is a compact passive solar design with a loft. It has many valuable and green/sustainable features:

• A South facing wall of windows and french door for passive solar heating
• An earthen floor for solar mass and economy of construction
• An interior cob bench for built-in seating and rocket mass heater
• A built-in desk or kitchenette area with side storage niches
• A north wall closet for storage space and insulation
• Small East and West end side windows for views & area lighting
• A sleeping loft accessible by a built-in ladder
• Roof framing which needs only minimal small dimension lumber
• A corrugated sheet metal roof
• The structure is designed to include seismic stability components
• A pleasing curved design
• Low cost if you build it yourself

Building with cob allows the use of local sustainable materials. In many areas the earth at your site can be used and only water, sand and straw will need to be brought to your site to make your cob. The cob is mixed right where you are building and stacked up on an impervious foundation. There are no forms needed to make a cob building. Curving sculptural walls are easily created. Your imagination is set free when you build with cob.

The cost of creating a small cob building can vary greatly. If you have an experienced cob builder provide both the labor and materials to construct it for you, the cost should be about the same as a simple stick framed building of similar size. Another possibility is to have a builder do the foundation and roof construction, while you build the cob walls. Cob is easy to build, but foundations and roof framing are more technical work which will benefit from expertise. Building your cob structure yourself is by far the most economical. If you can provide the labor to build, and are resourceful in your acquisition of materials, it may be possible to create your cob building for one tenth of what it would cost to have a builder do the construction. It's a big project, but cob is forgiving, and can be done slowly.

You can find out more about this specific plan and the advantages of small cob buildings at www.dreamgreenhomes.com.