I have found statistics that say for every three new houses built, one
goes in the landfill, labor being more expensive than materials. This
being true, many of us have figured out how to build with the landfill
materials. There is a list dedicated to this topic,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
One man has started a movement to use landfill rescue to build homes for
low income working families using minimum wage help. His crew are
usually young men that were at risk and after a year or two with him,
they get hired by the big contractors. His web site is phoenixcommotion.com
Congratulations on trying to reduce the waste and build sensibly, not an
easy task with building codes, banks and insurance companies involved.
Bright Blessings,
Kim
robert luis rabello wrote:
> Hello Everyone!
>
> It's been five months since I've been able to post here. My wife
> and I have built a new house, and not only have I learned a lot about
> the building process, I've been astonished at how much waste and
> inefficiency goes into putting up a home.
>
> 1. Builders love concrete. We used WAY more concrete than I
> believed we would when we first considered this project. I'm not
> certain we could have done much better than we did because our property
> slopes considerably, but concrete manufacturing is VERY energy intensive
> and next time we'll have to be more careful about property selection.
> Any ideas about alternatives out there?
>
> 2. The amount of waste generated by a building is simply
> astonishing! I own a Ford Ranger with a short wheelbase and a small
> box. I filled the thing 4 times with dimensional lumber cut too short
> for use, and hauled all of it out to my father in law so that he could
> mix it with his firewood this winter. (Generally speaking, dimensional
> lumber is so dry that it burns too quickly for a clean fire and
> therefore produces excessive smoke.) Surely gasification or clean
> pyrolysis would be much better alternatives than the landfill, where all
> of our oriented strand board, drywall, carpet scraps and other waste
> ended up. What's worse, is that our tradesmen kept saying that we
> actually had very little waste. . . Some of the houses going up around
> here have huge dumpsters that get filled more than once during the
> building! (I had asked the architect who drew our plans to minimize
> waste by making room sizes as close to standard dimensions as possible.
> We ended up with a bigger house for less money that way. Strange, isn't
> it?)
>
> 3. There's a certain "momentum" in doing things the "conventional"
> way. The lender at our credit union looked at me as if I was crazy when
> I said I wanted solar hot water. The builders simply didn't understand
> why I was so particular about southern orientation, minimizing north
> facing window sizes (our view is to the north, so I lost on that one. .
> ..), and people scratched their heads when I specified a relatively small
> electrical panel ("just" 100 amps of service!) and high efficiency
> lighting. We argued about extra insulation in the ceiling, heat in the
> floor and the "tiny" size of our natural gas boiler.
>
> There's a lot of ignorance about energy issues out there. I suppose
> people in forums like this one have a LOT of educating to do. . .
>
> robert luis rabello
>
>
>
> Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
> http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
>
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