Natural Building

Natural building is based on a philosophy that places the highest value on social and environmental sustainability. Natural building is about integrating our built environments into their local ecologies and communities with a minimal amount of adverse effects on local and distant environments. It is believed that natural building improves lives in many ways. It allows us to show deep respect for our immediate environment and gives us the chance to make responsible decisions regarding distant environments. Our goal is to use minimally refined and manufactured, non-toxic, natural materials.Natural building is not new, but it is revolutionary. Most of our grandparents, including those of us from the industrialized North, practiced natural building. Before the advent of standardization, mass production, and long-distance transport, people relied on locally available materials to house their family. During the last century there has been a shift towards the import of building materials, causing disastrous effects on ecosystems, cultures, and communities. But we have a choice. By exchanging earth and straw bale for concrete and cement, by choosing locally milled lumber and roundwood over lumber that has been unsustainably harvested, and opting for natural clay plasters, washes, and paints instead of dangerous chemical varnishes, stuccoes and paints, we can exert a force to affect change in our economies and in our lifestyles.

Cob
Cob is the Old English word for an earth building technique that combines clay sediment, sand, fiber, and water, which is hand sculpted to form walls, benches, ovens, and fireplaces. Variations of this technique are found around the globe and through the millennia. Cob building makes use of readily available, affordable, non-toxic materials to build beautiful, organic structures. Historical and anecdotal evidence has proven cob buildings to be long-lived, weather-resistant, earthquake-resistant, and comfortable. As pressure to continue manufacturing toxic building components while degrading our environments for building materials increases, cob provides an excellent, affordable alternative.

Straw Bale
Straw bale building was common in Nebraska during the early twentieth century. The renaissance of this building material began in the late 1970s and early 1980s and is even stronger today. Straw bale building makes use of an underutilized waste product of agriculture. Straw bales are stacked like giant masonry blocks, usually pinned together with rebar, wooden or bamboo stakes. The massive straw bale walls provide a high insulation value. Building with straw bales can decrease the amount of lumber needed for a building, lower its energy costs, and can be more affordable than conventional stick frame buildings. Marrying the insulating properties and speed of straw bale construction with the thermal mass and compressive strength of cob is a concept currently under research.

Slipstraw
This is also known as light-straw or straw-clay. Slipstraw is a building material made by coating straw with clay slip. Slipstraw combines a readily available, affordable material that has good thermal retention, namely earth, with the excellent insulating abilities of fiber. This creates a lightweight, insulative building material that is resistant to fire, insects and rot. It can be packed between forms to build freestanding walls. It can also be used to insulate walls and roof spaces. Recently, people have been experimenting with wood-chips and clay slip to create a similar material to slipstraw.

Roundwood Carpentry
A timeless, natural approach to the use of wood, timber is used without being squared by sawing or hewing. The integrity and strength of the wood are maintained by retaining its natural shape. The forest is a supermarket of sizes and geometries for posts, beams, and rafters.

Finding and Using Recycled Materials
The use of recycled and refurbished materials is in harmony with the philosophy of natural building. Windows, glass, doors, fixtures, lumber, bricks, and more are being brought to landfills every day. Thankfully, many places have set up collection and distribution sites where the thrifty and aware can pick up these types of materials either for free or for a minimal fee. Hunting for, repairing and refurbishing, and finally using recycled materials helps us to break out from our society's 'throw-away'