Building Natural Builders
by Catherine
Wanek – Kingston, New Mexico
Common to all in the diverse group of participants who assembled at
the Black Range Lodge on October 1st for a ten-day Builders Without
Borders “facilitators training,” was a sense of purpose.
Yes, there were a few neophytes, eager to stack their first bales and
get their hands in the mud. But mostly the twenty-six professionals
participating came from a distance – Canada, France, Honduras,
Columbia, Uruguay, Kyrgyzstan – to focus on developing a new kind
of training that would investigate the dynamics of natural building
in cross-cultural contexts.
Architect Kelly Lerner brought her considerable experience from working
with ADRA and the UNDP in Mongolia and China. Joseph Kennedy, Director
of Builders Without Borders, came with experience working and teaching
from Europe to South Africa to South America. As the course trainers,
they led the participants through a series of interpersonal exercises
and role playing to reveal the various ways that cultural differences
manifest in human interactions. One evening was devoted just to people
telling stories about their most interesting and challenging experiences
in other cultures. These probing exercises were sometimes uncomfortable,
but they created a deep bond within the group.
Issues like development, economic globalization, appropriate technology
and sustainability were part of daily discussion, as everyone participating
tried to get a handle on what skills and talents it would really take
to share our natural building skills and values in other cultures. Answers
were sometimes discouraging, sometimes exciting.
The training included a hands-on project. Participants built a load-bearing
straw-bale pump-house on a bare lot where a trailer had burned down.
One intention of the building was to use as many free, recycled, and
locally available materials as possible. On site the concrete pad for
the defunct trailer’s front porch was broken into pieces and stacked
with a mud mortar above a rubble trench to provide a foundation. One
large smooth chunk of concrete was selected for the threshold, and earth
bags were filled to various heights on top of the rough-stacked chunk
foundation to create a level base for the bales.
The straw bales were stacked on edge – just like the pioneers
in the Nebraska sandhills did it. Window and door bucks were built reusing
2X6 and 2X8 lumber from a torn-down garage. (We had to buy new lumber
for the top plate.) But participants built parallel cord trusses using
wood from shipping pallets – a new idea that Santa Fe architect
Alfred von Bachmayr developed, with input from an engineer. At many
lumber yards and home building centers across the U.S., shipping pallets
are available free for the taking. Constructed from tropical hardwood
or oak, slightly damaged pallets are often bound for the landfill.
To build a truss, pallets are first cut apart with a “saws-all.”
The 2x4 sections are connected with short plates of the 1x4 pieces,
glued and nailed to the length desired for the top and bottom cords
of the truss. The other 1x4 members become the triangulation pieces
that connect the two cords. While a bit time-consuming to set up, work
can go very quickly once the truss crew is trained. As expected, 16’-long
pallet trusses turned out to be very strong. Each was blocked up to
create an elegant arched roof shape. Scavenged 2x4s became purlins underneath
new metal roofing. Participants plastered the 12’ x 20’
pump house with local clay mixed with chopped straw.
The training – the first of its kind – was inspirational
to all. The hands-on building project pushed new boundaries in low-tech
natural building, discussions illuminated ecological design and cross-cultural
issues, and the group process helped plan future BWB projects and goals.
Several “trainees” volunteered to stay on to help with the
Builders Without Borders project in Anapra, Mexico later in October.
In this squatter community, most families live in houses made of uninsulated
pallets covered with tar paper, which are freezing in the winter and
sweltering in the summer. There BWB helped build a straw-bale house
for a family who lost their home in a fire. Eager to get involved, these
freshly-trained natural builders faced the challenge of taking what
they learned and putting it into practice.
Catherine Wanek is Editor of The Last Straw, and a founding member
of Builders Without Borders. The BWB Anapra Project and details of pallet-truss
construction will be profiled in an upcoming issue of TLS.
BWB is an international network of ecological builders working together for a sustainable future.