Working Together
by Duncan Echelson
"Everything said is said by someone." - Humberto Maturana and Francsico Varela
"Everything said is said to someone." -A reworking of the above quote.
The intended audience for this article are those of you who are contemplating building your own straw home now or in the future. Within this group are folks of various skill levels and with varying amounts of capital, time, and energy. (Caution!! If you prefer listening to CDs and never participating in live music, if you prefer watching professional athletes and never playing games, if you are satisfied purchasing all of your food at the local supermarket and don't at least dream of having your own garden, don't bother reading this article; it will be a waste of your time.)
One hundred and fifty years ago, most people, except for the very rich, had to build their own dwellings. Even up to the second world war, a significant portion of the population had the skills to either build their own houses or participate at a meaningful level. Those who did not had immediate family members who were sufficiently skilled. It is only in the last fifty years that housing has become a commodity. Now the vast majority go shopping for an already built house, with a smaller group that contracts a "custom-built" house.
In theory, there are some very attractive advantages to purchasing housing as a commodity. One, it seems easy; you shop with your wish list in hand and purchase the house that satisfies the most categories on your list at a price you can afford. In theory, you can leave all those pesky decisions to the experts.
The main problem with the commodity approach to living is that it is not satisfying. Why is it that canned food seems less nourishing and tasty than food grown in your own garden? Why is it that a house designed by an expert and built by a professional contractor seems less satisfying than one where the owner actively participates in the design and the construction?
Let me assume you have read Thoreau's On Walden Pond and the Nearing's Living the Good Life, and maybe you even have a copy of Mollison's Permaculture lying around the house partially read. Recently, you may have bought copies of the Steen's Straw Bale House and Myhrman and MacDonald's Build It With Bales, and the How to Build your Elegant Home video by Kemble. Maybe you also have some newspaper clippings and a few copies of "The Last Straw." You are raring to get started!
Well, let's take a few minutes to think about this before we start stacking bales.
Even today the majority of homes in the world are owner-built, and that was true even in the US. until after WWII. Although any reasonably healthy and sane person can master the skills and obtain the knowledge necessary to construct their own homes, it cannot be done instantaneously.
If you have a couple of brothers and sisters with building skills and they can work for months at no pay, you can stop reading now. For this select group, I can only recommend attending Straw Bale Association of Texas meetings and maybe obtaining some informal or formal consultation from folks who have built some straw bale buildings. There is nothing intrinsically difficult about building with straw, but like any fairly complicated human endeavor there are a few "tricks of the trade" that people pick up after a number of experiences. However, if you are the type that likes to "re-invent the wheel" then plunge ahead and I wish you well.
For the rest of us, potential builders, I suggest that we ground our dreams with realities. You can do the work but it is hard, complex, and expensive. Think about your own job for a while. I am going to assume that you have been doing it for a few years. You are probably considerably better at your work now. Could you write a manual describing your job, such that a new person could read it and begin working at anywhere near your skill level?
Let's take a roughly analogous situation, repairing your car.
You can buy tools, and get the manual. Okay, so go out and switch out your engine. Can you do it? Is it perhaps a little complicated for you? Probably so, in spite of the fact you have the tools and the manual.
How about farming? Once again, you buy the tools and a manual. What do you think? Are you going to have a flourishing farm the first year if you just rely on yourself? Etc., etc..
You can do it; you can do anything but it takes an investment of skills, time, energy and money. So the first step you need to take is to do an analysis of your situation. Each person's total situation is unique. Most of the early pioneers in the owner built strawbales were folks who had been living very special lifestyles. They tended to have amassed many prior practical skills, established lives with considerable "free time", had many friends, little money and incredible "scrounging" abilities. In addition, they had a lifetime of taking what they had on hand and making something useful.
What are your skill levels? Do you or do you have access to folks who can do carpentry, concrete, stucco, electrical, plumbing, insulation etc.? Are you willing to do some learning to boost your skills? You can get some experience working with Habitat for Humanity. You could take a few construction courses at Austin Community College. You could attend some workshops or even go to one of the Owner-builder schools or locate other straw bale owner-builders and work with them.
Take a look at your available time. After working at your job, and tending to your children and household necessities, how much time do you realistically have during a typical week to devote to building a new home. It is not only a matter of time, but also, how much energy you can realistically expend within a given unit of time? How healthy are you, how energetic are you? Maybe you are already a gardener or a marathon runner, or you can play a fast game of ball or tennis for hours on end. On the other hand, you may spend your free time reading or drawing. Construction is hard work. Dreamers can build themselves up and can learn to do long hard hours of work with a smile , but you cannot get up out of the office chair and immediately go out and pour a concrete foundation.
Finally, you need to do a realistic assessment of your financial situation. Unless you are an advanced "scrounger" and have a strong "make do" mentality, any home you build will cost more than any other activity of your lifetime except for raising children.
The ideal situation for an owner-builder is to finance "out of pocket". That way, you can take as much time as necessary to maximize your own labor, to build up your abilities, and to increase your stamina. Another advantage of self financing is that you can move into a partially finished home. If you obtain bank financing, the home must be completed within the specified time period. The shortest purely owner-builder project that I am aware of took about fourteen months, the longest about four years. How long can you spend on a project?
Many folks need bank financing. In this case, you generally have six months from start to finish. I admit the possibility, but I have never heard of an owner-builder project that finished in six months. If any exist, I am willing to bet that the owner-builder had previously amassed all the skills of a general contractor prior to contemplating building their own home. Either that or they had an incredible roster of skilled and selfless friends and relatives.
Let us add one final area for analysis, how much space do you really need ? Please think about this carefully. One situation that broke my heart was a lovely couple that brought us plans for a 2800 square foot home. We gave them a realistic cost estimate, then they went out and purchased a 1200 square foot manufactured building. The tragedy was that we could have built with them a lovely straw bale 1200 square foot home for about the same cost. Please remember there is no end to want, so in addition to working out your dream house, work out a design that meets your minimum needs.
Okay, so you have done your analyses and have decided that at least you should check out people who have more experience, skill, tools, etc. How do you proceed? Remember the old saws "talk is cheap" and the "proof is in the pudding." You need people that have experience in the specific process and also, you need people you trust and like at least tolerably well. Go to the Straw Bale Association and Sustainable Building Coalition meetings, and contact the Green Builders Program at the City of Austin. If you meet some people through these sources that seem to be competent and seem to be trustworthy, then go visit their projects, present and past, and take the time to contact the owners. It is extremely important that you be able to trust the integrity and competence of anyone you work with because in any complex building project physical and communication problems will arise. For you to have confidence that mutually agreeable solutions can be found to all problems is very important.
Before you take any plans to a consultant, be sure that you and your significant others agree on most of the items and that you have made note of as many specifications as possible (types of doors, windows, floor coverings, etc.). Two references you can work with are the Building Your Own House by Robert Roskind and Your Engineered Home by Charles Wing. It is also useful to pick up the four page residential specifications forms available at most architectural supply companies.
Here are a few points about the relationship between yourself and those you find that can help you accomplish your construction plans. One, the more work you can do, the less it will cost. For example, if you come to us with a floor plan and roughed out elevations, it will take less time to collaborate on a final construc-tion plan. Two, you need to find a contractor that enjoys working directly with clients on projects. Three, please keep in mind that all consultants and contractors need to make a living. Therefore, you will have to pay for time they spend on your job, and time that they have to spend re-organizing if you make significant changes in the plans after the project begins. Four, you and your professional help need to work out a clear, written agreement as to the details of what to expect and how much money and how the money is to be paid. Do not depend on verbal agreements. The construction phase is a very busy, tiring, and emotional process: do not depend on your memory alone.
Build your dream with a keen awareness of all that building involves. Building takes much thought, energy and money; however, the investment is worthwhile. A well constructed straw bale home should serve many people for at least several generations; and to actively participate in building helps to strengthen self-confidence as well as deepen relationships and community. A very important feature of straw bale construction is that it offers opportunities to a significantly wider proportion of the citizenry. A population dependent on experts for basic necessities is a fearful population unsuited to reasonably deal with the political, social and practical challenges of the day.
Buildings constructed only by professionals are only commodities. Buildings constructed only by well-intentioned but unskilled owners tend to be shoddy. This is a time for a collaboration between professionals and owners to construct well built buildings that can truly be called homes.
In hell, there is plenty of food; however the forks are so long that people cannot feed themselves, so they are constantly hungry. In heaven, the situation is exactly the same. However, instead of trying to feed themselves, people feed each other - A Vietnamese folk tale.
Duncan Echelson is a strawbale contractor who has been involved in seventeen strawbale projects in the Central Texas area in which the owners have participated at various levels of time and skill. In addition, he has heard of many other projects, successful and not so successful, that were owner built and contractor built.