Grand Mis-Design

Weekly readers of this blog post will relate a portion of this title to last weeks blog post and one of the television shows I have watched while icing my sore feet.  The British show, "Grand Designs" follows different housing construction projects, over the course of time, which can be years.  One thing struck me on a recent episode.  That episode was the construction of what in Britain is called a cob house. The person building the cob house desired to make it energy efficient, and he claims to have done so. It is all well and nice to be energy efficient, but one should couple that with an ecological mindset in other areas as well. In that sense, it is a Grand Mis-design.

World's Largest Cob House Under Construction

A cob house is thought to be a very land and energy favored type of construction when built in the area with the proper soil.  A cob house is built of clay, mixed with water and straw. Its construction needs to relate to the suitability of clay deposits in the area, or on-site. Most readers have probably seen the movie the "Ten Commandments" when slaves were in the mud pits stomping straw into the clay, the clay was put into wood forms to make bricks.  The strong sun on Egypt would dry the bricks to be used use in the majestic buildings of ancient Egypt. Well, a cob house is also an old form of building technique going back to the iron age in parts of Britain.  The house has a concrete footing, and cement block foundation to get it out of the ground.  They then dump a load of the clay-straw-water mix  on top of the concrete blocks and someone stamps it down, and scrapes off the excess material that drips to the side. They repeat the process.  And repeat the process.  The walls are probably about three feet thick. The thing is, given their climate, the cob construction can only occur generally from May to September, in order to have sufficient time to dry.

Idea of Scale of the Cob House, builder is to right

My  beef is not with the use of material.  Rather the mis-design comes in the fact that the house is 10,000 sq ft.  The owner-builder, who is a contractor who builds cob houses, and decided he wanted to make the largest cob house in the world. Maybe he wants to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. He was already in a 5,000 sq ft cob house, but that was not big enough for his ego. He met his goal at a financial and personal cost (his marriage).  But, the site disruption, and extra materials used to build to 10,000 sq ft, when you really do not require a building that size are not ecological.  A 10,000 sq ft home seems rather excessive for a man, his new wife, and a few children.  I doubt they really needed a house that size, but his ego drove him to doing the large house. It took him a few years, due to the limited construction season for cob and also having run out of funds. He quite work to do his house full time and when they ran out of the over one million pounds set aside, he had to go back to work and work on his baby only part time.

Water view of Gates' House

His baby is very nice looking, and the massive laminated timbers going to a center point of the circular shaped house is quite a marvel.  He would wrap the exterior in 3 or more inches of rigid foam bent to the arc of the house to meet the energy codes of England. Yet, would an ecologically conscious person over build?  Apparently so. It makes me think of Bill Gates, who preaches climate change from a house over 66,000 sq ft.  Yes, his house is larger than Fitchburg City Hall, which is 57,000 sq ft.  Now, do Bill and Melinda, being so ecologically conscious really need a house that has square footage of near an acre and a half?  Does he really require that many flat screen televisions, over $80,000 worth to portray changing art work?  The Gates mansion has 7 bedrooms, but 24 bathrooms, and of those 24, ten have tubs. More bathtubs than bedrooms. Even if he has solar panels to offset the electrical use, the solar panels and the house still used raw materials processed to form a product.  Just like the cob house needed raw materials. Could Bill have gotten by with a house half that size? 

Cob House Completed

Thinking ecologically requires more than energy efficiency.  One should think holistically about size, and use of resources.  Another episode on Grand Designs had an ecologist who built his house on a slope of 35%.  Again, a very nice house, and built into the grade so that it is more energy efficient, but all the soil that was disturbed.  The problem was it remained disturbed for quite some time as the house construction took longer than expected.  I am sure some washed into the stream at the base of the ridge on which he built.  

Jevons Paradox

The recycle triangle uses the words, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Energy efficiency only will go so far.  most everything we build requires energy to make.  Concrete, milling timber, glass, roofing materials, and even making the cob, which was done with a large backhoe, demands energy.  The cob builder was not using his feet like they used in the "Ten Commandments" to make bricks. It is not unlike the Jevons Paradox with one example being where people who own hybrid cars drive them more than they other wise would a car with an internal combustion engine. The gains in energy efficiency are lost by an increase in consumption. Size is not always better. To think ecologically we need to think broad scale and the overall impact. To be conservation minded does not mean to not use energy or resources, rather it means to use them in a wise and reasonable manner.  Building a highly energy efficient building is not as conservation minded if the building is much larger than needed for comfortable living. That is why it is a mis-design.

Images from Google Images