[GSBN] Barbara Jones video from EcoBuild Conference in Europe

[Mark Piepkorn]

Hi Jakub, good to hear from you.

Mostly I meant climates and conditions taken together. She spells out 
exactly the kind of soil conditions they'll build on, a choice people 
often don't have, especially in urban infill situations (the next 
frontier for natural building).

When you couple a high-moisture environment with poorly draining soils 
in a climate with prolonged winter freezing, frost heave can move a 
building more than just a little. However, the difficulty isn't so much 
in the building moving, but rather in just part of the building moving. 
One heaved corner can result in cracked and delaminating plasters and 
potential structural damage. That won't win fans over to our side.

We definitely should learn from what's worked in the past. The tricky 
part sometimes is remembering that what hasn't worked in the past is 
generally no longer around to learn from. For instance, the number of 
original SB buildings in the Nebraska sandhills that quietly failed and 
disappeared from memory before Judy and Matts first started researching 
them isn't known.

I'd like to make it very specifically clear that I'm a huge fan of 
Barbara's.


Mark


On 3/5/2011 2:08 PM, Jakub Wihan wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> thank you for the post!
>
> It is so good to see and hear Barbara. I think the methods she is 
> mentioning are well suitable for other climates. What do you mean 
> exactly? Shallow foundations without cement? Maren and Rikky are 
> building this way in Spain, I believe. I'm helping to build the 
> buildings the way I learned at amazonails in the Czech Republic, 
> Austria, Siberia. Do you think that Siberian traditional log houses 
> had deep foundations? They didn't. Building moved a little time to 
> time that is true, but much less than Darcy Donovan's strawbale 
> shelter on a shake table.
>
> Building professionals are usually too scared to do things some other 
> way they are used to. That is why Barbara is so unique in her approach 
> that comes from thorough understanding of her trade which is stripped 
> from everything unnecessary and also in bringing her common sense to 
> arguing that makes some people rethink the basics, some people humble 
> and some people angry.
>
> Kuba
>
>
> On 5 Mar 2011, at 18:31, Mark Piepkorn wrote:
>
>> (There are methods discussed that are inappropriate in other climates 
>> and under other conditions, which would need to be pointed out. But 
>> on the whole, this is great.)
>>
>> On 3/5/2011 12:27 PM, Mark Piepkorn wrote:
>>> http://vimeo.com/20618415
>>>
>>> It's an excellent intro to SB for building industry peers in Europe, 
>>> but this would be a terrific thing to show clients and the general 
>>> public anywhere in the world. She covers important territory that 
>>> generally gets too little coverage.
>>>
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>
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