Alternative Building: April 2008 Archives

 

House 97: The Buck House, original home of the Center.

Campus Center for Appropriate Technology in California is a live-in demonstration home and educational center for appropriate technology and resource conservation.

This home based center is located on the Humboldt State University Campus in Arcata, California. Motivated by an approach of "education by example," CCAT offers tours, workshops, and opportunities for hands-on involvement to university students and the general public.

CCAT began in 1978 when a group of students, with the support of faculty and community members, renovated a dilapidated house on the university campus and initiated an experiment that continues today. CCAT works with fifteen HSU classes a year to incorporate new appropriate technologies into this living laboratory in sustainability.

The Campus Center for Appropriate Technology uses less than five percent of the energy consumed by the average U.S. house, produces almost no waste, and serves as a national model for appropriate technology.

Just as important as what the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology does, is how it is done. Three students live in the house and direct the program for one-year periods. Eighteen student employees keep operations going. Being directed, staffed, and funded by students makes CCAT a place where young adults become leaders; it nurtures creativity and hones professional and technical skills. CCAT helps to infuse their local university community with a practical idealism and a desire to serve the global community.

In 2007, the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology began rebuilding in a new location, offering another generation of students the opportunity to develop skills that lead to a greener future at the hands-on environmental learning center and demonstration home for sustainability projects.

A variety of university course students spend classroom time at CCAT, where students learn about everything from renewable energy to organic agriculture to green construction and design. Little by little, workers are reshaping the yard into a miniature eco-topia. “We joke that this is our little patch of South America or Southeast Asia,” Hart says, standing in the terraced gardens behind the home. The area used to be a bramble patch of invasive plants and weeds. As well as common fruits and vegetables, the garden includes edible native plants, herbs and wildflowers.

The recently installed solar panels should provide all of the home’s electricity, and a solar hot water heating system will not only provide hot tap water but also warm the house in winter by circulating the sun-warmed H2O through radiant concrete floors on the ground level. The concrete floors themselves are a thing of beauty, covered in a swirl of natural pigments made from iron sulfate and coffee topped with a soy-based sealant. The energy efficient home’s walls are filled with blown-in cellulose—made from shredded recycled newspaper—rather than industrial fiberglass.

Future projects include the installation of a rainwater collector to gather and store runoff from the roof, which will be used to quench the gardens.

For more information about the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. Or stop by any Friday, volunteer day, to participate in the ongoing reconstruction effort.

The Campus Center for Appropriate Technology at Humboldt State University (CAL) has worked on sustainable strategies since 1978.  One "alternative technology" is alternative building techniques, which actually is a wide variety of technologies and materials that help people create buildings with less impact on the environment than traditional wood, concrete and brick.

Many regions of the world (including many parts of the U.S.) do not have enough wood to build wood-frame houses, so forest resources in other regions are depleted in order to import these scarce materials.

While wood-frame houses predominate in the U.S., many other building materials are in use around the world. Houses can be made out of locally available building materials such as cob, adobe, bamboo, straw bales, rammed earth, formed cement, and mixtures of these materials with waste debris (i.e. tires, cans, or bottles).

Inexpensive shelters can be made with poles and canvas, hides, or wool (i.e. Yurt or Teepee). In many places where wood is available, there is an under-utilized supply of "waste" -- small diameter timber (harvested in forest thinning operations). This timber can be used to make pole or log cabin style houses. Thatch, bamboo, tin roofing, sprayed cement, and living roofs can be used as alternatives to plywood/asphalt roofing.

Here are links to the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology's many resources for alternative building options:

• Alternative Building
  • Adobe
  • Bamboo
    • Bamboo Construction at CCAT By John Halley 
      
    • www.DeBoerArchitects.com
  • Cob
    • How to Build With Cob 
      
    • Cob: Technology of the Past, NOW By Patrick McAuley 
      
    • History of Cob By Jeffrey Steuben (Spring 2005)
  • Strawbale
    • CCAT's Strawbale Shed By Lisa Murgatroyd 
      
    • HSU Student Website Strawbale Shed By Tony Frink
      
    • How to Build Straw Bale Buildings [PDF 56.2KB] 
      
  • Rammed Earth
  • Sprayed Concrete and Papercrete
  • Earthships
    • Recycling Tires...More than Just Swings By Desideria Ramirez 
      
  • Yurts
    • Yurt: A Traditional Dwelling as an Alternative Building Design