Housing Construction
Sustainable housing can include everything from tepees and tents, stone and mud bricks, wood and thatch, sandbags and even recycled garbage. As one of three essentials to human life (food, clothing and shelter), the choice of sustainable housing construction is important. Considerations for construction method include: lifestyle (nomad or dweller), access to raw building materials, regional weather patterns and even geographic topography.
When speaking about any form of housing, the one thing that remains of primary importance, especially for sustainability, is location, location, location. Why? Because housing is something that generally has a permanence making it less mobile or easily reconstructed if conditions change rapidly. In order to ensure viable long-term sustainability, the geographic location must have access to essential natural resources with low risks from environmental impacts.
Depending on the materials used in homes and other building structures, they can last for decades and even much longer. This makes the necessity and opportunity to modify or retrofit existing structures so important in meeting sustainable housing objectives. There are even more options for sustainable retrofitting than for construction. These can include the use of natural lighting, heating, cooling, water and space utilization to convert a resource or energy inefficient design into something that provides a more practical and sustainable solution.
Sustainable Housing Description
Our Sustainable Training Center provides a combination of resources, education and guidance to support those who seek to become more knowledgeable and proactive in their sustainable housing objectives. The curriculum includes the knowledge to help people gain access to safe and comfortable shelter while conserving money and other valuable resources by utilizing more sustainable techniques in natural home construction. Besides addressing all forms of natural, green and eco-friendly constructions, our classes include retrofitting existing energy inefficient and wasteful structures into facilities that are more sustainable, green and have a smaller ecological footprint using such techniques as natural lighting, passive solar, natural ventilation, solar shading, water catching and conservation, and consumable waste reduction. Our housing construction classes include the following topics and many more.
Straw Bale
Cob
Log Cabin
Adobe
Passive Solar/p>
Natural Lighting
Solar Shading
Natural Ventilation
Water Catching