Building Codes & Natural Building

• Building shelter is a human right! Birds build nests, beavers build dams, bears find caves and humans build homes.

• Building a home comes with responsibilities. It should be built without endangering the health of the inhabitants, the local ecology, the neighborhood, or the planet, both during construction and its useful life.
• Building a home is a joy. The act of creating beauty in a home can uplift us with pride and self-worth. It's a great learning experience and can bond families and communities closer together.

Building codes dictate how we should build houses. Their original intent was to set some safety and environmental standards for buildings. Over the years this has evolved into a focus on how industrially produced components should be put together. In the way they function now, building codes support the building of toxic homes, devoid of natural materials (except milled wood). By prescribing minimum sizes of rooms, number of outlets per walls, over-engineered structural components, irresponsible waste treatment systems (sewage and septic) and cold and hot water at multiple locations, buildings have become outrageously expensive.

We now have this weird thing going, where it is deemed irresponsible and illegal to live in a simple, small cottage by candlelight. Instead we say it is reasonable that people have to work 30 years before they own their home, which by that time is usually in need of a serious remodel. Conventional buildings put a heavy burden on the ecology of the planet and few people seem to enjoy building a house. This process has become so intimidating to potential builders, that most homes are now built by professionals, who have the tools, the skills and the strength to put the industrial components together.

My Own Experience
I recently built my own code-approved straw bale/cob home. Did it work for me to build a natural home through the official route? Yes, but at a cost. It is very hard to build a home under $30,000 (plus land expense) when taking the code route. Most people spend more in the range of $100,000 plus. However, code usually does allow straw bales for insulation, non-load bearing internal cob walls, earthen floors, living roofs and round wood.

For all practical purposes, if you work really hard at it, you can do a lot within the code. You need lots of patience and people skills (to "educate" the county officials) and be willing to waste some money on things that are often undesirable such as septic, an over-rated electricity system and some over-engineered structural components. Curved walls, though naturally stronger than straight walls, will need additional engineering (think $$).

Part of the problem lies in the fact that building codes are part of a building system whose other pillars include contractors, architects and an industrial complex that produces the building components. They all speak the same language and support one another. You're not just battling codes that don't provide much for natural building, you're fighting a whole system.

An alternative, which keeps you more or less within the code, is to buy a junker home and renovate it with the use of natural materials. Stud frame, foundation and roof can stay in place, as well as the electricity and plumbing, the rest can be re-done beautifully and affordably. My next newsletter will have an article on natural renovation, which I believe is going to be a very popular and promising option for people.

The Outlaw Builder
Then there is the "outlaw way". A friend of mine from the natural building community told me recently that he was seriously considering handing out building permits to people: A piece of paper that would state that you have permission to build your home. Thousands of people in the U.S. and millions abroad exercise their right to build shelter without the government telling them how to do that. Once a few precautions are in place, this is a very viable option, allowing people to build a beautiful, non-toxic home for less than $5000. Here are some helpful hints:

1. Keep it small and invisible from the road and your neighbors.
2. Stay away from using big, loud machines.
3. Get along with your neighbors. Most evictions are a result of complaints from the nearby community.
4. If possible, build where there is an already existing code-approved home on the land. (Decoy for building officials and tax assessors.)

The first three points are good ideas within natural building, code or no code. The last point knows several variations.

One option is to buy land and to drag a cheap second-hand mobile home onto it. Depending on the cost of permits and septic, you can get the whole thing approved for as little as $10,000. Once that is done, build your dream natural building somewhere else on the land and change the mobile into storage, office space, or fix it up and rent it out! Also many people have built "outlaw" cottages on other people's land and live in them for little or no rent. They usually have some written agreement with the landowner, and often contribute to managing the land, farm or homestead. Many people have a large chunk of land with only one house on it and would enjoy sharing it. This option makes it possible for people to build without a bank loan and just a little bit of savings. And last but not least, many natural buildings are code-approved as an agricultural building, barn, garage, etc. Once approved for that purpose, a kitchen and some kind of bathroom facility can easily be added.

This discussion wouldn't be complete without mentioning that there are many parts of the country where there is no code enforcement. This is usually the case in very under-populated counties. Finding community and work in these places may be more challenging.

As you can see, there are many possibilities to exercise your right to build. If we look at natural building as a conscious movement, trying to empower people to provide reasonable and sensible homes for themselves, all paths described here will contribute to that goal. We all look at our comfort level, skills, financial strength, local circumstances, stage in life, and then pick a course of action.