Modern Mud Huts :: Healthy Lifestyles and Natural Weight Loss Information

Modern Mud Huts
by author Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen

Straw houses offer low environmental impact, high insulation, and the freedom to be wildly creative without getting expensive or complicated. Straw requires little energy to produce, is easily renewable, and diverts farm waste. Compacted straw is fire-resistant and doesn’t attract pests.

Straw Bale Drawbacks

Harding heard, “I’m gonna huff, I’m gonna puff, and I’m gonna blow your house down,” so often, it became the biggest disadvantage. That, and “Ah, c’mon, Ruth, you’re not really building the house all by yourself.”

Straw bale challenges include finding bales with the proper moisture content, ensuring adequate drainage, and coping with unexpected costs. Sometimes construction costs more and takes longer than expected.

Straw Bale Surprises

The deer on Bowen don’t snack on the bales, and though the walls breathe, creatures can’t wiggle in.

Harding couldn’t quite describe how good it felt to be in her straw bale home. She used words such as “organic,” “earthy,” “spiritual,” and “connected.”

Rammed Earth Homes

“Homes are often toxic waste dumps,” says Burns Jennings. His father and father-in-law passed away from toxic exposure-related cancers; now he’s building a healthy home with as small an environmental footprint as they can afford. He and his wife Shauna have two preschool-aged boys.

Using his environmental science background, Jennings is compacting subsoil, cement, and water into forms that’ll be removed later. The walls become a canvas: Jennings can insert shells, beach glass, and “mocked-up fossils of prehistoric trilobites and ammonites” (great for young boys’ rooms). Subtle colour bands will wave through the walls; pictures, quilts, and shelving can be hung if desired.

The upstairs is wood framed (rammed earth is ultra-expensive on two floors). Jennings is using eco-friendly materials: non-VOC paint, formaldehyde-free drywall, and nontoxic glues. Sleep sanctuaries (bedrooms) will conserve energy and limit electromagnetic fields, which can negatively affect sleep patterns and serotonin levels.

Jennings’ goal is to bring rammed earth construction into the mainstream.

Rammed Earth Benefits

Rammed earth homes are built with sustainable, local, eco-friendly materials. The buildings are rodent proof, fire resistant, and maintenance-free. They can’t rot, wash away, or crumble during an earthquake. Their thermal mass acts, says Jennings, “like a rock on a beach that radiates heat for a long time after the sun sets.”

Rammed earth dwellers aren’t likely to contract SBS, which is caused by high carbon dioxide levels in poorly ventilated, moldy, water damaged, and recently renovated or carpeted buildings.

Rammed Earth Drawbacks

They can be labour intensive and expensive; a building code doesn’t exist yet. Because it’s all so new, Jennings isn’t certain about the final cost of the house.

Rammed Earth Surprises

Rammed earth is inorganic subsoil: sand, silt, rock, and/or clay. It’s not earthy soil or packed dirt (as with African mud huts).

Jennings feels good in rammed earth: comfortable and protected. “I think it may go back to the caveman days,” he laughs.

Changing the World

These modern mud huts are more than places to live. “You get the feeling that you might have changed the world in a good way,” says Hendyrsan.

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Freelance writer Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen lives on Bowen Island, BC.

Source: alive #303, January 2008

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