Why Natural Materials?

My friend Julia asked me the other day why I chose to build with natural materials. The question struck me because I never made a conscious choice to build naturally. And yet, a desire to use materials that have low-embodied energy and that will enable my house to be efficient has certainly been, and will continue to be, a key motivator throughout the process.

I suppose, then, that my answer would be: it's just what has made the most sense. Coupled with that is the reality of what I have and have not been exposed to. I haven't been reading books on conventional construction, nor do I know anything whatsoever about it. Thus, I never came to a point that I felt a conflict and a need to choose between the two building styles.

Honestly, I don't know how it occurred to me to open that first book on straw bale building. Why that one and not one on simple stick frame housing? Divine intervention perhaps. Or, what I like to think, is that in seeking to build an inexpensive and efficient house that I, with no building experience, could build, I was led to the only logical conclusion.

In this process I have been continuously coming up with ways to make things simpler. One of the subsequent results is that I have a smaller house than the sprawling homes that we are used to living in in this country. That smaller size means it will be more efficient to heat and cool, easier to build, and significantly cheaper. Taking just one step off of the traditional course has had exponential benefits.

The same holds true with the materials. I build with dirt instead of wood. I don't have to pay for the wood, I can build a house that can heat and cool itself, and I'm not cutting down trees. The pumice that will be used for insulation will come from within an hour away, from a source that I can identify and more or less understand. An additional benefit of using pumice is that it can double as a capillary break, cutting out the need for both gravel and insulation. I don't know how much it costs yet, but I'm guessing its cheaper too. Very different from rigid foam insulation. I don't even know what it is, much less how it's made. And never having worked with it, means I'm unfamiliar with potentially essential (and toxic) aspects such as seam adhesive or glues.

It's turned out like this with all sorts of components (the plumbing being a huge one) and materials: I find myself up against a wall needing to use a product, and trying to find a way out of it not because I'm adamant about using only natural materials, but because it's more expensive and/or seems daunting to work with. If I was a contractor, I would inevitably lean towards those materials because I would be familiar with them. I imagine that's why construction practices continue in the unsustainable, expensive and diy-unfriendly way that they do: it's easiest to continue doing the same thing as before, even if it's not the best, and it probably also makes you feel good to work with something others can't. Your livelihood depends upon it.

Building with as many natural materials as possibly, and choosing those high-embodied energy products I do use with thought, and hopefully making them multi-tasking (my metal roof covers my head and lets me use the rainwater), serendipitously leads me to my most ideal designs, offering additional benefits that would never have occurred to me if they didn't show up by themselves. At some points, designing has felt circular and regressive. That's one side of it. The other is that unconscious creativity has been whirring around, stirring up priceless perks that would otherwise not be included in my home.