Construction Methodology for Environmental Safety:

 

Again, we must begin with psychology to get through this tough one. I have been in the construction industry since boyhood, and I can assure you that most in the business have egos larger and as unstable as the buildings they construct! Now, the aggregate of all problems plaguing humanity is big egos residing in narrow minds (or the worst: having more money than brains!); this chapter however is not devoted to mental/emotional problems, this is about changes in construction methodology. Nonetheless, such changes will not occur unless it is either forced upon us, or; we humans learn that self-worth or internal substance cannot come from/in outward things, such as grandiose buildings. First we need to tone down the sheer size of structures for just that reason, the sheer-value of such structures. We will get into logistics such as the strategic problems (as 9/11 exhibited) later! As building materials get more expensive and alternative building products show up on the market, one product replaces another but is not necessarily equal to what it replaced. First, building engineers need to be held accountable for the substitutions they propose, and also be taught (prerequisite to getting licenses) the science as well as the history behind building products. This is currently done on a limited basis, but is not as perspicuous as I am suggesting. Secondly, all architects and structural engineers must be required to participate in actual building, also as prerequisite to licensing. The “over-kill” that many of these Engineering Firms (plan-mills) seem to get caught up in, is illogical. Adding (or accepting) structural excesses just to cover ones ass in the Attorney-infested waters we should call The Liability Sea, is not cost effective, or necessarily any safer structurally.

Still, few would argue that modern humans have made some valuable and even impressive contributions to the Architectural/Engineering world. This is not about becoming drab box builders, but we must accept the responsibility for our progeny by being both innovative and conservative in how we build for the now, and leaders in how building will be in the future. Truthfully, we are drab box builders, for we build nothing in the Capitalist jungle that could rival the Parthenon in Greece, or the Taj Mahal in India! Ornamentation and other structural art forms have been replaced with geometric-shaped mirror glass and painted monoliths! Building can be structurally enduring, artistic and practical. Therein lies the art of architecture; incorporating logic with regional materials and topping that with the heart of art!  The goal is to learn to be more regional in our building practices, and to incorporate self into nature, rather than bulldozing nature to contemporize it for our self. By regional, I am referring to the utilization of indigenous materials in bio-systems, as well as the modification of building practices that our ancients demonstrated as their way of overcoming their environment, with many fine examples of that in New Mexico and Arizona (see Website links). Using local building materials that are plentiful, replenish-able and practical is step one. Using new technology to improve old products (such as constitutional clay) is an exciting arena to be in, but we must maintain diligent justice in the equal distribution of all natural resources rather than to demonstrate hubris in thinking we sequestered the planet or any parcel therein, just because we print more mammon than other people. This section will cover the major environmental issues that come from Government, the scientific community, the Environmentalists, and syllogism. 

 

WOOD a forest?

 

We as humans need to greatly limit our consumption of wood products most of all: I am a Master Carpenter saying this! The demand forces the supply side, wherein criminals somehow get the blessings of Capitalist Governments (the sell-outs) to stalk the planet seeking innocent unwary rape victims: rain forests and other oxygen-producing expanses of trees, clear cut along with the under-canopy they are symbiotic with. This ecocide needs to end now, and all intelligent people are outraged by this crime. I stand firm on this soapbox and will return to it often! To utterly destroy unto extinction ancient eco-systems so that we have more paper products to landfill is well below stupidity, it is insanity.

Recycled plastics are already being made into non-structural wood products, and soon they will be available for even more applications; it is a hope that the recycling centers will grow to the point that they will provide enough building products to offset the demand for that which is raped from forests. Since the Earth is a big rock, the greatest product available is rock-based: from natural stone to cement products, they are plentiful, natural, non-flammable, and if competently mined and concreted, non-toxic and safe for the eco-system.

This is not advertisement; I’m not a Capitalist; I am an Egalitarian, a Writer, a Carpenter and an eco-environmentalist. All intelligent and caring humans are environmentalists because it reflects active concern for future progeny, competent leadership, and logical stewardship of Earth as a whole. Selfish hoarding greed at the expense of others (in any time/location) is a neon sign displaying gross immaturity and indifference in individuals and/or the governments or corporations they control. Such a psyche (mentality) is an anomaly that needs classified and then treated: such people need to be monitored, not given positions of leadership in government or corporations, nor in any power position or control over others.

Commercial construction is already utilizing steel and concrete, but the need to downsize buildings would reduce quantities of steel. Gypsum (drywall) is the most common interior product utilized in both commercial and residential construction, with light gauge metal studs for interior partitions in most all commercial constructs.        Consequently, we need to focus on residential construction methodology, which also happens to be my specialty, because I was a homebuilder (framing to finish) for years. I used many tons of trees (lumber) in my time, and I enjoy working with wood, but I also realize that the global eco-system cannot continue to absorb the human demand for wood products, a demand that is not just the residential construction industry, but also the paper industry. Paper in most its uses are indeed the greatest waste of wood currently existing and will be addressed in another section. As for construction, wood can then be limited to fine cabinetry/furniture.

I suggest the use of concrete products (for now) in all residential constructs, and this would be primarily the structural members: outer walls and load bearing interior walls, with the remainder of interior partitions and facades framed out of light weight metal studs enveloped with fire resistant drywall. Roof structures should be light gauge metal truss systems sheeted with recycled composite materials: a product yet to be manufactured. This roof sheeting would possess both structural sheer value as well as fire resistant. Most roofing materials such as shingles is a technology in need of improvement, and though tough to ignite exteriors of most roofing materials, they are all made of petroleum products, and if a fire is hot enough they will burn: We must reduce flammability of aggregate roof structures; firefighters saying amen! Obviously if homes are built to withstand mild earthquakes, tornados, floods as well as fire, dry rot and termites, the insurance and the maintenance will attenuate as well. I am personally for no-paint exteriors!

Contractors in Florida construct many homes in this manner due to single-season termite infestations that also exist in Hawaii and most of the equatorial expanse: utilizing hollow-block for the exterior walls, they stucco its exterior and metal stud/gypsum the interior, with engineered pressure-treated wood truss systems sheeted with OSB and composition shingled. During hurricanes the shingles fly and sometimes the sheeting, but the walls stand, just as they most likely would in a tornado and during a flood. Commercial buildings utilize a process called tilt-up, wherein concrete is poured into a form in the shape/size if its wall, dried, and then stood up as a single steel-reinforced concrete wall rather than mortaring many hollow-blocks: A similar process is employed for residential construction, only unitized much like single-pour concrete basements are. Oh, concrete walls are bulletproof as well!

The strategic problem of having thousands of humans inside a single structure is, may I say, stupid. If a serious earthquake hits any high-rise, it will fall and the blood is upon the hands of lawmakers too shortsighted to realize this fact and to regulate the building industry accordingly. We need not elaborate on the facts of 09/11/01; this logic did not arrive on that date.

Many new products are fair replacements for our current developmental stage and I am hopeful that this trend will continue. Obviously, using too much of anything placed too much of a demand upon it, therefore logic suggests that we combine materials, and so it is with many of the new composites. 

Until environment-friendly systems are standardized, the need for lumber will continue. We can only use what is available, and in older homes framed with wood, remodel/repairing will require lumber to remain available for many years, but for new construction methodology the epoch for change is now, safely before we reach the point of no return as a species.

Logic dictates several obvious building advantages, but until humans learn to gain self-worth from within, rather than being willing to exploit natures resources wastefully just to have more than the neighbors; to have grandiose façades to impress others, then humanity can get down to the business of living in harmony with nature. Utopia is not impossible; in fact it is a rather simple and attainable goal. Immaturity is the one and only obstacle to it, because greed, selfishness and the need for superiority, are all childish traits that were never driven from children who indeed, grow into, not out of, a character that will likely infect their entire lives: a cultural contagion in need of inoculation! Humans are humorous about the expense and overall stress/anxiety they invest in their egos, wherein corporeality is spent in sedation from the very problems they create volitionally. I recall in Kansas City; the big 90s thing was loft condos; dirty old warehouses in downtown that were scheduled for the bulldozer, until a creative developer decided to refurbish them into condos and apartments. One mans trash is another’s treasure, indeed; fashion can be a tin can on a string if the media tells its vacillate cultural drones that such is in vogue! Oh to be lead around by the nose ring and be oblivious to it: somebody shoot me!

Nonetheless, building underground is one such logical methodology, partially or fully. Earth homes are advantageous in both hot & cold climates, designing south facing frontals to harness solar convection as well as power from collectors. In most such constructs the outer walls are pour-in-place unitized, steel-reinforced concrete, and the roof is either wood truss/composite shingle, or the roof is a slow pitched slab of concrete itself, waterproofed and then buried under a foot of soil, wherein grass is grown upon it: yeas you have to mow your roof, just don’t hit the skylight tunnels! This is called building smart; utilizing nature, geometry, physics and a little ingenuity in concert with good taste and an artful flair for making anything look cool! I would replace the wood truss system with a light gauge galvanized metal truss system with horizontal metal spaced apart to accommodate clay tile roofing. This would last almost forever against the elements and is fireproof! Utilizing fire rated gypsum over metal studs for interior (non-bearing) partitions, and clay tile flooring, the interior is nearly fire proof too. Fiberglass (and indeed all glass) is made from sand, another plentiful resource, utilized for insulation, window glass, and panels likened to boat hulls that could be used for roof sheeting, wall components, any creative application. 

 

Power me clean!

 

Electricity is the greatest property element harnessed by humanity since fire. We are getting better at producing it with fewer emissions, but even this trend must end. Electricity will never end, and so we must do two things: first we must use less per individual, and two, produce more without ecocide! I believe that this too, must be regional, or locally circumstantial. Power plants from damns have proven to be excellent, and we must preserve this methodology but improve upon it as well. All buildings need to utilize natural light, (and why multiple story structures are not good design): Work hours need to correspond to natural light! The logic is simple; humanity must return to nature within the context of following natural occurrences/processes rather than to war against them or trying to conquer them, because humans will ultimately lose that war. Humans will have conflict forever, or; until we adopt logical directives that have been handed down in many formats: live and let live; do unto others as you would want done unto you; love your neighbor as yourself; these all teach a simple premise: Justice! Once humanity advances to that peace, all these directives will be intrinsic, but until then lawmakers must force them upon the populous for the sake of Earth and our progeny. That is correct, we must force the indifferent to comply with ecological directives designed to improve the lives of their own great grandchildren, because they do not (and will not) care about them volitionally, but only themselves!

Since the need for electricity is being lessened by technology, it is also adding to it as well. Confusing? OK, my laptop computer I am now using is only consuming a trickle of electricity compared to a computer operating in 1965; it consumed mega-watt, filled up an entire room that additionally, required near refrigeration, or more electricity! The same computational capacity now requires only an infinitesimal fraction of electricity. However, the existence of millions of computers has added to itself, many new plug-ins pulling from the power source! Like all technologies, I believe that computers will soon shed extraneous applications for direct functional applications. Electronics is helping to reduce consumption, and we are all looking forward to this trend to continue with even more promising results.

Regionally, the use of geothermal electricity production, or wind, or solar, or other eco-specific applications is what needs to be capitalized upon. No intelligent person needs to hear about nuclear power plants (or new-clear?), the number two most moronic devise ever concocted by humans, the first being like weapons of mass destruction. It is promising that such power plants in large enough numbers, will be the direct or indirect cause of human extinction. If every nuclear power plant on the planet were deactivated now and forever, the radioactive waste they have already generated and buried could kill all life on earth one thousand times over! There are no English words to properly define such dereliction; the nearest understatement would be an insane moronic genocidal ecocide monger! Suffice it to say, the scientists involved in all this represent the maxim of sell-out, once again, the curse of the capitalist mentality wherein principles can be purchased. It does not take a prophet to state that a thrown ball will drop, nor that a profit-monger will also!

Power production needs to be on a smaller scale in most cases, with the exception being likened to Nevada’s Hoover damn producing many mega-watts due to its size. In New Mexico and southwestern US States, the use of wind and solar electricity production is being explored and fine tuned. These are more experimental today than they are practical, but this is not because humans are too ignorant to make them work nor are they impractical, it is because we are limited by profitability! Capitalism, whose doctrine is rooted in the dollar-god, has conditioned its drones to faithfully kneel at the alter of greed: bowing to the corporate bottom line, rather than to stand for environmental competency: a reality that will win one way or another. The planet will not continue to accept this abuse, and must respond accordingly in order to save itself, and in this ecological war, humans will lose. We need to choose wisely while we still have that option. I am humored when I look into a gym with people running on treadmills, indeed going nowhere fast! Now, I applaud exercising (fat-exorcism), it is funny because humans used to walk many miles daily because animals utilized for transportation were either unavailable or too much trouble for short-range travel. Removing the old hardships of living only added new hardships; when will we ever learn! It is true, long-range transportation is intelligent, but we are killing the planet with sixty-five million automobiles going all at once (or, what cannot be appropriately described with mere words as) gross over-consumerism and its parent, over-consumption! The American way of life cannot be protected; it must and will be destroyed, if not by other humans, by Earth itself. We have set an extremely poor example for the rest of the globe to admire, and indeed not all admire it! We are in fact (based on our own data pool) loveless gluttons, though in denial we see ourselves through the lens of fiction; from that we see heroes and patriots and other superior roles! Others are not so blind, and soon we will pay a major price for this volitional effrontery, because balance always finds its own in time, as both history and nature demonstrates! All civilizations that attenuated into the imbalance of over-consumption were utterly destroyed, and America cannot escape this fate unless we purposefully change on our own: so far the human condition (the ego) does not allow for such sweeping changes volitionally! This is why the leadership needs to be the intelligent people, not the Politicians. Intelligence is marked by the ability to cognize ones surroundings, establishing harmony and utility therein. In other words, lifestyles that is not self-destructive, because only a moron (or the mentally disrupted) would purposefully harm self and others (present or future), or live within the mental/emotional denial necessary to justify/validate such gluttonous indifference. True leadership will use that power to simplify living no matter the expense, and will basically enforce competency upon the human race. Humans who let their children play with fire because they want to, must be prepared to face a burning home: freedom is not letting people do what they want at the expense of others, that is irresponsible and the very absence of leadership!