…or how to build a house for about $25 per square foot!
This winter we are engaged in the planning process for a major outreach project on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where we intend to build a small 2 bedroom house. This exciting project will challenge us on many levels: technologically, logistically, and financially. In the months ahead we will be working on creative solutions to meet these challenges, as well as asking our friends and supporters for help (more on that later…).
The Pine Ridge Reservation is the ancestral home of the Lakota Nation. While visually striking, it is a challenging place to live. Summer temperatures regularly rise over 100 degrees, while winter-time temperatures drop well below zero. High winds and intense rains are possible any time of year. In addition to the environmental challenges, the Lakota people also face a host of serious social challenges: unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, obesity, depression, and more. It is estimated that 80% of the Lakota people are homeless and must rely on relatives for housing during the winter months.
The need for warm housing on the reservation is clear. But it will have to be more than just warm; it will have to be comfortable, beautiful, energy efficient, require very little maintenance and most importantly be very low-cost. Our organization and building practices are a perfect match for providing high-quality housing in areas of extreme need for a fraction of the cost of similar “development projects.” The savings will come from several areas.
1) Overhead: House Alive has almost no overhead costs. We have no office building, and we answer the phone ourselves. (Try it out, give us a call, you may get one of my children on the phone!). We don’t produce glossy publications, we design and maintain our website ourselves. Thus we spend very little on typical “business” expenses.
2) Land: For any house, the land costs represent a significant portion (if not the majority) of the total cost. On the reservation, Lakota people “own the land out right” as they have for thousands of years. So, we won’t need to pay for land!
3) Permits: Building permits can cost many thousands of dollars, depending on your location. On the reservation there are no building codes or code officials, and thus no permits are required. Also building codes make buildings more expensive. In my own house, which cost about $50,000 to build (in 2001), I estimate that about $8000 went towards fulfilling requirements for the code officials that were not strictly necessary for the safety or comfort of the building.
4) Labor: On most conventional projects, labor expenses make up at least half of the total cost. For this project, most of the labor will come from workshop participants, apprentices, and volunteers.
5) Materials: The principles of Natural Building (using locally available or scavenged materials) combined with freedom from building codes allow us to be very creative with material use. We can use natural and recycled materials such as earth and straw that may not be engineered to pass building codes, but will work well for our purposes. Internal cob walls (free) will be sculpted to “form-fit” every room in the house; the foundation will be made from scavenged (free) concrete chunks and earthbags; doors and windows will be reclaimed from local renovation jobs; the ceiling will be made out of chicken wire and cob (a House Alive specialty) instead of drywall, tape, and paint.
6) Energy efficiency: For any building, the cost of heating and cooling the building over its lifetime will match or exceed the original building costs. Thus it is crucial that we do everything possible to keep the building affordable over its lifetime, by making it highly energy efficient. This is accomplished by using passive solar design, thermal mass, and insulation. We will use a double-wall system with insulation between for the cob walls (a House Alive original!), straw-bales for the North (coldest) wall, and lots of insulation in the ceiling where most heat is lost (heat rises!).
7) Health and maintenance: In addition to being efficient, the building cannot make people sick or require lots of money to maintain. Too many development projects focus on using low cost, often toxic, building materials which cause health problems for their inhabitants. Additionally, we expect there to be a high level of moisture in the house, as there could be 10 to 20 people living in it during the winter. Clay walls and ceiling will help to moderate humidity by absorbing excess moisture and allowing it to pass easily into the roof vents. We expect this to reduce the risk of mold growth, another common (and potentially hazardous) problem. The building will be designed for low-maintenance, by keeping it simple and well-protected from the elements.
In spite of our best efforts to keep the costs down, we will have to spend money on this project. A huge chunk of our cost will go into the roof and insulation. We are planning on installing a “life-time” metal roof instead of using asphalt shingles (10-20 yrs). We plan to use roofing sheets that are left-overs from big jobs that we can mix and match (colors may vary…). Our shopping list also includes copper wire for electricity, wood for door frames and the roof, rocks and sand, insulation, straw bales, and more. Finally we have the travel and logistical costs of facilitating a project more than 1,500 miles from home.
We are excited about this project, but also daunted by the challenges that are ahead of us. Workshop fees alone will not be enough to cover the costs of this ambitious project, and thus we are working to raise $15,000 to help offset the material and logistical costs. Considering the size and scale of the project, this would work out about $25/sq ft, where most custom homes cost $200/sq ft and up.
And while we believe that this project will be a success, we don’t think this is the solution for providing housing and jobs, and improving the health and happiness of a group of people that have been violently repressed for 200 years. But we do hope that it will offer a small kernal in place that badly needs it. As the old saying goes, if you throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick!
Over the past 8 years, House Alive has touched and been touched by so many workshop participants, apprentices, or just visitors to our homestead, who have seen first-hand what cob and natural buildings look like. The support and enthusiasm of all of these people has given us the courage to take on this major project; now we are asking these people — and you — to help make this project a success. We invite you to help us create much needed shelter for our native people in the poorest part of our country. With your generous donation, we can bring this exciting project to a positive conclusion.
Donate to the Pine Ridge Project! Thanks for your support.