Zen Living

Episode “Building a green home”

 

Nicole Tomlinson: Bau-Biologie, green building, breathing homes. What does this all mean? It’s about creating a more environmentally friendly living space. This is George Swanson, a building biologist and he is here to tell us exactly what that means. Hi George. Would you please go into Bau-Biologie, would you please elaborate on what exactly that means?

George Swanson: Ok, Bau-Biologie roughly means building biology. It started about 65 to 70 years ago in villages in Germany where they were studying the health effects of construction on small villages. And found a direct correlation between the building materials and the health of the people in the village.

Nicole Tomlinson: What specifically did they find?

George Swanson: Well they found one village where they actually relocated an entire village because people would have four times the cancer rate because of water courses under the buildings.

Nicole Tomlinson: Ok, so you’re a building biologist, what exactly is your job description?

George Swanson: Primarily at this point we are consulting, but also fully doing design build for buildings for people with chemical sensitivity. So folks who don’t really have an option and do have to get out of their buildings.

Nicole Tomlinson: There homes are toxic to them so you help them to find ways to use green materials to keep them healthy?

George Swanson: Exactly.

Nicole Tomlinson: Great now this is your home?

George Swanson: Uh, huh.

Nicole Tomlinson: So George you have developed a very unconventional way for treating waste water. Can you elaborate a little bit about that?

George Swanson: Ok, what we are looking at here is a gravel marsh, black water treatment system. Where all the black water of the house comes into these two tanks that we see right below us here. And there are four manifolds that come out from the bottom of those tanks that spreads the black water twenty inches down into the gravel pit. And then the roots from these plants actually purify the black water as it runs through.

Nicole Tomlinson: Now how is this better for us living wise than say the conventional techniques?

George Swanson: Well we don’t have to ever empty our tanks for one thing. So the tanks self clean themselves. And the water that’s discharges from the end of this gravel bed is fully safe for watering our plants.

Nicole Tomlinson: so it’s all using everything that comes out of your home and recycling it back into your garden or you’re…

George Swanson: Right the water becomes safe its actually full potable water coming out the other end.

Nicole Tomlinson: So you could drink it?

George Swanson: Well, no it’s too nutrient rich. Now you could sand filter it and drink it. We recently did a system like that. But we want to use it in its full nutrient rich state.

Nicole Tomlinson: Thank you so much for having me in your home. Now we spoke before about a breathing home. Is this qualified as a breathing home?

George Swanson: Yeah, this particular construction was 12 inch clay treated wood chip block. That’s treated with a natural clay plaster to create the breathing effect.

Nicole Tomlinson: What is this little rock bed right here?

George Swanson: Well this is what we call breathing gill. We try to make this a signature on most of the homes that we do. It’s actually open to the earth. And it actually affects the electro magnetic s of the home. We have the natural earth smells.

Nicole Tomlinson: Ok, so there’s no foundation here?

George Swanson: No foundation here. Now this is part of our original cooling system where this was all plumbed. And this little cove that you see here was sprinkled with cold water that comes from the bottom of the cistern we saw out side.

Nicole Tomlinson: If I was to dig up all these rocks, I would find dirt on the bottom?

George Swanson: Mostly dirt right.

Nicole Tomlinson: And do you ever have any trouble with bugs or anything? No water comes up through there when it rains?

George Swanson: None of those problems. We will also look at these two Volkswagen car radiators that are mounted on the wall.

Nicole Tomlinson: So wait, let’s take that back, Volkswagen car radiators?

George Swanson: Car radiators, they are run on twelve volts, just like your car is run off of twelve volts, off the solar system. But this upper one it actually has cool water that is being pumped from the bottom of that cistern. So the water is about 61 degrees down there. It just runs over the car radiator with a tiny fan behind it. Now we are used to feeling like forty three degree air so that doesn’t feel like really cold air.

 So that why we only turn it down at night too charge the walls. By charging the walls we mean there is a concrete core in the middle of this soft clay treated woodchip block and that’s being cooled by what we call a radiant cool effect.

Nicole Tomlinson: There’s no radical up and down shifting because of the heat?

George Swanson: Right because it takes a full twelve hours for the heat or cool to leave the wall. So we are saturating it at nigh with the cool nighttime temperature, and then we get the free cooling all day long.

Nicole Tomlinson: So we talked before about your water bill, let’s talk a little bit about your electric bill.

George Swanson: Ok, it is averaging about $35 to $39 a month.

Nicole Tomlinson: American?

George Swanson: US, yeah!

Nicole Tomlinson: That’s insane. Alright so bottom line, what is the average cost of a typical green home?

George Swanson: Well, in the last couple of years we have been averaging about $170-$280,000.

Nicole Tomlinson: Well that sounds pretty comparable to a conventional home.

George Swanson: Right most of those homes are between the 1100, 1800, and 2000 square foot. So about a hundred to a hundred and thirty dollars a square foot.

Nicole Tomlinson: Ok great. So if you’re looking to live a more sustainable lifestyle green building is defiantly the way to go. Thank you so much George for showing me this beautiful green home.

George Swanson: And thank you Nicole.

Nicole Tomlinson: From all of us here at Zen Living thank you so much for watching, I am Nicole Tomlinson and I will catch you next time. Peace.