Living the Earth friendly lifestyle: How to focus, a path to take? Here is a guide to sustainable living.
Here is a format to plan a toxin and import-free sustainable tiny house or community. What questions, ethos, or format to make a lifelong home and village possible are spelled out here in.
These are the critical decisions for elements of building a Tiny Texas House with our ethos of 95% Pure Salvage Building and assertion that it is the most energy-efficient and sustainable way for millions to build within the United States.
Suppose you are going to build a house, large or small. In that case, this is the proof that you are living, not just talking about the Green revolution because living it is proof, talking it a lie if you do not even try to save on energy, materials, and shipping before you ever start to build your house. Start by deciding on the materials. Using Pure Salvage for Building as an ethos for communities is essential for toxin-free living.
Using part new and part salvage to get the best of both worlds, but only a small portion of the parts created anew is needed. Nails, screws, underlayment, insulation, and perhaps some wiring or technology, but I do not even recommend much AC electricity as it is a health issue too. Direct Current or DC electricity is not prone to starting fires, giving off EMF radiation that is harmful to a healthy life and can be taken through solar panels straight into light use. Sufficient energy then stored in many forms, even without standard batteries.
Why should no one be Building with new materials?
Price, availability, sustainability, economic benefits, less pollution, the better lifespan of homes using quality salvage instead of sheetrock, vinyl, and plastics.
Foundations depend on where you are
Wood for framing
Siding and house wrap
Roofing and underlayment
Windows from the past work in the future.
Doors inside, out, and sideways
Merits of the salvaged door and window Hardware
Walls
Ceilings
Floors and subfloors
Insulation and why we like Icynene
Weatherstripping
Sinks for kitchen and bath
Tubs and showers
Plumbing faucets, piping,
Black Water / Gray Water Separation
Compost or methane burners for waste
Water Heaters
Lighting Old or New
Electric boxes and wiring
Solar Power/Wind power Low Voltage wiring options
Paints and oils inside and out
New window glazing versus old glazing recipes
A/C, Heating, and ventilation
Loft ladders and lofts
Murphy, Trundle, bunk beds, and?
Cabinetry for Kitchen and Bath
While there are many reasons for using Salvage materials to build with, the most obvious one is that is saves our planet by eliminating the need to cut down more trees, mine more iron ore for hardware, or the need to crank up furnaces to make new glass or other hardware that exists already. More importantly, the materials from the past are generally far superior to those sold today in all building materials stores.
For example, a tree is planted and harvested in 30 years, speeded along with fertilizers, and in doing so, creating a weak wood that is prone to rot quickly, tastes like candy to bugs because it is so soft and easy to eat, and a wood that lacks any color or character. Furthermore, new wood will also tend to outgas formaldehyde and other chemicals for months after the house is built, adding to the chemical toxicity of new housing.
The hardware of the past is superior because it was built with the “last forever” mentality instead of the modern “built-in obsolescence” perspective that dominates American manufacturing. Sadly, where we once built everything to last for generations so that our children could use what we made throughout their lives instead of having to buy new every five years. It is a sad statement about our society that we not only tolerate such poor quality today, but we also endorse it and ask for more by paying for the cheap break right away stuff in the first place. With the old hardware, both for doors and windows, you could generally open it up and repair it. I have hardware we use indoors that have been around for more than a hundred years, still works great, and will last for at least another hundred years. Nothing built today offers that sort of longevity at anything near an affordable price, so why not use the stuff we built a hundred years ago?
The glass and old windows are much the same story. They were built with old-growth lumber that has lasted as a window for a hundred or more years and is still strong and without rot. The glass, wavy and interesting, is thicker than today’s typical glass and will last for centuries unless someone breaks it. The value of double-paned insulated glass is illusory in many ways, particularly in the South. For example, most insulated glass only has enough moisture-absorbent desiccant to last for 12 years, which means they are doomed to fog up and need to be replaced in 13 years. In today’s dollars, that means at least $20 per piece of glass to replace them, not counting the labor associated with them.
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