I went downtown today to submit our house plans for review so we can get a building permit. Yep, the plans are finally ready! Woohoo! Only I thought Development Services closed at 4:30. They actually close at 4:00. I arrived at 3:48, and had to get an address. Got the address at 4:02. So they wouldn’t let me apply for the building permit today. We are going to New Mexico all next week on vacation, so we will have to submit the plans after we get back. That might be better, since I can make an appointment and possibly walk them through all in one day.

We are pretty excited about our trip. It’s a much-needed getaway. There’s been a lot of stuff going on in our personal lives plus all the work on house plans (lots of late nights in front of the computer). We need something to recover our sanity and provide some strengthening to our family identity.

We are splitting the trip between camping at City of Rocks State Park and staying at a bed and breakfast. We had hoped to stay at the Wilderness Lodge (we had stayed there last year and had a wonderful time) but they were full up on our travel dates. So we are staying at the Black Range Lodge. That’s a happy thing since it’s Catherine Wanek’s place, and if you are a bale head you probably recognize that name-she’s the author of a number of popular straw bale and natural building books. The area where we are staying is practically straw bale central; Landerland is close by, among other homesteads with straw bale structures and enthusiasts. Should be very interesting!

Had lunch with Pastor E today. We talked about saving the world. About how we probably can’t, and that isn’t much the point anyway.

For sure the survival of the human race depends on it finding a way to live sustainably and in partnership with God’s creation. Alas, human behavior seems more like addict behavior in many ways. Especially in America. Most addicts are pretty destructive, both to themselves and to the people around them. Our love affair with gasoline engines and flush toilets and the ability to go anywhere and do anything we want, our love affair with no limits and all the freedom to be as stupid as we want to be… well, eventually it’s going to rattle itself apart like a badly-conceived Rube Goldberg contraption. Trouble is, we can’t see far enough down the road and those of us who try write novels like 1984 and Brave New World… and reality gives us the 90s instead. But if there aren’t big changes, we will run out of water, we will change the climate, we will have to deal with the consequences of our choices. And so will our children, perhaps even more so than us.

But I’m not trying to be green to save the planet. I’m trying to be green because I follow Jesus, I love my kids, and I want to do the right thing. One of the hard parts about trying to do the right thing is that sometimes it doesn’t seem to have much of a positive impact on the world. I doubt anyone will see our house with a sawdust toilet and want to run out and get their own. I wouldn’t expect them to, either. That’s okay. That’s not why I want to use one. I want to compost our humanure because it’s good, and I believe it honors the world God made.

I had a good conversation last night with a friend. We talked about trailers. Well, mobile homes to be exact. During our conversation I realized that I had feelings about trailers. I feel sad that they are considered an acceptable place to live when really, they aren’t.

This past winter I heard a radio story on NPR about the cost of heating oil and the impact it was having on families and particularly the elderly. I remember the interview of one retired couple in Maine, trying to figure out how they could afford their heating bills on a fixed income. The bills were several thousand dollars. The radio report focused on the cost of heating oil and how it was a serious hardship for them. Barely mentioned was the fact that they lived in a mobile home. In Maine. This couple wasn’t heating their mobile home, they were heating the state of Maine. There is no way a mobile home would retain enough heat to keep them warm without a constant heat source… something constantly consuming fuel. Nobody asked why they were living in a trailer. The cost of heating oil isn’t the problem, the problem is that they are living in a trailer. Why do they have to live in a trailer? I don’t know.

But I know why survivors of Hurricane Katrina are living in trailers. FEMA is mandated to provide temporary housing to disaster victims. So we have FEMA trailers in FEMA trailer parks along the Gulf Coast. They are tiny and there are issues of indoor air quality as the materials used to make these trailers offgas toxic compounds (formaldehyde in particular). In the hot humid climate, the poorly-insulated trailers consume enormous amounts of electricity to run the air conditioners. The air conditioners require all the windows and doors to be closed in order to work, which traps the offgassed toxic compounds in the trailers such that the occupants suffer migraine headaches and worse. The only way to breathe is to open the windows (so the air conditioning won’t work). Then the occupants may be vulnerable to excessively high indoor temperature and humidity levels, which carries its own risks for the elderly and the infirm.

Fortunately someone with good sense anticipated these problems and came up with an elegant solution: the Katrina Cottage. The Katrina Cottage is a beautiful site-built small home that costs the same as a FEMA trailer to build, and they can be built quickly. It is durable, insulated, energy-efficient, and has good indoor air quality. I heard once that FEMA would not build Katrina Cottages instead of putting people in trailers because it was required by law to provide temporary, not permanent, housing. Shot down by a technicality.

Nonetheless, somebody thinks the idea has merit. If you want a Katrina Cottage, you can now buy one from Lowe’s.

So now that you can have a beautiful site-built home for the same price as a trailer, where do you put it?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of trees to plant around our new house. The high desert is a tough place for trees and we will be asking a lot of ours, so I am quite excited about having found some good prospects.

We need trees that will provide a lot of shade to the south and west during the summer without blocking winter sun. According to permaculturalists, it is also best to select trees that are “multi-purpose”. That is, each tree should be performing at least two functions. So each tree might provide not only shade, but also produce fruit, attract wildlife, act as a windbreak, and so on.

Our site is high desert so we need plants that are more cold-hardy than what we see around Tucson. Our site is also a little drier and windier than Tucson, and we don’t have a well (yet), so drought-tolerant vegetation is an absolute must. A fair amount of irrigation will be with greywater, so our trees need to be able to tolerate the increased alkalinity and salts that come from detergents. Mesquite and palo verde are perhaps the best adapted to these conditions, but wifey and I are both highly allergic to them… and the wind will blow any pollen from the trees straight toward the house. So we need trees with low pollen.

With all those requirements, it’s a wonder that there are any trees to fit the bill! Well, I found a few that should work very well.

First there is Pistacia chinensis, or Chinese pistache. It’s not the same as the cultivated pistacio, but larger and hardier. It would make a lovely shade tree (it can reach fifty feet), provides beautiful fall color, tolerates greywater, and generates low pollen. Because of its size, it needn’t be planted close by. Its canopy may exceed thirty feet in diameter, so it will shade the house in the afternoon hours yet still remain far enough away that we could plan a small addition on the west side.

Next is Punica granatum, the pomegranate, perhaps the toughest fruit tree on the planet. While relatively small trees, only reaching 12-15′ in height, pomegranates are deciduous and are good candidates for shading the south yard. This would create a cooler microclimate in the summer but still allow the sun through to the house in winter. They produce pretty tasty fruit, require little supplemental water (and then only for fruit production), and are tough as nails.

I’m also intrigued by Ziziphus jujuba, the Chinese jujube tree. It produces fruit that is similar to dates. It is drought-tolerant, takes greywater well, and is low in pollen. Fruit production is best with at least two varieties planted together for cross-pollination.

Another fruiting tree possibility is Ficus carica, the fig tree (brown turkey variety). Drought-tolerant, greywater-tolerant, deciduous, tough as nails. They can reach 20 feet in diameter for shade. I’m not sure how low-pollen they are, and the fruit drop can be messy. Probably best to put this one a little further from the house and not use it as a windbreak.

Some other possibilities for shrubby trees include Laurus nobilis (Sweet bay) and the Arizona native Dodonaea viscosa (Hop bush). These have food potential and would make good screens or windbreaks. Sweet bay is not on the UofA’s list of low-allergy trees, though hop bush is.

Now the real trick will be making sure our trees get enough water to establish themselves…

Our house is going to demonstrate a lot of sustainable systems and is designed to be affordable. Apparently there is a major perception out there that green homes are only for people with deep pockets: after all, to have a green home you need low-e windows, Energy Star appliances, and solar panels, right? While those things are helpful, being green means having a light footprint on the earth… that comes from simplicity and smallness more than anything.

The best way to build green and save money is to consider only what you really need, and build according to that need.

I designed and redesigned many, many different houses before we settled on the one we are building. Ultimately this process helped us discover what our real needs were. It also helped us to realize that we shouldn’t build a house around our stuff, we should build a house around us.

Some of my original designs were excessively large to accommodate our furniture and our many hoped-for children. Some were too small for a family (we really need two bedrooms right now). What we are building is just right, and designed to grow as our family grows. We won’t be paying for more than we need.

Our needs are pretty basic: place to eat, place to cook, place to store some things we use only occasionally or seasonally, place to sleep, place to work, place to relax, place to do laundry, place to bathe, place to potty. Some of these places can do double duty. The more you can do with less space, the more affordable your home… and arguably the more pleasant your relationship with it. After all, your home is meant to serve you, not the other way around.

I’ve met some people who visit RV lots to see how to make the most of small spaces. It is amazing but there are whole families who live quite well in RVs. The outdoors makes a great living room, if your climate permits. In the desert southwest, it generally does… even in the heat of summer, it is possible to construct shady, cool outdoor spaces. And it’s much cheaper and more environmentally friendly to do that than it is to build an enclosed, conditioned space.

A coworker recently asked me about finishing wood for outdoor use. I’ve gone round and round about this but have come to some conclusions I think are worth sharing. Here are some things that I’ve discovered that have helped me make decisions in this regard.

1. Painting or staining are cosmetic, they don’t seem to protect the wood that much. I’ve seen bad paint jobs do more harm than good. So it’s not really a big deal to leave wood unfinished to weather, even in mixed climates. We have a fence with unfinished pine rails fixed to steel posts, and the rails are still straight and strong after eight years.
2. Anything that leaves a film (that is, paint or urethane) will eventually crack and peel, allowing moisture to enter. If it isn’t refinished it will trap moisture in the wood, causing rot or other damage. So using paint or a urethane is like making a commitment to refinish for the remainder of the project’s life. Filmy urethanes on decks tend to get cheesed underfoot, too.
3. Penetrating sealers degrade more quickly than paint or urethane, but they degrade much more gracefully (they don’t peel) and they can be more or less safely neglected. They won’t get cheesed underfoot either.
4. If left to weather, pine is known for being dimensionally unstable. That is, it will eventually warp or crack. Pressure-treated is particularly notorious for this. Redwood on the other hand is more rot-resistant, it is very dimensionally stable, and it ages gracefully… it’s more expensive up front but I don’t have to worry much about keeping up after it. So I think it pays for itself in the long run. (I’m in the Southwest so redwood is more available than, say, cedar.)
5. Of course, keep all wood away from ground contact to avoid termite damage and rot.

I hear good things about handmade oil-based stains made from raw linseed oil and citrus thinner. I’ve seen beautiful results. It is a little more work than just buying a gallon of whatever at Ace, but there are some real benefits. Namely that the result is deeply personal (it is whatever color you mix), it doesn’t hurt the wood if you neglect to refinish it, and it can be totally non-toxic and biodegradeable (so you don’t have to dispose of the excess with hazardous waste). The ingredients can be hard to come by, though, especially citrus thinner and pigments.

We haven’t tried the linseed oil-based stain yet but we’d like to do some experiments on our Potty House sometime. It is made almost entirely out of salvaged wood, much of which had been painted at one time. Most of the old paint sanded right off but there are still some pieces where the paint held on; I’m curious what will happen when we try using a 50-50 mix of linseed oil and citrus thinner over the old paint.

We went camping on our property this weekend. The weather was typical for an Arizona spring: highly unpredictable. After a week with highs in the low 80s, it snowed on us and got really cold Sunday so we had to come back to Tucson early (we had planned on staying through to Monday). But Saturday was fun… we had friends and a fire and s’mores, and we saw our first sunset (stunning!) and our first starry night (equally stunning!).

We were able to test out our latest project: the Potty House—christened so by our two-year-old. We built it in pieces at home out of salvaged lumber (total cost less than $200). Wifey’s dad and I took it to the land and put it up Friday. It worked extremely well, even with twelve people using it!

The Potty House, by the way, is a sawdust toilet. It is not a pit privy, and no it does not smell or look bad when you lift the lid… it looks and smells like fresh pine sawdust. All deposits are composted into safe fertilizer in a separate compost bin (which does not smell or look bad either). It does a great job of taking what is often considered waste and turning it into a useful resource.

Wifey’s comment to her skeptical mom: “We’re saving the planet, one poop at a time!”

For more information about sawdust toilets and how they work, check out the Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins.

Wifey and I left the urchins with a friend and drove to Canelo this past Saturday. Canelo is a small community in southern Arizona where Bill and Athena Steen (straw bale construction gurus) direct the Canelo Project, a place where magical things happen with clay and straw. It was a fun time. We got to tour all their little straw bale cottages and outbuildings and learn a little about how it’s done. Bill and Athena looked at our home plans and we came away feeling pretty good about the direction we’re headed, at least as far as what we are building is concerned. Check out their site, there are lots of pictures.

Maybe that’s a silly question, because these days it would be hard to find someone who didn’t think recycling was a good idea. Taking something made for one purpose and finding a way to reuse it or its materials for another purpose once its original purpose is fulfilled, well that just seems like common sense. In and of itself, it is efficient, and to do otherwise seems wasteful.

Continuing the line of thinking from my last post, where I suggest the idea that making sustainable choices is essentially considering the well-being of future generations, recycling seems to take on a bit of a nobler, higher purpose than merely being efficient. I have to confess that when I dump all our paper, cardboard, glass, and number-one-and-two plastics in the big blue recycling can the city provides for us, I’m not thinking to myself ‘This is something I do out of love for my kids and their kids.’ But you know, maybe I should. Because if I didn’t, and I just tossed everything in the big green can for trash, I’m basically contributing to the problem of waste management… eventually all that trash has to be dealt with by somebody, and an awful lot of the consequences wind up in the laps of our kids.

I’ve been reading a book called Sex God by Rob Bell. In it he talks about how disconnected we are from nature, how in our society we have so effectively air-conditioned ourselves out of the need to be outdoors that it is possible to go months without spending any appreciable time outside at all. I know, I live in Arizona during the summer. You’re considered crazy to be outside when it is 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Anyhoo, part of the disconnect finds its way into how we deal with our trash and the manner in which we satisfy our very basic human needs: shelter, water, food.

If you are reading this you’re probably the sort of person who actually thinks about where your trash goes. Maybe you even think about where your water comes from and how is it that it is safe to drink and will there be enough for everyone in the future. Maybe you even think about where your poop goes when you flush the toilet, and what happens to all the water we use to do the flushing.

You have to admit that there is something in our society that doesn’t really want to think deeply about these things. Maybe it’s denial, but maybe it’s just plain hard. I mean, do you really know how much electricity your air conditioner uses in one hour? Do you really know how much water is consumed to generate that electricity? Do you really know how much water it takes to generate enough electricity to power the air conditioners of two million people? Do you really know how much water it takes to flush all the poo for two million people in a year? Do you know how much water it takes to recover all that poopy water so it can be used for something else?

I don’t, but I know it’s a lot, and I know it’s more than we have. If we had enough, the mighty Colorado River would still be mighty all the way to the ocean, the Santa Cruz would have water in it year-round like it used to, and so would the San Pedro… which actually did run year-round until the last few years. But no more.

So maybe we ought to be asking ourselves these kinds of questions when we run our air conditioners and flush our toilets and leave the lights on in rooms we aren’t using. Maybe our kids are counting on us asking those questions.

It’s a buzzword that gets tossed around a lot these days. So I decided to find out what it actually means, cos you know, I’m a word guy, right?

Some definitions that came up when I Googled the term:

• The characteristic of being able to coexist with another system indefinitely, without either system being damaged.
• The use of ecosystems and their resources in a manner that satisfies current needs without compromising the needs or options of future generations.
• Sustainable development: The concept of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

The definition that I had formed in my head using merely how I hear it used has been a fuzzy sort of ‘Living in a way that allows you to get along materially without ruining the planet in the process.’

I can’t help but notice the word ‘materially’ in my definition. I suppose it roughly corresponds to the idea of resources and ecosystems. I’ve appreciated the third definition, which does not specifically identify the material. This tells me that the concept of sustainability can apply to human relations and the spiritual as much as it does to the management of resources.

I think it is pretty clear that the way we humans live is unsustainable if we continue killing each other and creating unsafe places for children to grow up, as well as polluting the earth/creating trash/generating waste.

Making sustainable choices means considering our children and their children; making unsustainable choices means failing to consider our children and their children. So it seems to me that making sustainable choices, whether they deal with relationships or resources, the spiritual or the material, is something that God wants us to do. He wants us to honor and love our neighbors as ourselves, be they present among us or as yet unborn. He wants us to love him foremost and specifically to do so by honoring and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

When I think of it that way, it seems like making sustainable choices is more than simply doing the right thing. It becomes an act of worship, just as it is an act of worship to feed the hungry or clothe the naked or care for the sick, the widows, and the orphans.