Category: Sustainable

This week I wanted to focus on some builders who are doing cool things with green housing, even if that housing isn’t necessarily tiny. The first thing that comes to mind is shipping containers which I have written about before. The more I think about it, the more I am enamored by what is being done these days with shipping containers.

A lot of very bright people have really jumped on board with the concept and realized that thousands of unused shipping containers already exist. Currently there are somewhere in the sneighborhood of 18 million shipping containers worldwide. They are highly durable, easily transported and make great elements and building blocks for modular designed homes. Since the shipping containers already exist, shipping container homes are a great way to build inexpensively while going green. A shipping container home is by its very nature, partially green and sustainable, due to the fact that the single largest component in a shipping container home is already built. There are also cost savings with building. Separate components don’t have to be trucked in from points all across the world or country. Instead a shipping container can be sent out to the construction site in one piece.

While shipper containers may only be slightly less expensive than building from wood and other traditional materials, the cost savings really comes into play is during the construction process itself. Homes built using shipping containers can literally be built in half the time.

One of the companies involved in building shipping container homes is SG Blocks. The company name stands for Safe, Green Blocks. This company provides code-engineered cargo shipping containers with an eye toward green construction that is highly sturdy and built to be used for decades to come. SG Blocks realized that modular construction was a major cost savings for construction of all sorts, and they have built their entire company around this notion. The SG Blocks are designed to be impressively strong. For example, each corner post is constructed in such a fashion that they are able to withstand 153,000 pounds of vertical load-each. This makes the design so strong that it is actually highly hurricane resistant.

If you are considering building a shipping container home, SG Blocks might be a good place to begin the process. They have taken a lot of the guesswork out of the process. They are in the business of taking shipping containers and modifying them so that they are very safe and durable. This durability is definitely part of the appeal of building with shipping containers.

Many tiny home builders often consider a variety of materials that are not commonly used in todays cookie cutter homes. One material that you are likely to have never heard of is Papercrete.

Papercrete is a combination of what seems like some pretty unlikely elements. Recycled paper, cement, water and sand are combined to create a material that is surprisingly strong and extremely cheap. Most environmentalists like Papercrete because it uses recycled paper and sand. However, some also dislike the fact that the material also uses concrete. Concrete is sometimes frowned upon as traditional concrete is not a very green building material. That stated, however, the amount of concrete used in Papercrete is far less than in a completely concrete home. The controversy does not end paper there. Many feel that Papercrete, while an interesting concept, is just not a viable building material.

There are a few developments that might be of interest where the future of the material is concerned. Econovate is a company that sees all the millions of tons of paper waste as a real building opportunity. They point to some interesting facts; such as that fifty percent of all paper waste in the UK is actually sent to China for recycling. This process, of course, creates CO2 due to the transport of the paper waste. Econovate feels that if there was a way of dealing with all this paper waste around the world that a major reduction in pollution could occur. Their concept for how to deal with the issue is a pretty brilliant one. The Econovate plan could address both pollution and the global housing shortage.

Papercrete Wall Panels and Papercrete Blocks are two of the ideas that Econovate is currently excited about. Their concept is to actually create wall panel sections and building blocks using Papercrete. The hope is that this very environmentally friendly project would be ready by 2011. The research and development is currently being done in conjunction with the University of Cambridge, and has numerous heavy weights helping with the funding.

What is most exciting about Papercrete is that some bright people decided not to give up on this potentially exciting material. Papercrete is cheap, comparatively eco-friendly, and could help reduce CO2 emissions considerably. If Econovate and the University of Cambridge are successful, tiny homebuilders might have a very cheap new building material very soon.