GARY DUNCAN FROM SMARTSHELTER NETWORK
Natural Building in the American Southwest Slide Show and Talk

Nov 8: Wed Ojai...7pm Happy Valley School Auditorium, contact Dave White,
Ojai Permaculture Guild, 805-646-9809; artdetour@mac.com.Zalk Theatre 8585 HWY 150,
Nov 9: Thursday Santa Barbara..... , 7:00pm at the Santa Barbara Public
Library Main Branch Downtown, Faulkner Gallery, donation $3, contact 962-2571
or sbpcnet@silcom.com. The Sustainability Project,Cohearts, Mac's Solar, Community Environmental Council
Nov. 10: Friday San Luis Obispo... 7pm at the Community Room at the SLO Library
co-sponsored by HopeDance (544-9663), Sustainable Building Council, CC Permaculture Guild
and the Canaries of the Central Coast, Future Electric


Positive Solutions with Natural Building Margie Bushman

Smart Shelter Network
Positive Solutions with Natural Building Introduction

Last April South Coast Permaculture Guild did a presentation on Earthships as a part of our monthly meeting at the Community Environmental Council in Santa Barbara, California. In the audience was Gary Duncan, from Smart Shelter Network in southwestern Colorado, and we were lucky enough to spend time with him before he left Santa Barbara, and learn of his immense knowledge of natural and alternative building design.

Strawbale, cob, and adobe. We've all heard about them, maybe even dreamed of owning one, but what exactly is involved in building one of these non- conventional structures? Since they have been around for so long, why don't we see more them?
   Gary Duncan had many of these same questions and a curiosity to learn more. He began Smart Shelter Network as a result of an illness caused from many years of working with toxic building materials. He had also observed how many alternative building structures were being built in his corner of southwestern Colorado, and conceived the idea of forming a network to share and exchange knowledge on this vast subject. This network would not only share information on how to build, but explain what was involved in financing, insuring and permitting these structures. This wonderful vision became a reality and now the
network provides advocacy and education to the public, code officials, bankers, material suppliers, and the media. It is composed of members who form tasks forces to learn about specific issues, such as water catchement, ferro cement, strawbale, bamboo, pressed earth block and more.
        Gary will share his experiences in an upcoming lecture and slide show (see ad in this issue for specific details) with over 3000 slides of documented case studies he has collected over the last six years..

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POSITIVE BUILDING SOLUTIONS  by gary duncan
Where’s the positive way out? As news of the increasing destruction of our planetıs environment escalates, more and more people are seeing that effective personal action is not only advisable.but absolutely necessary.
Gandhi kept turning our attention, often focused on other people’s action,back to the real origin of responsibility back to ourselves.
Pro-active environmentalism is necessary. We need to be pressuring the electric energy producers, developers and auto manufacturers to turn the course of global warming and resource depletion around.
But the lionıs share of effective changes will come not from those who produce commodities, but from changing the way we consume them. This is called demand side management.
Of all the purchases we make in a life-time, the buildings we live and work in pack the largest environmental wallop we finance as consumers. They are responsible for the loss of old-growth forests.
They are heated and lit with electricity...the number one contributor world-wide to global climate change. 30% of these  harbor toxins sufficient to produce environmental illness in their dwellers.(according to the EPA and World Health Organization)                                                            

There are a couple of beacons of hope on the horizon. Some of them are delightful surprises, which is often characteristic of profound solutions to perplexing problems.
Bucky Fullerıs concept of “Synergy” stated the seemingly impossible. He insisted that solutions could be found.Solutions which will produce more energy than they require to create. Strawbale Hybrid Solar Design is just such a solution. A natural home built of soil and bales not only reduces the slaughter of
trees, it produces super-insulated, sound-proof, affordable homes for those with the spirit to step out of the ordinary and build one.

After youıve felt the interior ambience of these 'Natural Homes'. Of which Iıve been through a couple of hundred now, you realize Buckyıs synergy extends to the subjective and spiritual realm as well. These homes feel and live on levels impossible to describe until youıve felt them and definitely far above that of
conventional dwellings.

The second irony of natural homes has to do with their cost and the attitude of their owners. We have found here in Western Colorado that people who go the extra mile in considering the environmental impacts of their homes have a definite tendency to wind up in them at 10-30% less cost than those who
3are selfish and donıt care. We canıt explain that, but we know for a fact that itıs a verifiable pattern.Much of the experimental era in Natural Building is over. The cutting edge explorers willing to tackle raw desert and isolation to create this new architecture have already laid the foundation for the most profound change in the history of the American Building Industry. There is no longer any doubt that
agricultural waste products and soil can save our forests and produce better buildings. Load Bearing Strawbale and hybrid designs are tried, tested, and in many jurisdictions, already approved. These techniques are now spreading from new construction projects to application in retrofit of existing homes.

These are techniques you can use today in the house you already live in. You donıt need to wait to be able to afford a new one.
There are several hotbeds across the nation where natural building is flourishing. The area of Southwestern Colorado from Aspen to Pagosa Springs (roughly equivalent to the area from San Luis Obispo to San Diego) hosts 200 known strawbale buildings (of which 28 are load-bearing), 50 earthships, 2000 adobe structures and healthy smatterings of rammed earth, cob, poured adobe, non-
toxic and reclaimed structures. This is the highest documented per-capita utilization of sustainable building techniques in the United States.

In the years to come, the availability of healthy homes(especially for those of us with environmental illnesses) and the right to build sustainably may depend on entities similar to the Smart Shelter Network which documents, studies, photographs and advocates natural building in this mountain area with
bankers, insurers, builders, code officials and politicians. It acts as an independent, business-based to support sustainable building, in sharp contrast to the lobby interests of the multi-national corporations who produce manufactured building products and write the building codes.

Southern California already has some of the ingredients necessary in the California Strawbale Association , Sustainability Project, the Green Building Alliance in Santa Barbara, the Sustainable Building Council of the Central Coast and Ecohome Network located in Los Angeles and South Coast

Permaculture Guild and it's related guilds in Southern California. It has an arsenal of talent in people like  Architect Jim Bell who brought us Santa Barbaraıs one of first strawbale project and Dennis Allen of Allen and Associates and Wes Roe and Margie Bushman of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network.

Networks like Smart Shelter take natural building into the business realm, creating and supporting jobs and a professional class dedicated to sustainability. It establishes credibility with politicians, financiers and code officials by objectively studying and documenting large numbers of natural building techniques. Entering itıs 5th year in Colorado, the Smart Shelter service area does not contain a single code jurisdiction which does not support strawbale construction. This works and the reason why is that it bases its resources and advocacy on the professional building community as well as the person building or remodeling their own home.

On Nov 9 Smart Shelter and the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network will present at the Faulkner Library Santa Barbara Public Library at 7pm donation $3 an1 1/2 hour slide show on natural building in Western Colorado...the majestic scenery, the million dollar strawbale homes, the converted WWII
quonset huts with adobe sun rooms an armchair tour of some of the most vibrant natural architecture in America and the characters who create it.

On Sat, Nov 11 Smart Shelter will produce a half-day workshop geared toward creating a Network of this type in Southern California (1-6 pm, CEC Gildea Resource Center, Santa Barbara).

For slide show and workshop information <sbpcnet@silcom.com>.

For information about Smart Shelter Network www.smartshelter.com.

By Special Request of the speaker this event will be “FRAGRANCE FREE”


Margie Bushman is a organizer and board member of the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, she has been active for over 3 years bringing programs and teachers to Santa Barbara.

Gary Duncan is a fourth generation native of Western Colorado. His academia background is in mathematics ,physics and architectural design. He has 35 years of building experience, forming Smart Shelter Network after experiencing an illness caused from years of working with toxic building materials, an observing the unsustainability of his profession

CONTACT Margie Bushman at 962-2571 or sbpcnet@silcom.com





Santa Barbara
Permaculture Network
224 E. Figueroa St, #C
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
805/962-2571
sbpcnet@silcom.com

Santa Barbara
Permaculture Network
224 E. Figueroa St, #C
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
805/962-2571
sbpcnet@silcom.com