Eco-innovators
Text: Marjorie Copland. Photographs: Sally Chance and Getty Images/Ikon Images. Article from the March 2012 issue of Garden and Home Magazine.
Building materials are no longer typecast. These green champions have broken new ground and left minimal carbon footprints by building their homes from natural, waste or renewable resources.
Carrying the can
Eco-innovators Wilf and Val Sperryn decided that the ‘greenest’ way to build a new home was by using items other people throw away.
“We looked at every kind of usable waste and the easiest to acquire seemed to be tins,” Val says. “We collected tens of thousands of oil and cool drink cans as we went along the building process.”
Wilf and Val’s house looks no different from any other in the smart Waterfall suburb in KZN where they live. As far as they know, theirs is the first ‘tin house’ of its kind. When they built it in 1993, there were no formally recognised guidelines so Wilf based the structure on the economical Lasak system, which has proved so successful that when they recently knocked out a section of the external bathroom wall, the cans were still perfect.
“For the walls we bolted steel shutters in place, 155mm apart and parallel to each other, and filled the space between with tins. We then covered the tins in a damp concrete mix that we stamped down and left it to to dry overnight. The shutters were then unbolted and repositioned for the next section. The position of the pipes, wiring, plugs and light fittings needed careful planning because they had to be in place before we cast the slab and we had to leave spaces for doors and windows,” Wilf explains.
“The walls were brush-plastered with raw cement on the inside and outside, and I added a thick coat of plaster mixed with a waterproofing agent to the exterior walls.”
Once construction was finished, it was up to Val to make the interiors as ‘green’ as the building. “Expensive finishing materials would have been out of place because of the nature of the house,” she says. “I’ve always said ‘give me a pile of rubbish and I’ll have fun’.” And she has done exactly that, creating furnishings and accessories with sound eco-credentials.
“The countertops and dining sideboard were made from planks of silky oak which were left-over waste in a lumber mill. The ceilings are canvas stretched over gum poles with a supporting pole in the centre,” Val says. “The kitchen sink and splashbacks are mosaic offcuts and multicoloured sweepings from the factory floor. Cushions are also made from fabric offcuts, while throws and rugs are hand-spun mohair.”
With the interior complete, Val started on the driveway and landscaping. She laid the driveway herself using brick offcuts and rubble from brick yards in large circular patterns and surrounded it with an indigenous garden.
Underground movement
When Shongweni, KwaZulu-Natal-based Bill and Inge Nicol’s children left home, they agreed it was time to downsize. Bill, a building crusader and eco-strategist, decided to go the green route and build their new home inside a hill on a piece of land they owned, where they’ve now lived for 14 years.
Bill drew the plans himself and once they were passed, it took just three days to bulldoze the underground space, and a further five years to turn it into a comfortable three-storey home. Once finished, it adhered to safety specifications and proved so impregnable that even floods left not a single drop of moisture inside.
“Everything is bigger and stronger than in a conventional house,” Bill explains.
“The reinforcing bars for the walls, floors and ceilings are 16mm thick, the building blocks are a third of a metre and weigh 27,5kg and our roof is covered with thick waterproofing, plus 500mm of soil.”
At the entrance is a paved patio garden in front of large glass double doors, from which you walk into a large, light living space. “In the front is our lounge and kitchen, which have a view of the outdoors. Beyond that are another lounge, a double garage, two bedrooms and Bill’s CB radio rooms. On the upper level are my sewing room and office, our en suite bedroom, two guest bedrooms and a sauna, which all have ‘rooftop’ windows. On the lower level are cellars, a passage for utilities and kennels for our dogs,” says Inge.
Aside from the fact that it cost less than a conventional house to build, there are also considerable savings on energy because the house is insulated from heat and cold; in summer and winter the temperature remains between 16-23°C. Electricity costs are also minimised as the sunlight, coming straight from ‘rooftop’ windows above, is much brighter than coming in at an angle through conventional windows and it also heats the borehole water.
Natural Resources
David Worral, a pioneer of organic architecture, built his house in Karkloof, KZN, with an almost nil carbon footprint. “My rule was that I would use only natural materials that would cause no major damage to the surrounding area,” he says. After studying the green choices available, he chose cobbing, one of the most affordable and eco-friendly building methods using a mixture of mud, sand, clay and cut straw on a wooden framework. He also decided that everything he used for the interior and exterior had to come from within a 5km radius from his house to minimise his use of petrol.
“Cobbing is the way houses were built 800 years ago and it’s a method that’s particularly appropriate today because the materials are available and affordable in an age of dwindling natural resources,” he says. “In addition, if the mix is right, it has great insulation because the walls warm up or cool down according to the seasons and it’s also weather-resistant. The longer it dries, the stronger it becomes, plus it always smells fresh.”
David dug into the ground for the foundations and put rocks in for drainage. Once he’d lowered the cob mixture into the ground, he walked on it to strengthen it and left it to dry. He then put up a wooden frame tor the walls and filled the spaces with cob. A wattle skeleton, made by fixing twigs or sticks to a timber frame, was used for the roof trusses and the roof was insulated with 5cm of cob mixture. It was waterproofed with a bank of slate and any gaps were filled in with cob. “All the materials I used, found within 5 km, were moved by wheel barrow, even the water,” he says.
David’s term for cobbing is “live-in art”. “Clay is an amazing material and I found working with it a spiritual process. It’s so basic, yet so creative because you can mould it into any shape you want.
I let my imagination run riot and worked out angles, shapes, curves, trimmings and ornamentation as I went along. I even inserted glass bottles from an old shebeen and bits of pottery thrown by my sister.”
The interior was particularly challenging for David’s radius restriction. “I used thrown away items such as poles, some old pine trees and even three derelict tables for kitchen counters. Luckily I found a derelict house within my 5km limit with enough stone and hand-dressed granite for fireplaces. I also used the broken tiles, bonded together with cob, for my floors.”
Nothing in David’s house came from a shop and, when it was finished, everything he used for the interior and exterior cost nothing, except the water tank in the bathroom and his labour.
Equally important, he has taught his labourers his building method and there has been such interest that he now gives talks on his building techniques.
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