Lou Host-Jablonski in Building with Clay blog talk-show

Lou Host-Jablonski is principal architect with Design Coalition, Inc., of Madison, Wisconsin. Since 1977, his projects have included multi-family housing & co-housing, childcare centers, new homes & additions, community-built projects, museum exhibits, and community centers.  Lou's areas of professional focus are resource-efficient ('sustainable') design & planning, and environments for children. He speaks regularly to student and community groups and gives frequent media interviews. Lou lives in a straw-clay home, has been active in his progressive EastSide Madison neighborhood for going on 4 decades, served on Madison's influential Urban Design Commission for 12 years, and helped the city to write and implement its "GreenPrint" as chair of the Sustainable Madison Committee"

Hi Lou, Thank you so much for doing this interview with me. There are many different natural building technologies. Would you tell us why did you choose Light Straw Clay (LSC) in the first place?

When I came out of architecture school in the mid-1970s I closely examined every construction system I came across. Back then we didn't speak of "green" buildings nor have the concepts of "sustainability" that we talk about nowadays.  But as a young designer I quickly learned how wasteful construction could be, especially in the U.S.A. I began studying advanced, alternative construction techniques.

I wanted everything in one package.  My ideal system would be low-toxin, affordable, local, materials-efficient, building code-friendly, contractor-friendly, beautiful, long-lasting.  It would be energy-conserving, especially in our challenging Upper Midwest USA climate extremes (Wisconsin for example is moist (± meter of annual precipitation, humidity 20 to 100%) with a broad temperature range, -40 to 38°C in a normal year). And it would be robust, resistant over time to molds, vermin and such, and forgiving to build with.

Impossible, I know; all construction systems have their limitations. But when I discovered light straw-clay in 1990, I realized that it had the potential, with some research work, to come the closest to my ideal system.

You have been researching and building with LSC for over 20 years. Your team has become one of the world leaders in this field. You are working on book of LSC, which we are looking forward to. Can you tell us what surprised you the most over these years while working with LSC?

'Surprised' is a strong word; as an LSC researcher, I work with our team to anticipate and eliminate surprises, at least the unpleasant kind! But if instead of 'surprise', you say rather 'insights', there have been plenty.  

A big one is the direct relationship of density of LSC versus its insulating ability.  Another is how important clay quality—and clay testing— is to the final LSC product. Another is developing an understanding of the physics of moisture movement in and through a wall due to the presence of clay. Another is how easy and seductive it is to 'build heavy' with LSC, and lose insulation value thereby. I'll say a little more on those topics below…

Other insights, of the delightful kind, came from our scientist Douglas Piltingsrud. He devised a way to make reliable measurements of decomposition inside a wall without disturbing it. He uses thermocouples and sensitive temperature probes, because microbial activity creates heat, as anyone who has managed a compost pile knows. Douglas also pointed out that no matter the various densities of LSC mixes, for a given volume the amount of straw is always the same. Only the amount of clay/earth varies. Which makes sense, since earthen materials are generally conductive of heat, not insulating. More earthen content = more heat conductivity.

But I would say that occasionally I do feel surprised at the angst, sometimes even anger, behind some responses we hear to LSC. Mostly of course these come from people who haven't explored very deeply into comparative construction methods. When some folks see the video of our on-site construction process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J0862TFPwU for example, they might say, "It's ridiculously mechanical! All that equipment and energy use! Natural construction should be simple! All you need are hands, feet, a bucket and a shovel!"

What they are failing to observe of course is that all construction requires certain skills, tools and knowledge, no matter what systems you are using. Sorry, but building something well is actually a rather complicated activity, as people who do it for living know. And compared to conventional construction — where all of the factory processes to extract materials and make the insulation and the plasters, with the specialized machinery and all of its energy use, pollution and such is hidden many miles away — with LSC everything is right there on the site.  No matter how simple or technical your chosen methods, with LSC what you see is what you get. And it's under your own control, to manage as ecologically as you wish.

I'm also surprised when occasionally some strawbale proponents may feel attacked, somehow, when I explain the advantages of adding clay to a wall, or point to LSC's centuries of successful history in Europe. I understand the feeling — it takes years and a real investment of study and passion to gain expertise with anything, and one may become quite attached to one's methods as the best and only. But this attachment can sometimes veer into what I might call 'construction zealotry', and perhaps obscure good ideas from elsewhere.

Franz Volhard, Douglas Piltingsrud and Lou examine 700 year old LSC samples in Darmstadt, Germany

I love what you said regarding straw-clay versus strawbale: "I have become convinced from my investigations over the last 20+ years that straw-clay is a construction method that is more durable and more tolerant of all of the environmental conditions and human errors that a wall system must endure". Can you tell us a little more about LSC and the human errors here. What are most common and less common ones? Any examples?

What I meant is that LSC is somewhat forgiving of on-site weather conditions and construction blunders, in general and in this case compared to simple untreated bale construction. This is a practical buildability concern.

A story to illustrate: some years ago we were helping to build a LSC house with a First Nation tribe in the forests of northern Wisconsin. Construction was running late into the year, and the roofing shingle delivery was delayed. So before the snows descended and halted construction, asphalt paper was stapled down to temporarily protect the roof over the winter. Before the shingles could be installed however, an early Spring brought high winds that blew off some of the asphalt paper. Heavy rains followed, cascading down the roof sheathing and draining surely hundreds of gallons of water directly into the top of one of the LSC walls. Disaster.

We traveled to the site to evaluate. Any other wall system would be trashed under these circumstances, and we expected exactly that. But when we took many core-samples and measured internal wall temperatures to check for decomposition, we discovered none. The low winter temperatures had prevented microbe growth, even as soaked as the wall obviously was. We had dodged a bullet. We shingled the roof immediately and allowed the wall to dry out. We watched the wall carefully as it dried over the subsequent months and we decided it was serviceable.

Obviously this is not ideal, certainly not recommended construction practice. But it does serve to illustrate the robust and forgiving nature of LSC.

Buildings have many enemies and we cannot eliminate the really big ones: gravity, UV sunlight, earthquakes, people. Moisture, on the other hand, is one big foe that we can control. That is, moisture in all of its forms, threaten a building both during construction and during the long years of the building's service life. We design with good foundations and sizable roof overhangs, but we always assume that moisture will find a way to enter the parts of a building anyway, someday, somehow. So we also provide moisture with exit routes.

With a straw bale unprotected during construction, one soaking rain and it's game-over for the bale. Especially in our moist climate, an untreated bale has no way to dry from deep inside, so it must be removed or else it will stay damp inside and rot. In contrast, the hydrophilic nature of clay is actually a mechanism which actively draws moisture from the interior of the wall to the surface. The clay in LSC provides a means, integrated throughout the wall, for it to dry itself from the inside out, forever.

Lou discusses advanced LSC framing techniques with a carpenter from the St. Croix tribal nation in Hertel, Wisconsin

For our house myself and my fiance Arek have chosen a very low density LSC 350kg/m3. What is your opinion about very low densities LSC 300kg/m3 and less? What are your experiences? Have you encountered any particular issues with low densities?

The walls of my house are about 235 kg/m3 in density. After 15 years so far, they're just fine. The key to successfully making low-density LSC walls that are cohesive is well-dispersed, high quality clay slip (we call "slip" the mixture of water and clay/earth). By high quality, I mean slip made with an inorganic earthen material (loam) that contains a high percentage of clay, which is as low in silt as possible and hopefully with no sand. We are fortunate that in our area we can usually source high-clay content loams.

To achieve walls of ±210 kg/m3 and lighter, we use only loam with a clay content of 40% or better. The tables at our website [www.StrawClay.org] shows the mixes needed and various properties for a range of densities of LSC.  I must not fail to mention here that a laboratory test is crucial of any loam you intend to use for LSC construction. If you care about creating a well-insulating wall that is also strong and cohesive, you must know accurately what your loam contains — the percentages of clay, silt and sand. Ribbon- or jar-tests are of no help here; they're too inaccurate.

I'm chattering here about insulating value and not enough about wall integrity/stability. Clearly, it's possible to mix LSC with poor clay, or so little clay, or install it poorly, such that it would lack cohesion and fall apart. That would be bad! An exploration of the buildability limits and mix options is a longer discussion, perhaps for another time.  But I do note that your home's construction method using horizontal wooden shutters (in the U.S. we would term it "skip sheathing"), while it may consume more lumber overall, does have the advantage of being able to provide good long-term wall stability, no matter how light you mix the LSC.

In terms of research finding, would you please share with us the results of very low densities LSC? Lots of people in Poland are worried that LSC take long to dry and can go wrong all the way because of the moist and only a bit of clay in the mixture. This make people go with strawbale instead.

In Poland, do you use cellulose insulation?  It is common in the U.S.; it is made from ground-up newspapers, with a little boric acid added for fire resistance. Contractors install it by blowing with a machine, either dry, or damp to make it a bit adhesive. If you are familiar with this type of moist-blown cellulose insulation, you will understand the parallel to LSC: both are damp installations that dry out over some weeks/months, depending on ambient conditions. In a proper LSC installation the mix should be only slightly damp, not wet.

Good clay and proper dispersing of the clay allows you to use the minimum amount of water in the LSC mix, which translates into faster drying times. In working with high-clay loam, the challenge comes in dispersing it effectively and thoroughly in water. It's possible to achieve full dispersion in low-tech ways, although it is time consuming and labor intensive. We're developing medium-tech equipment to efficiently disperse clay and quickly mix slip with straw, and are working on ways to make the process more understandable, accessible and affordable.

For us these issues are very important because our winters are long and cold. We're trying to improve LSC because we are unwilling to cede energy performance just because we prefer to build with natural, local materials. We now commonly build LSC walls of 38cm (15") thickness and achieve densities in the range of 210 kg/m3 (13-14 lb/ft3 — in fact density comparable to that of a common straw bale). Conductivity is 0.087 W/m°K (R±1.7 per inch). We couple this with a "blind stud" wall framing system that minimizes lumber with very little thermal bridging, for quite good structural and thermal performance overall.

We've been developing techniques to make very light straw-clay, reliably and in real-time on a construction site, because the insulating value of LSC varies directly with density. Lighter LSC walls insulate better, along a predictable curve. Franz Volhard of Germany demonstrated this in the mid-1980s [his new book: www.degruyter.com/view/product/457066], and our Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin confirmed it in 2004 [PDF report available at:http://www.designcoalition.org/StrawClay/research/rvalue.htm]. Our plan for the upcoming LSC book is to provide more complete information and practical, hands-on advice. A Polish translation would be fantastic, if that is in the stars.

Would you like to tell us a little bit about your Polish roots Lou?

My grandfather and grandmother were young Polish immigrants to the U.S. around 1900, he as a laborer from Chodybki and a large nearby farm with a Russian landlord and she as a small child from Poznań. Years later they met and married in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and had 4 children.  My father spoke only Polish until starting primary school; then his parents required all their children to learn and speak only English. Milwaukee at that time had many diverse immigrant communities, so it was important that they would blend in.  I remember my father telling us that there were likely more Jablonskis in Milwaukee than in Warsaw.

I speak no Polish, but I've always wanted to find a way to visit Poland. Our family has heard rumors of a small place where live many tall Jablonskis. Of our 10 siblings no one is shorter than 183cm, including the sisters, and two brothers are 2.06m and 2.08m. Someday I'd like to find that place.

Lou guides the students of Spring Harbor Middle School in building a LSC teaching greenhouse, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Thank you again Lou. It was a pleasure to talk to you. 



To find out more about our favorite natural building technology Light Straw Clay please go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J0862TFPwU
http://www.designcoalition.org/articles/Natural_LHJ/liteclay.htm
http://www.designcoalition.org/articles/Lansing-LHJ/research/Ktesting.htm

Suzie Cahn the first guest of 'Building with Clay blog talk-show'

My guest today is Suzie Cahn. Suzie is a Permaculture Designer and Educator, Lecturer, Artist and an Art Therapist. Along with her husband Mike, Suzie runs Carraig Dúlra Permaculture & Organic Farm in Ireland. In Irish, Carraig means rock and Dúlra means nature. Carraig Dúlra is a space where a variety of educational and community initiatives take place. These include: researching and teaching organic growing, permaculture, gardening for bio-diversity, sustainable and traditional skills, natural building, primitive living (or bushcraft), nature courses for children and families, and creative healing workshops combining Art Therapy Techniques with Eco Pscyhology and Nature, as well as, other gatherings and events.

Hello Suzie. Welcome to ‘Building with clay blog talk-show‘. Thank you so much for accepting my invitation. How are things in Carraig Dúlra?

Thanks Anna, they are very good this year. We have had one of our most productive years since setting up. The fantastic long summer helped, but also just at a certain stage of development after you have built up fertility in the ground and in the community things just start moving better. We have been particular pleased with progress on our naturally built barn.

 

Suzie, you are giving workshops and lectures on many topics like art therapy, permaculture, gardeninig. What is your motivation? What do you want to achieve through your teachings?  

Yes the offerings are diverse just like nature itself. This is part of natures resilience and hopefully mine too. But nature is really the central theme that holds everything I do together. Nature connection is something many people have lost or are in danger of losing. I believe that for humans, our health and well-being, the health of our communities, and our planet maintaining, repairing and developing nature connections is vital. I think there is a way for everyone to do this. Somebody may connect to themselves and nature through creative means using the arts, (which all take nature as inspiration even if that is human nature and expression), others go directly into nature, and some people connect through growing food or building with natural materials. I try to facilitate people in all of these.  

You are a big entusiast of community initiatives. What could be done to make them more popular and effitient local and globalwise?   

In the competitive growth and business model, communities suffer. However, I think new ways are emerging to build community initiatives in fairer ways. More people are taking responsibly for making their communities sustainable and resilient. I think this is because it ultimately benefits more people than competing or waiting for centralised governance structures to fix things. I work within the idea of collaboration or 'commons': where each contribute to their own ability and everyone who contributes benefits fairly. The benefits of this are that value is created within the community and those who make the value share in it. An example is our co-created barn, many students, volunteers, friends and professionals collaborated by design in the build. The value to us is a nice barn on our small-holding, the value to students was real world design and practical learning experiences, to volunteers there were social experiences, learning and the sense of contributing to something bigger than themselves, and some people were also paid for their skills or as a tutor thus benefiting by making a livelihood. An additional value was that environmental impact of the methods used were minimised by using local resources and so local global environment benefits.

Sharing examples of practice local through open days and reaching a wider audience through documenting new approaches, successes and lessons learned through the internet is a great way to make things popular around the world. Searching for permaculture, natural building, and so on on the internet yields hundreds of positive examples that inspire people to try new approaches that we need to adapt to current global challenges.

Photo by Carraig Dúlra Organic & Permaculture Farm

Suzie, you have set up a meeting group in Wicklow town called ‘Wicklow Community Garden Group’. What is the purpose of this group and who can get involved?

I set up that group back in 2006, and its purpose was to catalyst community gardens in my county. Along with others I recruited, I ran a series of talks and presentations about community gardening examples from Ireland and around the world. I followed up with any group in the county who was interested in starting and over the next few years a large number of gardens got going. There are still new gardens popping up all the time as word spreads about their benefits, learning about growing, social spaces, a place to meet different types of people and reclaiming neglected spaces in communities. I still help any group that wants to get going but the Wicklow Community Gardening Group fulfilled its aims and disbanded recently.

I always wanted to tell you this Suzie. I absolutely love what you call a ‘mid-life crisis gap year’. My fiance Arek and I, we did not have a chance to have our gap year in our 20-ties. When I heard about your recent WWOOFing experience it just gave me the hope that I can still do it one day. Would you tell us a little more about your WWOOFing in Europe?

I think that for me it is necessary to step outside of our lives to gain perspective and in addition I love adventures and travel. I didn’t want having children to stop that and I believe it benefits them giving them multi-cultural understanding which helps create tolerant adults. So we have taken a number of big and small trips as a family. Wwoofing for 6 months in Italy, France, and Croatia was the longest when our youngest was 2. We got to live inside other peoples lifestyles and contribute to their projects. This really helped us re-design our own on our return. We’ve travelled by train couch surfing across the USA and walked 100 kilometres of the Camino de Santiago with our children, and last summer we drove from Ireland to Mongolia with them on a charity trip. We passed through England, France, the Czech republic, Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakstan on route. We were able to visit former students and volunteers along the way. I taught some permaculture workshops in Poland and Mongolia. These experiences gave us a new perspective and helped us appreciate all we had back home in Ireland.

Photo by Carraig Dúlra

While traveling in Europe you also visited Poland and gave the lecture there. Where was it? What was the lecture about and how did you like Poland?

Yes the workshop in Poland was in a community called Bukowiec near Łodź, and I found the people very receptive to the ideas of sustainable design and food production methods. I really loved Poland. The people and the ancient forests. They were like something out of my childhood traditional stories full of mystery and like stepping into a living organism. We don’t have truly wild places like that in Ireland we lost much of our forest cover in the last century and being such a small Island you find that people have almost explored every part throughly.

The other interesting term you are using is NDD (Nature Deficit Disorder). How is Ireland dealing with it comparing to other European countries? What you think could help in this case?

I think that Ireland like the rest of the world is increasingly urban over 50% of people now. However, even our largest cities are small in a world context and Dublin our largest has one of the biggest city parks in the world. So Irish people do still have access to nature but the consumer and media entertainment dominates a lot of peoples time outside of trying to make a living. So the shopping malls are as full as the parks, beaches and mountains especially in winter. I think children here are increasingly scheduled into activities due to pressures on their parents and over exaggerated fears of stranger danger. This means that the childhood I experienced and give to my own children of long periods of unstructured time in nature is rare. This leads to an adult population disconnected from the natural world who have trouble having empathy for the plight of nature under threat from expanding human activities. So letting our children back out into the wild and remembering or discovering its delights for ourselves is a great way to help. In the USA there is a growth of nature clubs with families going out together to explore nature.

The last couple of months were very busy for you and Mike. You have organised a good few workshops like cob & cordwood also permaculture workshops… Please tell us more about this year activities on the farm.

Photo by Carraig Dúlra

We have been involved in natural building on many projects and wanted to have a big project of our own to try out all we had learned. Some learning has to come from trying something out. We co-designed with students and others a round barn. We wanted to use local natural materials for ecological and sustainable reasons but also because these materials are wonderful to work with in a community way. They are also a way to empower others. Our food and shelter systems along with other elements of modern life have been increasingly technological. I believe that giving people the skills to provide their own food and shelter is a great empowerment tool. Some people ask is it going back in time to older out of date ways of doing things and in some ways the answer is yes. We have much to learn from our traditional lives that pre-date the era of cheap fossil fuels as we need to reduce our dependance again. However, we can apply much modern thinking, innovation and science to natural building today to create spaces that are very appealing and functional in a modern sense. This is the key to good permaculture design blending the old with the new but doing so under an ethical framework of earth care, people care and fair share.

Photo by Carraig Dúlra Organic & Permaculture Farm

One of the recent Carraig Dúlra’s projects is to build the barn. This is very interesting piece of natural building combining couple of different techniques. Would you tell us a little bit about the barn? What is the purpose of it, what stage are you at and what are the techniques used there?

We will use the barn as a farm building but also a wonderful sheltered space for groups visiting the farm to learn. One thing about building with natural materials in a designed way is that the siting of the building and the orientation, the context is taking into consideration. So also are the materials used in different parts. In our barn, we placed it at the entrance to the site as a striking image for people arriving to the farm. We oriented the large windows to the south built into solid cob (clay/straw/sand) to let in light and capture heat. The north part of the barn is built with straw bale for insulation and the west has a lean to part for shelter from our wet winds. The roof is grass sod a cheap way to create a living roof.

On your farm you are offering a wide range of volunteering options. That looks like a great idea for a family day out. Please tell us what we can learn while helping in Carraig Dúlra?

We really welcome people to come and find their niche. In nature, every creature and plant has a niche where they meet their needs and at the same time contribute to the surrounding eco-system. We like to do the same for our volunteers. Sometimes, people help with the poultry, the gardens, forest garden, or new native woodland. Other times, they help with building projects or administration tasks. It all depends. We also create custom courses for groups from our expert tutor panel making a day, weekend or longer exactly what people are looking for mixing all the things we offer.

Photo by Carraig Dúlra

What are the plans for the next months workshops and activities in Carraig Dúlra? What can we expect in the near future?

We have had a couple of year of reflection on our activities and getting ready to continue. Mike and I invested our passion and our savaging in starting the project and getting everything to this stage of development. We need to put Carraig Dúlra on a firm financial footing to continue doing what we do. So we have up-graded our public image with a new website and I have started a blog called “the naked permaculturist” a bit of a tongue in cheek way of taking about “stripped down” or simple living. We are reaching out to new markets and our travels and students and volunteers made us realise the huge interest in Ireland and the rest of the world in the kind of learning we offer.

Would you like to add anything else Suzie?

Your blog interview came at a very good time for us because, I think that people in Poland and Polish people in Ireland and other eastern europeans don’t want to repeat the mistakes of growth based economics on a finite planet. They see the value in sustainable development and have a great opportunity to be examples to other countries so want to learn all they can about permaculture its applications in food, building and other areas. We would be very interested in finding ways to host people on courses maybe with translators as I had in Poland to learn and share experiences.

It's been great talking to you Suzie. I appreciate your time. Arek and I are wishing you all the best ;)

To find out more about Suzie, Mike and Carraig Dúlra please visit their  website www.dulra.org and Suzie's blog suziecahn.com/blog. Make sure you check Carraig Dúlra fan page for the updates. You might also join Carraig Dulra Volunteers Group on facebook.

Natural Building and Sustainable Lifestyle talk-show is coming soon

Interviews with inspiring people as blog posts?

Yes. I will be launching this new series on our blog soon. It's going to be called 'Building with Clay Talk Show'. I will be interviewing people who I find inspiring in natural building and sustainable lifestyle world. Those are going to be people who are passionate about what they do and just passionate about Nature itself.

But why to do the talk show? 

• reason number 1 is to promote natural building and sustainable life style
• reason number 2 is getting the answers for the questions I always wanted to ask
• reason number 3 is making my childhood dream come truth, the dream was to have my own talk show on telly just like Oprah, talk to those inspiring people, learn form them and just get inspired, and every time to wear the most amazing shoes!

I know that some people might think that having a blog talk-show is a bit crazy idea. But you know what? For some people even building a clay house is a madness. Isn't it ;)


Building With Clay Blog Talk Show S01E01 is coming soon 

Our first ever virtual photography exhibition

Have you ever been to virtual photography exhibition about building a clay house? We either :)  This is why we have organised one, here, now on our blog. 



You have already seen our photos from construction site. This time we a little treat for you. Our friends Zuzia & Waldek form Positive Art Photography have done a few pictures for us. Please see below and let us know what you think. This is a our construction site from a really different perspective, from a grunge perspective or you may even say with the little twist of the 80'ties.

Credits for the photos: Zuzia & Waldek  Positive Art Photography