Making Green Construction Fun!
Those who create work environments always put the focus on creating work goals. But not always on making the work goals fun, worthwhile and satisfying for everyone doing the work.
In this case I must make the work goals fun, worthwhile and satisfying for everyone doing the work……..
It’s because of the need for Sweat Equity
One of the major efforts of the Small Demonstration Project is how to make the work fun!
The cost of the materials to build the full scale Extreme green Village (or Idea Project) and the Small Demonstration Project are proportionately lower than other Housing projects.
The compressed earth block walls will be 28 inches thick. There is no need for that plastic material vapor barrier that’s used to wrap houses. There’s no need for insulation. The urine divergent feces drying compost system should be cheaper than out of date, wasteful, flush systems.
The barrel vault roof is one the cheapest ways to have a green roof and it might last a thousand years. Look at the Roman Aqueducts. The key is compressive strength.
But the major savings that can be made is in Sweat Equity. Making the work educational and fun!
The cheaper the cost of the construction, the bigger and better the Town Center can be. The more money we can invest in the infrastructure of the Cooperative.
Barn Raisings
The Extreme Green Village will be a model for inexpensive and Green construction. The key is to create an atmosphere where the building of this Idea Project is to use what was successful in a classic barn raising.
Obviously I’ll use any technique to make people want to work on the project. We are building something. I think it’s a good parallel. And I just like to explain the effort as an improvement on the classic barn raising.
What aspects of a classic barn raising attracted people?
Successful Barn Raisings were always very well organized. All the pre-preparation was done. You never run out of anything at a barn raising.
There was a bounty of food. Little kids were playing among themselves safely away from the construction. Everyone wanted to go. It didn’t matter if you would never need a barn yourself.
A Social Event
Barn raisings were the social event of the year. It brought the Community together. It was an opportunity for men to show off their prowess in working hard, working smart and working together. Things have changed now. It will be both men and women showing off their prowess in working hard, working smart and working together. And I want to stress working happy, working supportive to others and working friendly.
New Romance and New Friendships
Barn raisings were opportunities for new romance and friendships. Single men and women showing off to each other. Personality, age and looks meant less when compared to being able to create something bigger than themselves.
Understand, that that barn everyone built was a really big deal. That barn almost guaranteed financial success for that farm and it enriched the community.
I hope you can understand this. Or look it up if you don’t. You’re on the web, after all.
Important Note: Imagine what a 1000+-person Extreme Green Village will contribute to a community.
Building Green, but like a Barn Raising
The Green Barn Raising will be on the weekends.
The days of the week will be for the equally important work of organizing and preparing for the weekends. Contacting and inviting people to come for the weekend. Planning on making it a social event. Experimenting with making the weekends so valuable that people who will not become Coop Members, will still want to come and work just to contribute to the project and experience the Barn Raising atmosphere.
Family, friends and acquaintances. All will come from Church, work, clubs and the neighborhood.
For the kids
Giant swings, giant slides, entertainment. There’s a really interesting device I’ve seen where a child or an adult is strapped to a safety harness and the harness is connected with bungi cords to 2 telephone poles on either side of a trampoline! The bungi cords help you to jump higher than you could on the trampoline and at the same time it keeps you safe by making you bounce straight up and down. I really want create this fun devise because I guarantee you kids will remember it and ask to come back. And I want to use it too.
What I want to create is anything that doesn’t cost much but makes the little kids happy they came and happy to ask their parents to bring them back again.
Music
What kind of Music? I don’t know. The kind of music I would like to have is sound tracks from famous movies like Rocky, Star Wars and others. That would be around the building of the buildings. Around the kids I would have excerpts from Tom and Jerry Cartoons and other cartoons. Music without words.
Of course I’ll let others make the choices too. I don’t care as long as people are having a good time and the work gets done. And they want to keep coming back.
Food and Drink
The food has to be wholesome filling and cheap. Bring your own water bottle and fill it up on ice water, plain tea and sweet tea.
This project has to be made as comfortable as possible for people who aren’t used to working outside.
Shade
The biggest complaint I get from people about working outside in the Austin summer is the sun and sunburn. I want to experiment with covering the whole construction area with sun and rain shades. As an important note. All the sun shades can later be used on the full project!
The Heat
When it’s 100 degrees in the shade swamp coolers can drop that temperature down to feel like 80-85 degrees. The idea is to put the coolers where the work is being done.
Electricity on the Site
The poles that hold the triangular shade and rain protection structures will also hold the electric wires so there won’t be live electric wires on the ground. A big energy waste and a big expense is the use of diesel or gas generators on a construction site.
Experimenting with different Equipment and ways to work so that teamwork can be more fun.
The Forms
There will be a number of wooden forms that will be needed to be built to support the Compressed Earth Block arches. There will be arches over the windows, over the doors and the barrel vault, which is just an arch, extended the length of the roof.
The important point is the form needs to be raised in place. It must be strong enough to support hundreds of pounds for the window and doorway arches and thousands of pounds in the cases of the barrel vaults. Then the form must be slowly lowered until the compressive strength of the blocks form the arch.
Each Compressed Earth Block can weigh up to 40 pounds.
The effort to lift one 40 pound weight over your head time after time can be exhausting. It may be great exercise for some people but it’ll wear you out in a few minutes. I’m looking into wheeled carts and electric chain hoists or an electric lift vehicle the can be used outside in the weather.
Scaffolding
This has to be heavy duty and it has to be on wheels. There are many different types of scaffolding. Many different ways to approach the work. I like the wheeled crank scaffolding but the ones I’ve found only hold 500 pounds. I want them to hold at least two tons. That way I can experiment with doubling the completion speed of building the barrel vault roof using 2 different teams working towards the middle and cutting the last key stone to fit.
A Temporary Steel Arch Building
The first building I’m putting up is a temporary steel arch building. Large enough to keep all the equipment, supplies and a place to make compressed earth blocks when it’s raining.
This building will first be used at the Small Demonstration Project and later at the full sized Idea Project. When its use is ended at the full sized Idea Project it will be used in the next Idea Project. As with all the wooden forms, scaffolding and the large sun and rain covers.
What happens if the Small Demonstration Project is finished being built but the Money isn’t there to start the full scale Idea Project.
There are a lot of choices. We could build individual homes using what we learned on the Small Demo Project. Sell Compressed Earth Blocks. Promote, promote, promote. And keep giving tours.
But the most important thing is to learn to include whole groups of people in building the full size Extreme Green Village. To make it an exciting activity.
To give people the chance to answer the question, “What did you do this weekend?” with the answer, “I built a house!”
Do you see the challenge of making work fun?
Do you see the benefit to the community? Would you like to get involved?