Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Saving the Planet - do we use straw bale?

[Elizabeth Stevenson (lilbert]

You might be familiar with my passionate feelings about urban infill,
affordability, and accessability. I'm also tired of people building on
arable land and calling it green because they use straw bales or mud. Sprawl
is sprawl.

Our homes are so tight that I've never had an electric bill over 50 bucks in
the entire time I've been here. That includes the energy crisis and record
heat the summer before last - weeks of over 100º heat in the Central Valley
of California. Our solar panels on the CH feed energy right back into the
grid, as well as cool the building.

We have 25 homes AND parking, multitudes of fruit trees, many organic
gardens, compost all of our kitchen waste from common meals, brought this
neighborhood back from the brink of decay, all on a tiny 1.2 acre parcel.
Our members were instrumental in getting a neighborhood center built,
further revitalizing this urban community.

Oh, and we managed to make the homes affordable, in part by....




...standardizing construction!

Beat that with straw bale, honey.

-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California


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