Could a Tornado Proof Home Be In Your Future?

I’m sitting here in my office surrounded by earth walls, the temperature outside is a warm 80 degrees plus or minus and the temperature in here is close to 65, actually a little cool to my liking, and I am writing an article to extoll the virtues of earth construction in general and compressed earth block construction specifically. To me it seems like a given that people would prefer a home that is cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, a home that uses a fraction of the energy used by stick and brick homes to make it a comfortable place to live. There is that saying that if it sounds too good to be true then chances are it is and in many respects this does sound too good to be true. So here I am writing on behalf of a process that has been used for thousands of years but is still viewed as a mystery by the vast majority of humanity.

Every home is a complex system of foundation, walls, roof, insulation, windows, doors and interior and exterior finishes. This system that we as builders construct has an inherent amount of issues that are as a result of the choices of materials used. Concrete has its’ issues, lumber its’ issues and yes earth as well. The choices of materials we make all depend upon the compromise between those issues and the cost to surmount them and those costs should include, but not usually, comfort, safety, energy use, sustainability, (yes, there is a difference) longevity, and price just to mention a few. It seems that price is always the biggest issue, however, so this has dominated the consideration for the past century. We all admire those old homes that were built long ago that stand like pillars of strength against the forces of nature yet we build poor imitations, shanties by comparison, in their shadow. The thing that drives this is the cost but now we are realizing that the cost is actually higher than we thought because of the trade offs. We’ve exchanged comfort for price, security for price, jobs for price and longevity for price and now that we are taking a longer view it seems that the price we could afford has actually proven too high. Many of us can no longer afford the energy to make our homes comfortable. Many of us have lost our homes to the forces of nature and many of us can’t even dream of our own homes because of that price tag. So what do we do? What can we do?

Like Americans have always done, we solve the problem and go to work.

Here is my solution:

1. Build with local or at least American resources

2. Build real, sustainable, tornado proof homes

3. Build for your grandchildren

Easy to say but the proof is in the pudding. So here is my version of the truth, my personal opinion begotten from years of building, selling, and yes thinking.

By the way, most of what I am writing is verifiable but since this is my opinion I will leave the research to you if you so desire.

How does building with local and or American resources benefit us. Instead of a diatribe on what has happened I will instead talk about what could happen.

Your, my, local town used to have stores and small shops that made things and in some cases big shops that made a lot of things and those stores and shops employed a lot of people and gave a lot of families wealth. This was a good thing because everybody knew they had to work somewhere to make a living and some folks saw a need and started a business that gave those folk jobs. That was back in the day when most people believed that their work was important and what they made or did was good!

Our present economy is an effect of the cause of 1. laws passed that made making a decent profit unobtainable or worse placing too high a cost on starting a business. 2. The American sense of entitlement that enabled people to think somebody owed them something that wasn’t worked for. This was facilitated by eager politicians who could buy their jobs with our money.

So we have to make our own stuff and use our own stuff, I like to build homes out of earth, sometimes from the house site but always locally, Somebody has to dig it and then haul it but not one grain of it comes from a foreign country or is made with chemicals or plastics. I sometimes use cement or lime that is made locally but I don’t use very much, one, because I don’t need to, but more importantly, because it uses too much energy to manufacture and costs too much.

It’s virtually impossible for some bureaucrat to regulate the use of soil so they pretty much leave us alone and let us make block. Yes they do require standards for construction in most areas but their standards are so low we easily comply. So instead of paying for some product that had to be shipped across the country I can pay a few extra people to work.

I believe this attitude should become epidemic everywhere something is made or grown. Like making fabric near cotton farms, lumber near forests (local forests), steel in america, boots with our leather from our cows. Did you know that tanneries were prevalent across the country up until the 40s? You can blame WWII for the loss of most of those small businesses because manufacturing went national and then we built this huge interstate highway system and fuel was cheap, cheap, cheap! But now, not so cheap so time to go back to work and make our own stuff.

Up until recently tornado proof and sustainable were oxymorons, in order to build a home that could withstand the incredible cyclonic forces of a tornado one had to build with concrete and steel, a lot of concrete and steel. These homes were hugely expensive and inefficient as you can get. I lived in a pumice crete home for a winter in Taos New Mexico and thought I was going to freeze to death. And it didn’t have the excuse of being too big, the square footage couldn’t have been over 200. But as you can see in the videos of destruction the homes affected were stick frame and maybe a brick veneer.

Here is the alternative, 12 inch walls of 100% compacted earth weighing over 100 pounds per cubic foot. This translates to a 1200 square foot home that weighs 60 to 80 tons with the roof tied to the foundation. A home that is cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter and requires less energy to maintain a comfortable temperature. A home that can’t be penetrated by a bullet or a wind driven missile. Yes the windows are vulnerable and we can address that but it would be a lot less expensive to replace a few windows than a whole house. A home that will last for generations not just a few decades and finally a home that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to buy and to own!

We are building these home all over the world and yes even here in the US and we want to rebuild those homes destroyed by storms as well as the new homes scheduled to be built in those areas vulnerable to both tornados and hurricanes. You can find us on the web, just google “tornado proof “ or directly at tornadoproof.us . Some of our associates are listed there as well.

This is a good thing for America, we need jobs and a lot of folks need homes.