Transcript: Building a Green Home

Zen Living

Episode
“Building a green home”

Nicole
Tomlinson: Bau-Biologie, green building, breathing homes. What does this all
mean? It’s about creating a more environmentally friendly living space. This is
George Swanson, a building biologist and he is here to tell us exactly what
that means. Hi George. Would you please go into Bau-Biologie, would you please
elaborate on what exactly that means?

George
Swanson: Ok, Bau-Biologie roughly means building biology. It started about 65
to 70 years ago in villages in Germany where they were studying the health
effects of construction on small villages. And found a direct correlation
between the building materials and the health of the people in the village.

Nicole
Tomlinson: What specifically did they find?

George
Swanson: Well they found one village where they actually relocated an entire
village because people would have four times the cancer rate because of water
courses under the buildings.

Nicole
Tomlinson: Ok, so you’re a building biologist, what exactly is your job
description?

George
Swanson: Primarily at this point we are consulting, but also fully doing design
build for buildings for people with chemical sensitivity. So folks who don’t
really have an option and do have to get out of their buildings.

Nicole
Tomlinson: There homes are toxic to them so you help them to find ways to use
green materials to keep them healthy?

George
Swanson: Exactly.

Nicole
Tomlinson: Great now this is your home?

George
Swanson: Uh, huh.

Nicole
Tomlinson: So George you have developed a very unconventional way for treating
waste water. Can you elaborate a little bit about that?

George
Swanson: Ok, what we are looking at here is a gravel marsh, black water
treatment system. Where all the black water of the house comes into these two
tanks that we see right below us here. And there are four manifolds that come
out from the bottom of those tanks that spreads the black water twenty inches
down into the gravel pit. And then the roots from these plants actually purify
the black water as it runs through.

Nicole
Tomlinson: Now how is this better for us living wise than say the conventional
techniques?

George
Swanson: Well we don’t have to ever empty our tanks for one thing. So the tanks
self clean themselves. And the water that’s discharges from the end of this
gravel bed is fully safe for watering our plants.

Nicole
Tomlinson: so it’s all using everything that comes out of your home and
recycling it back into your garden or you’re…

George
Swanson: Right the water becomes safe its actually full potable water coming
out the other end.

Nicole
Tomlinson: So you could drink it?

George
Swanson: Well, no it’s too nutrient rich. Now you could sand filter it and
drink it. We recently did a system like that. But we want to use it in its full
nutrient rich state.

Nicole
Tomlinson: Thank you so much for having me in your home. Now we spoke before
about a breathing home. Is this qualified as a breathing home?

George
Swanson: Yeah, this particular construction was 12 inch clay treated wood chip
block. That’s treated with a natural clay plaster to create the breathing effect.

Nicole
Tomlinson: What is this little rock bed right here?

George
Swanson: Well this is what we call breathing gill. We try to make this a
signature on most of the homes that we do. It’s actually open to the earth. And
it actually affects the electro magnetic s of the home. We have the natural
earth smells.

Nicole Tomlinson:
Ok, so there’s no foundation here?

George
Swanson: No foundation here. Now this is part of our original cooling system
where this was all plumbed. And this little cove that you see here was
sprinkled with cold water that comes from the bottom of the cistern we saw out
side.

Nicole Tomlinson:
If I was to dig up all these rocks, I would find dirt on the bottom?

George
Swanson: Mostly dirt right.

Nicole
Tomlinson: And do you ever have any trouble with bugs or anything? No water
comes up through there when it rains?

George
Swanson: None of those problems. We will also look at these two Volkswagen car
radiators that are mounted on the wall.

Nicole
Tomlinson: So wait, let’s take that back, Volkswagen car radiators?

George
Swanson: Car radiators, they are run on twelve volts, just like your car is run
off of twelve volts, off the solar system. But this upper one it actually has
cool water that is being pumped from the bottom of that cistern. So the water
is about 61 degrees down there. It just runs over the car radiator with a tiny
fan behind it. Now we are used to feeling like forty three degree air so that doesn’t
feel like really cold air.

 So that why we only turn it down at night too
charge the walls. By charging the walls we mean there is a concrete core in the
middle of this soft clay treated woodchip block and that’s being cooled by what
we call a radiant cool effect.

Nicole
Tomlinson: There’s no radical up and down shifting because of the heat?

George
Swanson: Right because it takes a full twelve hours for the heat or cool to
leave the wall. So we are saturating it at nigh with the cool nighttime
temperature, and then we get the free cooling all day long.

Nicole Tomlinson:
So we talked before about your water bill, let’s talk a little bit about your
electric bill.

George
Swanson: Ok, it is averaging about $35 to $39 a month.

Nicole
Tomlinson: American?

George
Swanson: US, yeah!

Nicole
Tomlinson: That’s insane. Alright so bottom line, what is the average cost of a
typical green home?

George
Swanson: Well, in the last couple of years we have been averaging about
$170-$280,000.

Nicole
Tomlinson: Well that sounds pretty comparable to a conventional home.

George
Swanson: Right most of those homes are between the 1100, 1800, and 2000 square
foot. So about a hundred to a hundred and thirty dollars a square foot.

Nicole
Tomlinson: Ok great. So if you’re looking to live a more sustainable lifestyle green
building is defiantly the way to go. Thank you so much George for showing me
this beautiful green home.

George
Swanson: And thank you Nicole.

Nicole
Tomlinson: From all of us here at Zen Living thank you so much for watching, I
am Nicole Tomlinson and I will catch you next time. Peace.