While there is a lot to be said for building codes, I sometimes wonder if the increasing strictness applied to individual homes is a way to ensure nobody has the option to affordably build their own home with their own hands.

(Though I only wonder, I'm not sure - because I really appreciate how great modern insulation and fire/earthquake safety is)

The CO2 produced for the manufacture of structural concrete (using ~14% cement) is estimated at 410 kg/m3 (<200kg/tonne)[0]

Bricks are around 0.5kg CO2 per kg produced (500kg/tonne). Bricks have bit lower (but similar) density than concrete, say 2000kg/m3. That makes them a lot more pollutant than concrete. Brick require a lot higher labour and transport costs as well.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285041812_Embodied_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned_house_horizon

Well, the wikipedia link that you provided says that there is no evidence for that claim since the houses were destroyed in the burning. Two possible explanations on wikipedia for why it was done are recycling of building material and symbolic end of houses.

I doubt there's a wide-ranging conspiracy to stop people from building their own houses in the western world. I'd rather you not build a rickety ramshackle hovel next to my house. That's why we have building codes. You're certainly able to build your own house, but it can't fall over onto mine, or cause a citywide fire, or be built with poisionous elements, or ...

I recently moved from a house built in 1918 to one built in 1965, and the complexity of the construction is immediately visible. The 1918 wood struction was rough hewn compared to the stuff in my 65 house. All the walls are straight in the 65 house. The 65 house stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. I don't have constant critter intrusion. That's just moving from a 100 year old house to a 60 year old house! The new construction in our area (all high quality - they knock down one of the old 1918 houses to build a new one, no idea about tract houses) takes the efficiency and performance a level up.

This is all possible through improving building codes - no one would bother with this stuff if it wasn't required.

Looking up Earthships can be a good starting point (though many of those are desert climate focused as well, it's not a necessity) for further research.

That's why our typical "vernacular architecture" is log cabins, not mud brick structures. Different advantages and disadvantages. Different construction process. Different materials. But still more sustainable than concrete.

However I will challenge you on plumbing and electrical. RVs, Boats, and Vans have plumbing and electrical. There are wood burning stoves that are made to be used on small sail ships. If you look at the indian subcontinent water receptacles at the top of the roof is just a normal part of life.

You could just as easily add solar, a stove and composting toilets to your fort and it would become quite livable by most peoples standards.

These are obviously expenses, but it can be done relatively cheaply depending on what level of comfort you personally require. I for one would be fine skipping showers and having occasional power cuts at night.

Getting the services to the property are the most expensive part.

Fully self-sufficient (septic tank, water well and generator/solar) would be pretty expensive but still mostly a case of digging dirt and putting basic components together.

Or you can simply look at the results on the ground.

Afghanistan (where mud brick and adobe are popular construction materials) recently suffered several earthquakes in the magnitude 6 range.

Death toll: many thousands.

Anchorage, Alaska (which has modern building codes that exclude mud bricks and the like) suffered a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 2018.

Death toll: zero.

No. Reinforced concrete crumbles after a few decades due to steel expanding under corrosion (rust takes more volume than steel, making the concrete crack, increasing corrosion, and so on). So reinforced concrete is tougher, and stronger, but also much less durable.

> Afghanistan (where mud brick and adobe are popular construction materials) recently suffered several earthquakes in the magnitude 6 range.

> Death toll: many thousands.

> Anchorage, Alaska (which has modern building codes that exclude mud bricks and the like) suffered a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 2018.

> Death toll: zero.

Turkey this year, where many building where from the late 90 and later and build out of reinforced concrete (but without state-enforced regulation).

Death toll: many thousands. Eh!

Reinforced concrete doesn't make buildings earthquake-proof, (properly enforced) earthquake safety regulations do.

They didn't follow the building codes, and were poorly constructed out of sub-standard materials, it's unsurprising things went horribly wrong.

> Reinforced concrete doesn't make buildings earthquake-proof, (properly enforced) earthquake safety regulations do.

This is caused by pore water. By comparison, mud bricks crumble instantly if they get wet, not "after a few decades".

> Reinforced concrete doesn't make buildings earthquake-proof, (properly enforced) earthquake safety regulations do.

Compared to mud bricks? Yes, yes, it does.

I'm sorry, reinforced concrete is a better building material than unbaked mud bricks by every possible metric, except maybe cost..

No… That's fascinating that we are having this discussion honesty. This shows you don't have any idea about how this works but are here saying nonsense with a sense if self satisfaction… FYI mud brick don't collapse when they're “wet”, soaked maybe they could but unless you put them in water or leave it unprotected from the top during monsoon, it's not happening.

> Compared to mud bricks? Yes, yes, it does

Yet Turkey… But hey, I know you don't give a shit about facts, you've just shown it above

> I'm sorry, reinforced concrete is a better building material than unbaked mud bricks by every possible metric, except maybe cost..

Ever heard of CO2 emissions?

There are adobe structures dating all the way back to 500 BC [1] - if you've got the climate of Iran or Yemen or New Mexico it holds up adequately, especially if you only need a single storey.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe

The video talks about "no cost at all", except it ignores the massive amount of labour and time required to hand make bricks from mud and go from there.

Later on the video talks about ancient structures (pyramids, great wall, etc) that withstood the test of time, ignoring the MASSIVE human cost associated with building those things. How many people died housing a small handful of elites? In what living accommodations did thoses slaves find themselves?

I can guarantee you that if ancient pharoahs had access to glass and concrete they would have used it. Especially if it made it cheaper or quicker to build what they wanted.

How do you house the population on this planet without making use of cheap to produce, scalable and durable materials such as steel or concrete?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37927320

On the other I'll point you to this common structural building material:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_block

Even if you used just cement and water I think you would get more than 12L from 25kg.

>Even if you used just cement and water I think you would get more than 12L from 25kg.

The thing will crack very soon. The density of concrete is around 2.4g/cm3

Bricks were made for uniformity so you could have it as a known quantity and spit them out of an assembly line. If you're making bricks, you've already lost this game.

> binding material or mortar should be of the same constituency as the brick or stone white gypsum and sand mortar go well with sandstone mortar made of lime clay and sand is suitable for our newly developed mud bricks

https://youtu.be/f_q1pYl80pc?si=sP1GwbWT3UfFVsBW&t=371

https://helioscsp.com/concentrated-solar-power-for-high-temp...

https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/421794-the-next-solar-re...

Concrete costs about $160 USD per cubic meter both in the USA and in Zaire (first African country I cound find a price), that works out to $4 USD a 35 kg bag, but in this case it's mixed and ready to pour.

If concrete factories were more common there there, I'm sure the price would be comparable for a material that is easier to work with, requires far less labor, etc etc. But they don't, and their traditional techniques work well for the area they're in. The moral to this story is, use what's local and does the job, and I feel like the only thing I got out of the video is some cool visuals of dudes building with bricks.

Of course, clay has a lot of benefits over concrete. It's lighter, insulates better, they can dig it out of the ground!

The content of the video is specifically directed at people of the developing world:

> this is the catastrophic reality I say in developing countries we have to go back to using natural building materials. historically we have a very rich examples of vernacular architecture that still stands we have to go back to our traditions to learn from but in the same time keeping up with the immense scientific progress so that a person from the 21st century can enjoy modern life commodities examples from South of France and Germany

"i'd rather build my house with my own earth than go into debt, Green Architecture, Africa"

Cost and labor are two different things, especially for people whose market assign very little monetary value for their labor.

Plus the fact that many places (including the US) have tax burdens >= 50%.

So if it would cost $50K to hire a contractor to build a minimal house (labor + materials), we'd have to first sell $100K of our own time.

On top of that we'd be be fighting an uphill battle against inflation and land scarcity.

So it really doesn't take much for this kind of thing to be worthwhile.

Those people get approximately the same amount of lifespan as anyone else (even less, in most cases). If they use up more of their lifespan making mud bricks (by hand!) rather than learning to read, spending time with their families, or maybe even just having fun, that is a waste of their lives, regardless of what monetary value the local economy puts on their time.

> Then (reinforced) concrete is pretty much the opposite of durable, at least with the current “cheap and scalable” technology we use today with steel rebar that corrode and eventually destroy the structure.

Less durable than unbaked mud bricks? I'm... skeptical, to put it very mildly.

That's not "trolling". Those are simply facts.

The presenter does mention several times "to build your own house" and it seems to be focused on impoverished communities or individuals. This would take a lot of time and labour, but it does not necessarily beget the use of forced/unethical labour.

That amused me too but I don't see a massive amount of labor.

I do quite intense physical labor. The guy making the bricks is using only one tiny tool. You can do the same with knee pads, using tables, you can put them on plates before you put them on the ground.

I cant see how long mixing takes but say he does 1 brick in 5 seconds. Thats 12 per minute! Say we want a wall 24 bricks wide and uhh 30 tall. That takes only 60 minutes! You.. ok maybe not you... but someone used to the work can make 8 such walls in a day!

When I was 18 I got out of school with a diploma as an electrician. Most kids didn't find a job, I got one because I was just that good. I wire houses for 2.40 euro per hour. My boss charged the customer 25 euro. The houses were sold for roughly 40 000. Today the 40 000 euro house costs about 280 000. My hours are in those houses! People are buying my labor for 73 times my earnings.

I earn a lot more now of course but to buy one for 280 000 at that salary I would have to work 116 667 hours or 2917 weeks 40 hours or 56 years.

Say my salary grew from 2 to 14 euro or 6 euro on average. Then it is only 46 667 hours, 1167 weeks 40 hours, 23 years.

I would have to rent and eat too of course! Say I would have been able to live on only 5 euro and save 1 each hour. Then it takes 135 years.

in 135 years I could make 201 601 440 bricks. Enough for 10 large cathedrals.

> cheap to produce, scalable and durable materials such as steel or concrete?

Cheap as in no matter how hard you work you never gonna get one?

Don't bother with the bricks, just make cob walls a meter thick. It will last until the next ice age.

Such initiatives have to be supported, or at least, not illegal in the country, so that it prevents any local dictator with 100 citizens from his power trip on vulnerable population

Edit: https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/bretagne/finistere/j...

That they had cleaned up the landfill is rather irrelevant, and in fact it means that the terrain might not have been constructible at all.

Even if their project was interesting, as far as I can tell was destroyed because they didn't follow the established rules and built it illegally. But I might be wrong, feel free to send references for this thing.

Well, isn't "following construction rules" basically means "use concrete and established plans"? I hope i am wrong, but sounds like it's just impossible to satisfy regulations while building something from dirt and grass

Build things that use materials that aren't fire hazards and have been engineered to support themselves and the stresses they should survive are the primary imperatives of residential construction. The only reason the house I escaped a 2018 firestorm survived was that it was built to code. And the reason the house I was in in 1989 didn't collapse from a massive earthquake was it was also built to code. DIY lacking principles and conventions of civil engineering aren't cool, they're stupid for playing Russian roulette presuming they "know better". There are plenty of nontraditional housing projects that still follow sensible engineering principles.

Two tribunals at two different levels (additional authorities separate from the mayor) judged that they were wrong.

I would argue that you did not explain the actual situation honestly.

> Well, isn't "following construction rules" basically means "use concrete and established plans"?

It does mean that you need to submit plans beforehand. Concrete is absolutely not a hard requirement in France.

But building in a natural protected zone without a permit is asking for trouble. Maybe a small wooden shed would have been ok.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjyGOOtOFik

How to add a doorway/window...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EFWOXjvAU

How to add electrical and plumbing conduits...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfd2_MoNxI

Might not be the best videos, but there's plenty to choose from.

In the process, the mind will be forced to learn many new concepts. Lessons of project management and time management will be learned. The body will be excercised and muscle mass added, becoming more attractive to the opposite sex.

Hunt, gather, garden.

It's not an easier path, but perhaps it is a better path than slowly rotting away (mind and body) in an air conditioned cubicle.

> decided to save up $500K

For most people this is called "retirement"; by the time you've hit that total, you're over 60 and needed somewhere to live in the meantime.

I would say, the goal should be to accomplish this without much money. Any money spent will add to the co2 footprint. (you can buy a lot of gas/concrete/coffee/meat/plastic/clean water... for that kind of money.)

I'm not using concrete at all, I am reusing foundations, and mostly sustainable domestic wood and other recycled materials. I've been taught from a fairly young age about carpentry so I'm not ultra-green and I do use some local tradesmen, which I'm learning a lot from. I plan to do some more of my own projects so it's been great to work with them and gain more insights into how they work.

I've learned an incredible amount, there is something ultra inspiring and rewarding for me when working with physical material. I find it sort of unlocks parts of my brain I forgot I had. Working in the third dimension I guess?

Also, remember all that math you learned in school but hardly use? Well you'll likely be revisiting at least some of it! Which feels awesome.

Regarding the time management, project management etc, it's true, you have to learn all this, but more importantly you start to have to learn to compromise and really get good at communicating with people. A mistake in the physical world can get costly very fast.

Extreme weather in regional climates demands better quality building materials, and traditional architectural styles may adapt poorly to new climates. Earthen bricks may work fine in the Middle East, but unless the bricks are fired, they cannot survive wetter regional climates (even with their claims of being waterproof), let alone a snowy climate. On the other hand, a Scandinavian-style A-frame will keep snow from accumulating on the roof, but such a design feature is extraneous for much of the world.

If you did want to build your own house using local materials, and you have wood available, rammed earth may be a better choice than unfired bricks, but it still won't perform too well in cold climates.